Graham Greene, Errol and Underaged Girls

To answer your question, GT, Michael Korda, who was Graham Greene’s friend and editor says that Greene and Errol did meet in Havana, for drinks at the Hotel Inglaterra.

They would have had much to discuss aside from politics. Greene knew a great deal about Hollywood films. Moreover, both their careers were nearly destroyed by infamous encounters with underaged girls.

In Greene’s case, however, his actions were quite calm and premediated and he was fully aware that the girl in question was nine years old.

From 1935 to 1940, Greene worked as the film critic for The Spectator magazine, one of the publications for which I write. In total, he reviewed 400 films, including two of Errol’s, (the notices of which I am trying to find in the archives.)

In 1937, in the supplement, Night And Day, Greene chose to review ‘Wee Willie Winkie’, the new Shirley Temple vehicle. I reproduce the article below. Please bear in mind that Greene was a humourist with a penchant for irony.

 

Night And Day, October 28th, 1937

‘Wee Willie Winkie’ (20th Century Fox)

by Graham Greene

‘The owners of a child star are like leaseholders – their property diminishes in value every year. Time’s chariot is at their backs: before them acres of anonymity. What is Jackie Coogan now but a matrimonial squabble? Miss Shirley Temple’s case, though, has peculiar interest. Infancy with her is a disguise. Her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already, two years ago, Miss Temple was a fancy little piece. In ‘Captain January’, she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich.

Now, in ‘Wee Willie Winkie’, wearing short kilts, she is a complete totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square; hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant’s palm is raised; watch the way she measures a man with agile, studio eyes, with dimpled depravity.

It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers – middle aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire. ”Why are you making my Mummy cry?” – what could be purer than that? And the scene when dressed in a white nightdress she begs grandpa to take Mummy to a dance – what could be more virginal? On those lines in her new picture, made by John Ford, is horrifyingly competent. ‘

 

 

In those days, film critics did not write articles accusing studios and child stars of catering to paedophilia. The bien pensants failed to see the funny side and created an uproar. Fox sued, and, as a result, night descended on Night And Day and, for a few months, Greene’s career as a critic.

Greene was not a very nice man – well, let’s be fair, he was a bit of a shit at times, but after ‘Wee Willie Winkie’, one can forgive him everything. Besides, in all seriousity, he may have had a point. (Just being ironic again, of course. Gosh, Americans, though I love you all, can be so damn literal.)

 

— PW