My unforgettable night with a musical genius

Nostalgia barged in like gangbusters. What brought it on was a brief article about the most charming and enchanting of young women, Nancy Olson. Seventy-two years ago, she was in that rare gem of a movie, Sunset Boulevard, playing the rosy-cheeked screenwriter who was the love interest of William Holden, the writer who was handsome but entrapped by Norma Desmond, aka Gloria Swanson. Nancy’s blue eyes shimmered, and her figure was to die for, but what made her memorable was that she was as American as apple pie. Innocence trumped sex in her case, and apparently she was as decent and as intelligent as the ingénue she played in that film. She quit the movies early on because it was too narrow a life. She’s now 94 and has written a book – and I for one can’t wait to read it. Alas I never met her and I won’t feature in it because she was the third wife of a very great man with whom I spent an unforgettable evening when he was on his fifth or sixth marriage, the final tally being eight.