Peter Finch' 3rd wife Eletha Barrett ---- Another Yoko Ono

“Eletha always let Peter know loud and clear that she was different from all the other women, those bad women chasing after him who just wanted jewels and pretty clothes and money and photographs taken of them together to further their careers, and that she wanted nothing of him but himself and that he owed her nothing. In many ways she was a real star-struck kid. She just wanted to be able to tell her girlfriends that she was sleeping with a movie star.”

Eletha recalled for journalist Helen Lawrenson that she would weave a powerful spell around him and keep him with her always and always keep him safe.

When Peter returned to Jamaica, Eletha was waiting for him, unshakeable in her loyalty. He asked her if she would go with him to Hollywood. She told him she would go with him anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the world. She left her child with her mother, Miss Bertha, and together she and Peter took off for California. All through the shooting of The Legend of Lylah Clare Eletha remained with Peter, a seeming shadow in the background, yet, in fact, always by his side.

Peter found Eletha’s view of himself and the world refreshingly different from his own. For one thing, she was not hampered by humility — spiritual or otherwise. She would have dismissed such a quality in herself contemptuously as servile and abasing, as arse- licking.

“Arse-licker” was her favourite epithet for such folk she decided belonged in this category; nor was Peter spared this epithet when from time to time she felt it necessary to warn him of the traps into which his good manners and good nature might propel him.

Although in the past Peter had never underrated his talents, he had been constantly tormented by self-doubt, plagued by indecisions and by the clear recognition of his faults and shortcomings. It was this lack of arrogance and aggression, he knew, that had made it impossible for him to be a successful “Up yours!” man. How could he help but be lost in wonder and admiration at the way Eletha always ended her pronouncements with, “Am I right.”

Under Eletha’s influence he became less insecure and more content. He also became less easy-going, less outgoing, far less open-handed and less trustful and in his cups his streak of coarseness re-emerged.

From The Red Tent on, when Eletha worked on the picture in Russia as a third assistant ‘‘rustling up tea and a wonderful sight in her fur boots”, according to Peter, she became more and more directly involved in his work. In fact, so deep became their symbiosis that they talked of ‘‘we” in the context of his work as well as in their private lives.

Most wives or girlfriends rarely show up on a set while their husbands or boyfriends are working, But Eletha on a set was not just sitting around. She was there because she had a special task to perform, and it was one that Peter wished her to perform. She was there to protect him. Says Anthony Harvey, who directed him in 1973 in The Abdication

, ‘‘Peter would come up to me and say, ‘Is it all right if Eletha comes on the set tomorrow?’ and although I very much dislike having anyone not directly concerned around while I’m shooting, I always said yes, because it made him so happy.”

From what was Eletha protecting Peter, one might ask, a man in his fifties with thirty years’ acting experience under his belt? Says a thoughtful co-worker on one of Peter’s sorrier and later films, ‘ ‘Peter was fuelled by Eletha’s suspicions. If Eletha saw a plot somewhere, Peter saw the plot and it could come from anywhere.

Eletha’s function was to keep Peter alerted to the great conspiracy surrounding him in terms of his career and its ultimate destruction and the people who were out to get him.”

In other words, she was a cunt.

If her protection campaign seemed at times to others to take an aggressive form, there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that Eletha, by her behaviour, was not doing exactly and precisely what Peter wished her to do even though he did not seem to take into account how other people might react to Eletha’s outspokenness, lack of inhibitions, and — it must be stated — downright rudeness.

One evening in London, while they were drinking in the crush at the bar of the White Elephant, an actor came in, ordered a drink, and spotting Peter called out “Hello, Finchie.” Eletha was standing near the actor and turned to him. “You a good friend of his?” she demanded.

A good friend of Finch’s? Who at The White Elephant was not? Put off by her manner, the actor replied facetiously, “Never met him in my life.”

