There was no performance on Christmas Eve as everyone would be celebrating at home and many would visit the Frauenkirche, the charming old twin-steepled cathedral. Our friends were spending Christmas with their families so we accepted Pusca’s invitation to visit Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The party was to consist of the Boston Brothers, Rosie and Tom, George Romanos and all the girls. Pusca had kindly organized the whole trip. It was to be very cheap.
‘I’m taking the loss on this, but it is pleasure to do some things for such nice peoples,’ said Pusca.
He explained that we were to pay in a lump sum before we departed, and after that there would be no passing of coarse notes. We would stay in a small inn and come back the following night in time for the show.
Accompanied by Reggie, his ciné camera and his ménage, we piled into a train full of young people and skis bound for the mountains. The object of Reggie’s visit was not to see the scenery or to breathe the mountain air. Reggie hated and distrusted the country, but he would have crept on his hands and knees up the Zugspitze, if it had meant getting a first-class film. With his ciné camera he had taken shots of the company all over the world from the Côte d’Azur to the beaches of Brazil, but this would be something different; a snow sequence.
Photography was not a hobby with Reggie. It was a disease. He was so busy taking pictures of places that he saw them chiefly through a lens. It had started with a well-meaning friend suggesting that he smuggle a Leica over the German border as part of his theatrical equipment. This Reggie did, but when it came to the point of selling it for a profit he found himself unable to part with it. By now a great deal of his capital was tied up in cameras. He lavished loving care on them and fed them only the best film.
As soon as we arrived on location Reggie selected the terrain with an expert eye. Having outlined the scenario he allotted the parts and mapped and timed our moves. It was to be a Winter Frolic to be executed with great verve and spontaneity. In my role of comic relief I merely had to fall into a snowdrift. As we frisked through the same idiotic gambol time and time again, building our snowman, throwing snowballs (some of which found the mark), the gaiety became less spontaneous, our spirits sagged, and toothy smiles froze on our faces.
Reggie was in his element. He was a world-famous movie director – Cecil B. de Basil himself creating a great epic at the cost of thousands of pounds a minute, his handiwork to be seen by millions. He was not manipulating eight soggy girls but eight hundred invisible extras in a vast crowd scene. As he rose above the handicap of being producer, director and camera man, cries of technical jargon assailed our frost-bitten ears.
‘Can’t you go deeper, Tommie?’ he shouted inconsiderately. ‘You’re supposed to disappear from view.’
At this stage all that could be seen of me was a blue nose and my alpine hat.
‘Laugh, Tommie, laugh!’
I was laughing, but he couldn’t hear me as my mouth was full of snow. When he actually shot the sequence perspiration glistened on his forehead, and after the final, ‘Cut!’ Reggie von Stroheim, his moment of glory over, had to be assisted by his minions to a Gasthof to be revived by strong drink before he had the strength to return with his retinue to Munich.
But he missed the best shot of all when we piled into a sleigh under a voluminous fur rug to ride around the countryside. The girls tucked their slacks into thick wool socks, piled on layers of sweaters and tied mufflers around their heads: without their glamorous trappings they were like children let out of school. As we rode through the valleys, sleigh bells jingling, the countryside looked like a Christmas card, the fir trees, their branches heavy with snow and icicles, as though they had been decorated with silver tinsel and cotton wool. Towering above us were the breathtaking white mountains.
On our return journey we passed a cemetery full of people dressed in their Sunday best. The graves had been decorated with evergreen branches, and candles were burning in front of the tombstones. A band was briskly playing carols. We stopped to join the crowd and sing, ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’ nearly choking with the milk of human kindness. Nothing but peace on earth, goodwill towards men seemed possible.
At night, when the mountains turned dark and forbidding, we sat in the Wienstube drinking beer and learning German songs. Conducted by Pusca, we sang in chorus, ‘Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit,’ and ‘In München steht ein Hofbräu haus, eins, zwei, g’suffa.’ We banged our steins on the table and gulped down our beer in the accepted fashion. When the bells came peeling over the snow, we interrupted our revels to walk with the rest of the populace through the crisp, clear night to the church to attend midnight mass.
We returned to the Weinstube to drink the heady peasant rotwein and talk sentimentally of homes and families until Babs started to cry.
‘But Babs,’ we said, ‘you should be happy. It’s Christmas.’
‘I know,’ she sobbed. ‘I want my mother.’
We thought it was time to put her to bed. Babs, Carol and I tucked ourselves under a large feather tick and were lulled to sleep by Babs’s intermittent sniffles.
We were reluctant to return next day to the Deutsches Theater. We had enjoyed our holiday in such a simple setting far from the footlights. It had been a Fröliche Weihnachten and we felt indebted to Pusca, even if he had contrived to make a small profit.
Extract from Les Girls
Constance Tomkinson © 1956
Click here to browse the podcast archive 
Leave a comment