"There goes a happy man" says the cheerful announcer, as Peter Lawford strolls into picture, raising his fists in a joke-challenge to the audience. There couldn't have been a greater misreading of the man. His right arm was, in fact, almost useless, enabling him to exploit the shortage of young males in Hollywood as the war was starting. As for happiness, this would steadily elude him, as his addictions rendered him less and less employable - as an actor, that is. But Hollywood still found work for him, at the dizzy rank of messenger boy, running between the Rat Pack and the White House.
For his looks and charm had snared a Kennedy princess, and it appeared that he might broker a Presidential visit to the specially-modernised Sinatra estate. When Bobby Kennedy ruled this out, because of the mafia links, Sinatra's anger knew no bounds, and Lawford's career was dead.
Lawford was under no illusions about Camelot and the stench of the mob, and could easily have put a bomb under the whole sleazy lot of them. But he retained certain instincts as the son of a much-decorated British general, and kept his counsel, as a lot of other men wouldn't have done. Some say he laid out the bottles of pills on Marilyn Monroe's dressing-table to indicate suicide, when he knew she had just been murdered, and that he had received her dying message "Say good-bye to the President" (which actually sounds a bit made-up, I always think). Like all addicts, he went from bad to worse, missing his chance to make something of 'Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell' (a highly-original comedy starring Gina Lollobrigida), where he looks like a ghost, just going through the motions. Finally at 53, he married a 17-year old, to make him feel young, but died within months.
This episode of 'Mysteries and Scandals' is short of neither mystery nor scandal, and ranks high in the long-running series fronted by the energetic and abrasive A.J. Benza.
For his looks and charm had snared a Kennedy princess, and it appeared that he might broker a Presidential visit to the specially-modernised Sinatra estate. When Bobby Kennedy ruled this out, because of the mafia links, Sinatra's anger knew no bounds, and Lawford's career was dead.
Lawford was under no illusions about Camelot and the stench of the mob, and could easily have put a bomb under the whole sleazy lot of them. But he retained certain instincts as the son of a much-decorated British general, and kept his counsel, as a lot of other men wouldn't have done. Some say he laid out the bottles of pills on Marilyn Monroe's dressing-table to indicate suicide, when he knew she had just been murdered, and that he had received her dying message "Say good-bye to the President" (which actually sounds a bit made-up, I always think). Like all addicts, he went from bad to worse, missing his chance to make something of 'Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell' (a highly-original comedy starring Gina Lollobrigida), where he looks like a ghost, just going through the motions. Finally at 53, he married a 17-year old, to make him feel young, but died within months.
This episode of 'Mysteries and Scandals' is short of neither mystery nor scandal, and ranks high in the long-running series fronted by the energetic and abrasive A.J. Benza.