“Then you don’t call him Finchie,” said Eletha. The actor put down his drink and walked away in a marked manner

In pubs, Eletha liked to get up and sing and Peter liked her to do it. “Isn’t she wonderful?” he would say to everyone there. In Russia, during the making of The Red Tent, they were dining at a large crowded restaurant in the company of a rather correct Englishman, when Eletha, feeling the urge come over her, got up and sang.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Peter asked the Englishman as they watched her. “What white person would do that?”

“I would,” the Englishman surprised Peter by answering, carefully adding, “I thought they wanted me to. But they don't, old boy, don’t you see?”

But Peter did not. He marked off the Englishman’s remark as just another racial snub. For Peter was as intent on defending Eletha

...and a Man, Baby!

In the beginning, if Eletha had a fault in Peter’s eyes, it was that she perhaps did not distinguish too nicely between hangers-on, which he agreed were a bad thing, and old mates and family, which were not. Eletha tended to lump them all together, especially the women, as part of his destructive, exploited former life and consequently wished to remove him from their dangerous influence.

On one occasion in London, Letitia, Ken Adam’s wife, easily as candid as Eletha, reproved her sharply. At an Adams party filled with film technicians with whom Peter dearly loved talking shop, Letitia, perturbed by Eletha sitting apart from the others looking obviously bored, finally went over to her and asked if there was something the matter. When Eletha replied that there wasn’t, she just wanted to go home, Letitia pointed out that Peter was enjoying himself tremendously and that this was the second time at one of their gatherings that Eletha had behaved this way.

“Can’t you see that Peter’s having fun and you’re spoiling it for him?” said Letitia as she walked away.

In Rome, the Whitings were to see a good deal of Eletha’s “Letitia” face. Says Whiting, “In an evening together the weight of entertaining her and talking to her fell on me because Peter expected me to take to Eletha and appreciate her. I tried very hard to find a subject of common interest with her but I was not able to do so.

'It was arrogant rubbish for him to attribute the Roman reaction to Eletha to colour. The question of colour did not arise. What did arise was a reaction to Eletha’s aggressiveness and Peter’s defensiveness. Eletha had a side of domestic pure gold and I credited it to her. She boasted of her skill in bed and I have no reason to doubt it. Peter at this stage was rude to people not in a rebellious way but with the self- righteous pride of the Underdog ...”

After Peter divorce from first wife Tamara, Peter’s interest in his daughter Anita was sporadic although he supported her financially and after his divorce from Yolande, his interest in his daughter and son, Samantha and Charles, seemed to cease abruptly.

In her late teens, Eletha had borne a child called Christopher and given him her surname, Barrett. Peter' heart went out to Christopher, and they quickly formed a bond. Olive Harding remembers the first time she laid eyes on the child in London, Peter leading the boy by the hand into her office and proudly introducing him saying, “This is Christopher and he is to have anything he wants.”

And yet Peter insisted in preserving the honesty of the situation. When he legally adopted Christopher in the early ’70s and the boy started calling him “Daddy”, Peter said to him firmly, “Look mate, I’m not your Daddy. You call me Finchie, and we’ll be great friends. Right?”

Anything about Faye in all of that?

Eletha gave birth to a baby who — although a girl whom they named Diana — was and still is the exact replica of Peter, he was ecstatic!

A black Finch! Peter had had a black Finch! He crowed his triumph all over Rome. And he particularly savoured the effect this news would have on his former “bodyguard”, his aunt in the bad old days of his boyhood in Australia, who was still alive.

Eletha struck Anthony Harvey as “loud, animated, with a mad, childlike quality and a bubbling sense of humour. On location she would often have lunch with us and by the way, you could hear her coming all over the ravines, and Peter’s face would light up.” Says Liv Ullman,

“The endearing thing about Eletha was that she was so loved by Peter.” Said another member of the company who shared these lunch hours, “Eletha would start talking and out would come a non-stop stream-of-consciousness monologue that sounded like a James Joyce character let loose in the room. Then she would sail off somewhere and Peter would smile and say, ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ ”

Eletha, having lived with Peter for six years and borne him a daughter who was now aged four, got her dearest wish and was married to him in November 1973 at the Methodist Church in the Piazza di Sant Angelo in Rome in a full white wedding.

