“Gosh, and you two were only just dating,” I replied.
“Your mom was like Grace Kelly with all the elegance, beauty, class, and charm, but fierce as a tiger. She told the London press that her love for me could not be destroyed by fascist hate attacks,” Pop explained.
“A kind British journalist for the Daily Mirror, by the name of Sir William Neil Connor came to our defense, pleading for people to stop the slander, get off our backs, enough was enough.” The guy wrote under the pen name of “Cassandra” taken from Greek mythology, in reference to a tragic character given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but is ultimately cursed so that no one will believe her.
“Your mom continued to pay the price for the London racial slurs, though. Back in Hollywood, eighteen days after the racial slurs by Sir Oswald Mosley’s followers in London, a Twentieth Century-Fox spokesman released a statement that May Britt’s contract would not be renewed,” Pop explained. “This was June 1960. The studio refused to say if the action was a result of her plans to marry me or the London racial slurs, but the timing was more than a coincidence.”
With Henry Silva in Johnny Cool, 1963
I could see my father’s eyelids grow heavier. Mentally, our talks were therapeutic for both of us, but physically draining for him. I put a throw blanket over him and let him nod off for a spell. As I watched him sleep, I thought of my mom, always so proper on the outside, dressed to perfection, bag hanging on her forearm, never leaving the house without her eyeliner—she was so put together, so beautiful. On the inside, she had enormous courage, strength, and resilience. She would not only marry a black man at a time when interracial marriages were shunned, but do it at all costs.
Uncle Frank, Dad, and Uncle Dean in Robin and the 7 Hoods, 1964
Taken on the day my parents announced their engagement to the world, 1960
My mom, Swedish actress May Britt Wilkens was born on March 22, 1934, in Lidingö, Sweden. Her birth name was MajBritt Wilkens, but she later changed it to May Britt. Her father, Hugo Brigg-Wilkens, was a postal clerk; her mother, a housewife. Mom had a younger sister named Margot. Mom always said there was very little racism in Sweden, at least in the town where she grew up.
Mom and Dad had a deep, undying love for each other, while courting, through marriage, and divorce—even after my father’s death.
Mom always said, “It was your father’s kindness, his thoughtfulness that interested me the most. He was very intelligent. He studied people, he understood people—he could always spot someone across the room and tell if they were a phony or not.”
Mom still says, “He was a good father, Trace, even if his schedule kept him from being around all the time. As an entertainer, when you are hot you are hot, you have to work. Can’t stay home and hold your wife’s hand all the time. Your father had to work his butt off. And it was also his life blood, his passion. He thrived on it. He loved entertaining.”
Mom had a great career before she met my father. Her first job was as a photographer’s laboratory assistant in the Stockholm suburb where she was born. At eighteen years old, she left for Italy. In 1952, she was discovered by producer Carlo Ponti at a retouching studio. My mother became one of fifty actresses who Ponti auditioned for the film Yolanda, Daughter of the Black Pirate. Mom landed the role and off to Rome she went, chaperoned by her own mother, for the filming of Yolanda. In 1957, my mother moved to the United States after five years under contract to Carlo Ponti in Italy.
In 1957, Mom escorted her good friend, Montgomery Clift, to the Hollywood premiere of the American Civil War drama Raintree Country, a film in which he starred with Elizabeth Taylor. Clift had a nearly fatal car accident during the filming, which is evident in scenes where the left side of his face was partially paralyzed. The director of Raintree Country, Edward Dmytryk, would later direct my mom in the 1959 film The Blue Angel. Mom fit in well in Hollywood. She and fellow Swedish starlet Ingrid Goude were invited to the filming of television’s Panorama Pacific. Mom was also cast in the role of Kristina “Kris” Abbott in The Hunters—a Twentieth Century-Fox feature film adapted from a novel by James Salter.
In 1958, Mom attended a dinner party given by Southern California real-estate mogul Edwin Gregson Sr. My mother met his son, Eddie Gregson. Eddie left Stanford University in 1957 to follow an acting career, getting a small part in The Naked and the Dead. My mother spent a lot of time with young Gregson on the Strip and in Malibu, and on February 22, 1958, Mom and Eddie Gregson married in Tijuana, Mexico. He was nineteen; she was twenty-three.