One Ambition Is ‘To Be Happy9'

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 2

One Ambition Is ‘To Be Happy 9 '

(By

SIMON MARSH)

“ I have only one real burning ambition,** said the most beautiful girl in the world, “and that is to be happy. But it is not easy to be beautiful and happy. Sometimes, indeed, is seems impossible.”

For Ursula Andress, who many people women of course think is more beautiful than anyone has the right to be, the sunny world of private joy and public acclaim has suddenly clouded over.

Her nine-year marriage to the film director, John Derek, is said by friends to be over. Derek, the man who admits he “became a kind of Svengali” and spent years building Ursula into a symbol of supreme beauty, is no longer around.

And the woman who admits she has never been alone in her life, is beginning a solitary, bewildered search to pick up the pieces.

Ursula Andress never wanted to be a film star; to her, the world of the glittering sex symbol is empty and boring. “Her real career,” a colleague explains, “is making her friends love her.” She longs for children but has never felt herself responsible enough to have any of her own. She is insecure, undisciplined and gladly admits that she’s lazy. Leisurely Life Derek constantly harried her to correct such imperfections; to live up to the blueprint he had created. But she could not and would not “She told me once in anger,” he recalls, “to fall back in love with her and not with the image that’s been created.” Now 30, Ursula sometimes despairs that she will ever have the things she yearns for most, a family and a leisurely life among her friends. When she says: “It is often a

curse being beautiful,” she means every word. The career of the golden girl is an object lesson in how to succeed without even trying. As a schoolgirl in Rome, she appeared in three pictures and was brought hopefully to Hollywood to become a second Dietrich. She went because she “thought it might be fun to have a swimming pool and horses.”

And so it was, but the fun soon palled. So she went back to her native Switzerland. Then in 1957 she married John Derek.

Movie offers poured in relentlessly, but she never bothered to even open the scripts. She turned down the lead in “A Certain Smile,” “The Story of Ruth,” and dozens more. ‘Magic Moment? Suddenly she accepted a part in the James Bond film “Dr. No.” She did not read the script beforehand, but when she emerged out of the sea as a bikini-clad shell diver, it was a magic moment which confirmed her, whether she liked it or not, as an international glamour star. This was followed by a Sinatra film “Four for Texas” “Fun in Acapulco,” playing opposite Elvis Presley (“He stays at home and doesn’t have much fun”) and the lead in the Rider Haggard adventure story, “She.” At the Derek home in the Hollywood hills, she tried to recapture the carefree days before her stardom. But it was too late. “My husband hates my sex image,” she told a friend. “He thinks it’s vulgar.”

For his part, John Derek resented having to share his

wife with the picture-going public. “I don’t like to see her in the picture business,” he complained. “I want her all for myself. And, anyway, there’s no one big enough to handle her in a real career. There’s something mysterious about her they could never understand. If they took her seriously, she’d drive them crazy. Ursula can never be disciplined about anything.” ‘Wild Wife* Nevertheless, he tried to. He pronounced stern judgments on his “wild and unpredictable wife” to visiting journalists and friends. He was looking for “the right girl,” and Ursula was the nearest he’d ever get. Sometimes the training course to prefection needled even the easy-going Ursula. “You have to pay for everything in life,” she growled at an inquisitive journalist. “And I certainly pay for my beauty. But I will not be pestered by people like you.”

About the time that she made “She” friends noticed the first signs of restiveness. Even John Derek admitted: “Maybe I’ve been too enthusiastic about her for too many years. I’m really a hobbies man but I’ve given it ail up for her. I guess she’s got to change and so have I, but it’s going to cost me some happiness.”

Now the sumptuous Hollywood home on the hill no longer resounds to the barks of Ursula’s two dogs, a poodle called Cappuccino and an Afghan hound called Dimitri.

The new life Ursula Andress will make for herself will not be an easy one. A dose friend explains: “She loves people, but people don’t always love her in return. A man thinks: ’Can I score there?’ A woman thinks: ‘Can I keep her out of the way while I make my entrance?’ ” So the lives of the world’s most beautiful woman and the man who perhaps expected too much from her reach the crossroads and branch their different ways. For good? No-one knows.

But the car John Derek gave his wife as a present remains in the garage of their Hollywood home. Inscribed on the steering are the words: “Sweetie you are indispensable.” Only time will tell if she is.