On 2 February 1974, Peter’s real father, Jock Campbell, died in Moffat, Scotland, aged eighty-seven. Peter and Eletha were in London at the time and his sister Flavia says, “I want to emphasize that this is all second-hand, but my mother told me that Campbell wanted to see Peter before he died and that Eletha did not want Peter to go up there.”

Susan Landau: “The physical transformation of Peter on the set was remarkable. He was Howard Beale. But slumped on a chair in the hotel lobby waiting for Eletha who was always late, he looked ... well ... he looked a lot older. We all became good friends and saw a lot of each other and I could see pain behind a lot of things he did; pain behind his drinking and his travelling and running around.

If Peter was the ultimate professional, Eletha was the ultimate amateur. An unflagging film fan — she sometimes took in three films a day with pleasure — she enjoyed overseeing the work on a film set. One day, after viewing some of the rushes, she went up to Sidney Lumet and explained to him that Peter needed two more close-ups in a certain scene. “Yah, pussycat, yah,’’ said Lumet hugging her affectionately. Peter did not get them.

Undeterred, Eletha went back into the arena again and fought Lumet hard for the close-ups. She did not win. In the making of a film the director is the ultimate boss. A film editor once told me of Liz Taylor in tears in the cutting-room, begging the director to allow the image of Burton’s face to linger on the screen for five seconds more. The answer was no.

There can be no doubt that the “two more close- ups” scheme was one of Peter’s wishes, and there is something wonderfully innocent about the two of them thinking that Eletha was going to obtain them.

This new love was based on Eletha’s joy and excitement at living in the film capital as well as Peter’s enormous new satisfaction in his work. It was a love, one might say, based on both his and Eletha’s final all-round acceptance of the reality that Peter was an actor before anything else and that as Hollywood had again become the centre of the film industry, it was the place to be.

Now the Finches wished to become Americans. To this end Peter immersed himself in Americana, interesting himself in recent Indian excavations in California and reading huge amounts of books on American history such as volumes of the Adams Chronicles while, more practically, Eletha saw to it that their lawyer set the wheels in motion so that they would be eligible for citizenship when the time came.

All that was left for the Finches was to find a house for them and the children to settle down in. The one they chose as their hearts’ desire was a modest one in Beverly Hills off Benedict Canyon on Ysidro Drive on the other side of that street where the grander residences of Fred Astaire and Danny Kaye flourish with their rolling lawns, tennis courts, swimming pools and private cinemas.

By Hollywood standards, the Finch house was a tiny house with a tiny garden and no swimming pool. By English standards, it might, with perfect justice, have been described as a cottage

In Peter' Australian youth it had slipped through his open fingers with abnormal speed. Now in his Hollywood middle age, it stayed abnormally tight within his closed fists. He was, in fact, well- known in the movie colony for being a close man with a buck; a man who counted every dime; a man who had never been known to pick up a cheque that could not be charged to the studio he was working for.

Yet: “In the matter of getting their new home fixed up,” says Mike Maslansky, who was to be Peter’s publicist for the next six months, “Peter gave Eletha full rein. But Eletha never told any of the workmen concerned with the renovations that she was Mrs Peter Finch, and Peter was fond of saying that all of them probably thought she was the maid coming around to oversee the work.”they reasoned, if the workmen on the house found out that Eletha was the wife of a movie star and not the maid, their prices would have doubled.

This “maid” motif was a theme that ran throughout Peter’s and Eletha’s life together. Remarks about Eletha being mistaken for the maid were a common topic of conversation both with their friends and in the press.

“I bought Eletha a mink coat,” Peter said in London, “so that when she goes flat-hunting they don’t think she’s the maid.” “I bought Eletha a Mercedes,” he said in Jamaica, “so that the neighbours won’t think she’s the maid.”

Very soon after the completion of Network , at the beginning of August to be precise, the possibility of all four of its stars winning Academy Awards began to present itself strongly in their thoughts as well as in the thoughts of everyone connected with the film.

