Peter Arne, bastard
junior
that Sal Mineo died, killed by a male prostitute in
his driveway, but that is not the present topic.
Arne died just a few months or weeks before the
writer Mary Renault died, in 1983. The topic is
the relationship of him and his friend Jack Corke
with Renault and her friend Julie Mullard in Durban,
South Africa, in 1948 and 1949.
The two women were moving from near London to South
Africa, when they met the two men on the boat that
went through the Suez canal and down the east coast
of the continent.
Renault had recently won an MGM prize for fiction
with her book 'Return To Night', though the studio
never made a movie out of it. After publisher
and agent cuts, her take amounted to 37,000 Lb, a
fortune in that era. Unfortunately, though, in
postwar England, such windfalls were forbidden by
tax law, and Renault actually realized only 5000 Lb,
still a lot of money, and thought to be enough to
get the two women established in a new country.
They had met while working as nurses, as they did
all during the war and post war years, until their
decision to quit and move away in 1948.
While on the boat, Mary naively told Peter and Jack
about her prize money, and the two men at once
started proposing ways to invest the money in various
get-rich-quick schemes. The plan they eventually
adopted was to build homes in costal Durban, said to
be a developing area, with the four of them acting
as partners.
The business didn't take off, however, and while
two houses were still being constructed, with the
four partners living in the only one completed, Peter
and Jack began showing less interest in the business
and more interest in borrowing Mary's car, a used
Studebaker, and leaving the smaller car, also needed
by the business, for Mary and Julie. Peter and Jack
were partying and spending the small company's money,
really Mary's money, and bringing on financial ruin
for the business. Eventually a mutual friend
understood what was going on and warned Mary and
Julie.
Incredibly, Mary's lawyer didn't take her side,
apparently seeing the women as less believable and
trustworthy than the men, in that chauvinistic time
and place. Eventually, though, thanks to Jack's
heavy drinking, Peter and Jack became so discredited
among their circle of friends that they were forced
to move away, though still legally tied to the business.
That was not the end of it, though. Later they forged
a letter, ostensibly from other friends, asking to be
met at a the small out-of-the-way airport. Julie
drove the Studebaker to meet them, and they promptly
took over the car and drove away with her in it.
She managed to escape during a traffic slowdown, and
she and Mary reported the stolen car to the police,
who caught and arrested the two men. This time Mary's
lawyer believed her, and justice was done, with Mary
and Julie finally freed from the menace of Peter Arne
and his friend. Jack's future life was not notable, but
Peter Arne had a long successful career in film and TV,
with 'Straw Dogs' and two Pink Panther movies among
his many acting credits:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0036170/
Though she might have preferred to do without knowledge
of the dark side of life that she learned from Peter and
Jack, Mary Renault was able to effectively use some of
this experience for a few of the negative characters with
whom her heroes had to contend in her next book, 'The
Charioteer', published in 1953, the last of her
contemporary novels, before she became famous for her
Ancient Greek ones.
This information was taken from the excellent book by
David Sweetman, 'Mary Renault, a Biography', 1993.