David Niven wife: Roger Moore claimed Niven’s partner ‘was a b**** to him’ | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV
Around the World in 80 Days airs on BBC Two this afternoon. The adventure film is based on the classic Jules Verne novel, and stars David Niven in an all-star cast. David won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Major Pollock in Separate Tables, and has also appeared in films such as A Matter of Life and Death and The Pink Panther. He also played James Bond in the 1967 parody film Casino Royale.
David unfortunately had a turbulent life when it came to his relationships.
In 1940, he married his first wife Primula Susan Rollov.
But six years later, she died at the age of 28, only six weeks after the family moved to the US.
She fractured her skull in a fall in the Beverly Hills, California home of Tyrone Power, while playing a game of sardines.
In 1948, David met and married Hjördis Paulina Genberg, a divorced Swedish fashion model.
He recounted their meeting, saying: “I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life – tall, slim, auburn hair, up-tilted nose, lovely mouth and the most enormous grey eyes I had ever seen.
“It really happened the way it does when written by the worst lady novelists … I goggled. I had difficulty swallowing and had champagne in my knees.”
In 1980, David began experiencing fatigue, muscle weakness and a warble in his voice.
His 1981 interviews on the talk shows of Michael Parkinson and Merv Griffin alarmed family and friends, and viewers wondered if David had either been drinking or suffered a stroke.
He blamed his slightly slurred voice on the shooting schedule of the film he had been making, but he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis later that year.
His final appearance in Hollywood was hosting the 1981 American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire.
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As James Bond icon Roger Moore says in his 2008 book ‘My Word is My Bond’, he was not impressed with the way David’s wife was treating him.
Struggling with his condition, David told his wife Hjördis that he had managed to “swim two lengths” of their swimming pool.
Roger said he watched on as Hjördis snapped at her dying husband in what the James Bond star later described as “a cutting voice”.
She said: “Aren’t we a clever boy.”
Roger observed: “She was a bitch to him. David was a dear, dear friend of mine who did nothing but try to please her. In return, Hjördis showed him nothing but disdain.”
In the book, Roger recalled the day Hjördis came to his house on the day of David’s funeral in 1983.
He said: “In order to spare her the ordeal of having to face the TV cameras, I suggested that the car take Hjördis around to the back of the house.
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“She, meanwhile, decided to enter by the front door.
“The car door opened, and, with her wig slipping and an empty bottle of vodka rolling round her feet, Hjordis looked up at me and slurred, ‘Here for the press, are you?”
Niven and Hjördis’ allegedly tense marriage later became a plot-line in a play titled ‘Chalet’, written by a friend of Niven, international showbusiness writer Roderick Mann.
The Mail also reports that in a 1970 interview at London’s Connaught Hotel, she repeatedly interrupted and corrected his version of events, adding: “I’ve heard all these stories a thousand times and they bore me to death.”
David replied: “Then please go away and die, darling.”
Around The World In 80 Days airs on BBC Two at 2:40pm.