Peter had always taken awards in his stride , But What had happened around that time to reverse Peter’s casual, off-hand stand about the awards? What had changed him overnight from reluctant to keen, from keen to determined, and from determined to obsessed with the desire — as Eletha was — to win for that year?

Eletha and Peter had learned through the grapevine that MGM was planning to enter Peter not in the Best Actor category, but in the Best Supporting Actor category. Peter’s blood was up. Howard Beale a supporting part? In a word, no.MGM must be made to put him in his rightful category and Peter must show them that he was prepared to fight for Best Actor. More — that he was determined to win.

Says Mike Maslansky, “Peter wanted to win that Oscar. It was an obsession with him. And we went to all lengths, let me tell you, during the period I was engaged. Between August and January, Peter must have done three hundred interviews with foreign and domestic media — radio, television, the works. Nobody, but nobody was missed. And there was no one Peter refused to talk to.

Though no one has yet been able to figure out whether Academy Awards are based on merit, money or the popularity of a particular actor at the time — there are just too many variables — the short answer a film studio would give you is: popularity based on publicity.

What did Peter Finch have to say three hundred times over in interviews? He talked about his early days in the Buddhist monastery, his middle years in the Australian outback and his not- too-distant days Hellraising and how those had never really existed — except in the eyes of the Press. He was, after all, and always had been, a one-woman man. He talked domestically about Eletha and the children and occasionally he mentioned remembered remarks of Vivien Leigh’s or reminiscences of his grandmother. But there were no more New York Times revelations about his origins. His father was George Ingle Finch, the mountaineer.

Peter was mostly in high spirits during these trips. There was, however, one upsetting incident that occurred in October in New York in the Finches’ suite at the Pierre that caught Mike completely off-guard and perturbed him for a very long time. He says, “Peter and I were sitting there and I can’t honestly say what brought it on — whether something had made him angry, or he was exhausted, or he wasn’t feeling well, but suddenly out of nowhere it seemed to me, he turned white with rage and then launched into this speech about the evils of the business world and how the business people in the movies corrupt the artists. Then it was all over and never referred to again.”

That summer, before launching himself on his campaign to win his Oscar, Peter lunched at Barry Krost’s house with Eletha, John Osborne and Jill Bennett. As they sat in the sun on the patio, Jill studied him.

“He looked outrageously beautiful as only he could — that beautiful liquid face — but he just didn’t look himself. He was very quiet and we didn’t talk much. And then I noticed that his clothes didn’t seem to fit him

.” And all at once Jill’s skin began to crawl and the horrifying thought lurched into her mind and took root, this man is going to die!

Soon after she and John Osborne left, she had to say it out loud, “Peter is going to die"

“Rubbish,’’ said Osborne. “What makes you think that?’’ “I don’t think it, I know it,’’ answered Jill. “He looks just like Godfrey Tearle looked before he died ... His clothes ... they seemed to be falling away from him.’’

The Finches’ good friend Jill Saint Amant had been away from California most of that autumn and had not seen Peter until she dined with them in November. Afterwards she left puzzled and troubled.

Peter was not looking well. It was not anything she could exactly put her finger on because they’d all spent a happy evening together, but he looked somehow ... frail. And it seemed to her that his skin had a sort of pearly blue tinge.

Mike Maslansky: “How much was Peter aware, as he must have been, that he had a bad heart? I don’t know. He never mentioned it to me. I do know that one of the things one does to exercise a bad heart is to walk all the time. And Peter walked constantly. He walked everywhere. he walked for miles every day from Sunset Towers to Twentieth Century. But he looked — I thought he had looked for the six months I was working for him — awful.

His colour was bad, his skin was pasty looking. He wasn’t drinking.

He only fell off the wagon a couple of times. One time was the night of the first preview of Network at MGM and he got pissed. Mostly he drank Perrier or Club Soda and Lime. I have no idea whether he had any intimation of his imminent death. I don’t know if he refused to see a doctor but I do know that he did not believe in them.

