Please Believe Me lobby cards, 1950

From Photoplay, 1960

Deborah by husband Anthony Bartley, 1946

Deborah Blimping.

In 1974, [K.H] came to stay with Peter and Deborah in Klosters during the winter skiing season. Despite the fact that she had not joined in the sport since her debutante days, Hepburn insisted that Peter take her up into the Alps for a day’s skiing, borrowing for the occasion an old pair of boots from Deborah, and continuing up and down the slopes until the light faded. When she returned her feet where bleeding, and her hostess tended them, applying Scholl’s pads to the wounded areas. The next morning Katharine the Great, one of the fittest women in history of Hollywood, went out again with Peter to the ski-slopes, without a murmur of complaint, and repeated the process. A few weeks after her return to the US, to film Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne, a large package was delivered at ‘Wyhergut’ - Scholl’s plasters, ‘with love from K.H.’
One of Deborah’s most prized garments is an old polo-necked pullover Hepburn gave her in 1959.

Deborah Kerr by Eric Braun

Wobbly, But not Drunk

A part from the flat feet and scoliosis I have always had, which eventually put paid to my dreams of being a ballet dancer, I was fortunate enough to dodge illness and incapacity for many years.

Now, at the age of 78, I thank my lucky stars that, until 70, I had enjoyed a life of reasonably good health.

Although I have been on medication for Parkinson’s disease for the past five years, I still enjoy reasonably good health, and my medication has not had to be increased by more than half a tablet. Of course, being somewhat incapacitated is a source of great irritation, but it has its lighter moments too. My companion and I sometimes find ourselves laughing helplessly, overcome with mirth at the bizarre occurrences that result­usually -from the medication itself. Although it helps my mobility, it can have strange side-effects. I have been known to fling my dinner through the air like a toddler having a tantrum, and to carefully pour my morning tea onto the carpet instead of down my throat. Sometimes, I cannot hear my phone calls and wonder why the connection is so bad -until it is pointed out to me that I am holding the receiver upside down.

On my tentative walks beside the river near my home, I have been known to stagger to within inches of the rushing water, unable to stop myself, and can sense the tut-tuts from passers-by who obviously assume I must be drunk.

Another incident that springs to mind, one directly related to the Parkinson’s syndrome, was the day my legs froze as I descended some stairs in Marbella in Spain. I toppled forward hitting the side of my head against the sharp corner of a door frame with amazing accuracy. With blood spurting everywhere from a sliced vein, I was rushed to hospital where the wound was sutured by a Saudi Arabian surgeon who, I later discovered, only visited the hospital on Mondays. What luck my accident had not occurred between Tuesday and Sunday.

Wearing a pair of my husband’s oldest, baggiest trousers and a pair of slippers, I tried to shield my face from the paparazzi -alerted with astonishing speed -who anticipated the inevitable drunken actress headline in the Spanish morning papers.

Before Parkinson’s reared its exasperating head, I travelled to London in 1991 to attend a family party for my 70th birthday. I had been feeling unwell for a number of weeks, and although I managed to get through the party without disgracing myself, I was relieved to leave London the following day.

On my flight back to Zurich, I suddenly felt very peculiar, and by the time the plane landed, I was too ill to stand. The airport medics were summoned and, as I was wheeled off the aircraft, I heard somebody ask: ‘Isn’t that Deborah Kerr, the actress?’ Oh dear, I thought. There will now be rumours circulating about my drinking habits.

On that occasion, my illness turned out to be a large gastric ulcer, and the hospital consultant remarked, after tests that included the swallowing of, in his words, ‘black spaghetti’ -a thin tube with a light and scissors on the end used to snip out a part of my innards -that my ulcer was the most beautiful he had ever seen.

Now my Swiss GP, who comes to my home to take various blood samples, greets me with the words: ‘The vampire is here.’ He says I have the heart of a 25-year-old, and that when I reach the grand old age of 200, he will have to kill me off. I look forward to outliving him.

Deborah Kerr for Bonjour Tristesse, 1958