“Eletha’s obsession at the time was to get the house all fixed up by New Year’s Eve ready to move into and she accomplished it. The Finches moved in on New Year’s Eve.

“The evening before Peter died he was in terrific spirits. He had just taped his guest appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show and he was marvellous in it. He talked about his eccentric grandmother in Paris and her harp. And there was some comedian on the show who did a long monologue about death which Peter and I talked about that night when we were driving back to his home after the show. And Peter talked about death, saying how fitting and funny a subject it could be for a comic monologue because death was, in the ceremonies and incidents surrounding it, ‘a hilarious thing’. That is what he said. ‘A hilarious thing’. That’s a direct quote.’’

The next day, Peter was to appear on the Good Morning America. He rose early, dressed, spoke on the phone to Mike Maslansky, kissed Eletha and walked down to the Beverly Hills Hotel to meet Sidney Lumet who was to be on the show with him.

Peter once wished to spend those days with Vivien Leigh, and before that it had been with Tamara, He should have known better. He should have known he was an actor born and would die an actor’s death, in the thick of it with his boots on, at the right place at the right time. He was to die in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel before going on television to get votes for himself for his finest performance.

At nine a.m. that morning Peter collapsed in a chair in the lobby. He was rushed in an ambulance to the University of California Hospital and at 10.19 declared dead of a heart attack.

As he knew he would, Peter Finch won his Oscar although he was not there to receive it. In his place, Eletha stood in front of the Academy Award audience and gave a graceful speech and everyone wept.

A few years before Peter’s death, Eletha had been converted to Catholicism and so Peter Finch, the lifelong Buddhist, Peter Finch, was given a Catholic funeral service at the Church of The Good Shepherd in Los Angeles and then buried in Hollywood Memorial Cemetery.

The internment was conducted by a Catholic priest. Mourners noticed that his adopted son, Christopher, was the most outwardly broken up of the family.

In the shocking suddenness of Peter’s death, Eletha’s grief, as the ineffable reality of it awakened hourly in her consciousness, was pitiful to see; and friends worried that it might prove too much for her to bear.

she yearned to follow him and both comforted and tormented herself with fantasies of ways to do it soon.

But not for her the cowardly passivity of the overdose. She imagined herself sitting on his grave and allowing a poisoned snake to bite her, or of getting on the next airplane and willing it to crash by her magic powers. But life was too strong in her and instead she visited his grave daily and read aloud to him from the Hollywood Reporter.

Peter Finch left Nothing to his 3 kids from his previous 2 marriages , and left everything Eletha Barrett.

Charles Finch : "Charles was six when his parents' marriage ended, after his father drifted into an affair with Shirley Bassey. Thereafter, Charles scarcely knew him: his letters weren't answered, his requests for a meeting rejected. All he had to remember his father by was a photograph.

Eight years later, when his father died, everything - even Charles's childhood home in Jamaica - went to Finch's third wife."

Notably, he dropped dead on Network co-star Faye Dunaway's 36th birthday.

Producer Charles Finch talks about his deadbeat dad :

A son of the actor Peter Finch, Charles was a toddler when his father had an affair with the singer Shirley Bassey and his parents divorced, Dad vanishing altogether into the fog of alcohol, often stiffing his mother, the actress Yolande Turner, on support payments. Sometimes the electricity would be cut off, or the heat. A few years later, when he was around 12, Turner moved Charles and his older sister Samantha to the French village of Mougins. When Dad died of a heart attack, 15-year-old Charles heard the news on the radio in a cab in Paris, its streets slapped with posters for “Network,” for which Peter Finch would win a posthumous Oscar.

“I think wherever I went, people would treat me a sort of different way — ‘Oh, we loved your father in that movie,’ ” said Charles, . “And what were you supposed to say? ‘Well, he didn’t love me so much?’ ”

But being a Finch had some compensations: acting lessons with Lee Strasberg a few years later in New York, “who didn’t charge me, because Anna Strasberg liked famous kids, I guess.”

She was real ugly. Probably still is. Looks like she stinks too.

Is Eletha Finch still alive ?!!

R20