JEREMY DOES CLAUS

In the new movie Reversal of Fortune, Jeremy Irons plays Claus von Bülow, the mysterious boulevardier accused of injecting his heiress wife, Sunny, with a near-fatal dose of insulin. JOHN RICHARDSON compares the real with the celluloid Claus. And HELMUT NEWTON re-creates his infamous V. F. portrait of Von Bülow in black leather

Nobody could play such a character, Irons protested, without coming across as a ham.

At the onset of the von Biilow affair, I attended a dinner given by the late Slim Keith. It was in honor of Billy Wilder. The conversation, as conversations did in those days, focused on Claus von Billow's trial— the most notorious society scandal of the decade—for allegedly attempting to murder his enormously rich wife, Sunny, with injections of insulin. "A film is bound to be made," Slim said. ''Let's come up with a cast." Grace Kelly, we all agreed, would have to be enticed out of royal retirement to play this former princess (Sunny's first husband had been Prince "Alfie" von Auersperg). The key figure of Richard Kuh, a former district attorney turned sleuth, who had been paid by Sunny's family to hound Claus (just as he had hounded Lenny Bruce), was also easy to cast: any Rottweiler would do. Sunny's lugubrious German maid, Maria Schrallhammer (known in the family as ''Schrilly"), who had likewise done her best to bring Claus to justice, was more of a problem until one of us recalled Lotte Lenya's performance in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love—the embodiment of dingy Mitteleuropa menace. But Claus: who could play the dashing Danish playboy? Someone suggested Klaus Maria Brandauer, or the excellent Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. Someone else said Maximilian Schell, but Wilder would not hear of it: ''Maximilian Schell plays the maid."

Jeremy Irons, whom the French-based German director Barbet Schroeder has cast as Claus in Reversal of Fortune, his mesmerizing movie about the case, was not a name that would have occurred to any of us. He was surely too young and slender and callow, too deferential, to impersonate someone as overwhelmingly urbane, let alone as physically imposing and bald, as Claus. When this laid-back, youthfully handsome actor came to pump me for pointers on playing my old friend, I was more than ever convinced that Irons would not fit into the exquisite shoes that the incomparable Mr. Cleverly made for Claus, or those smart shirts from Battistoni that never crease because they button between the legs.

But I was wrong. Irons has caught not just Claus's dandyism, but also his mystery. Mystery, Irons and I had agreed, was the key to playing Claus. It was the reason many of us in postwar London had taken a shine to this bright young law student who was so much more worldly-wise than the rest of us. Over the yeare, I watched Claus deepen the mystery, never entirely denying the sensational stories that circulated about him, never entirely exorcising the demonic image that, intentionally or not, he cultivated. The sulfurous cloud that he generated around himself—and sometimes around Paul Getty, his Scrooge of a boss—was his stock-intrade, his magician's cloak. And then there were his glamorous Parisian affairs—the beautiful wife of an evil collaborator, the French mistress he shared with an English duke—and his little quirks. Then as now, he hardly ever wrote by hand, not even postcards; these were typed. Was he afraid of giving himself away?

Besides being an enigma, Claus had been a stimulating companion once he had been steered away from the Almanack de Gotha. His training as a barrister had endowed him with a sharp, disputatious mind; he was also well read, well versed in classical music, eighteenth-century art and decoration, and the niceties of international tittle-tattle. It was fun, moreover, being around someone who prides himself—too much for his own good, as things turned out—on being a high-flying gambler in the game of life.

Before he turned twenty, Claus was already wearing a mask, I told Irons. Some psychic twist or deficiency, some moral leak, had evidently needed plastering over. Why else contrive such a baroque persona—a combination of dandy, nobleman, financier, epicure, playboy, and, yes, raconteur? (French for bore, as the late Kitty Miller used to say.) A persona that was not so much too good as too grand to be true: what stuffy English people call "bogus," and what I regarded as romantic role-playing. In due course the grand manner became second nature. Claus no longer seemed to know where artifice began or left off.

Nobody could play such a character, Irons protested, without coming across as a ham. He need not have feared. His performance is extraordinarily subtle. "Irons's approach was that Claus was innocent," Barbet Schroeder has been quoted as saying. "That's what gives so much depth to his character. The movie doesn't say he's innocent, but the performance of Jeremy Irons does. That creates a fantastic ambiguity." Irons was at pains to generate sympathy for a man he was not innately sympathetic toward. Sympathy, as opposed to approval, would open the door to understanding. Schroeder claims that in the course of the movie he himself was drawn to Claus, because "he likes to play games, always leaving open the possibility of his guilt. That's either a game or it's part of a perversely gentlemanly attitude. . . more perverse than evil." Schroeder, whose previous films include a coolly romantic but explicit study of a dominatrix (Maitresse) and a documentary on Idi Amin, is a past master at evoking perversity and savoring rather than sensationalizing it.

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Access to Claus's puzzling character came from an unexpected source, Irons said. After watching tape after tape of Claus's interviews, especially the ones with Phil Donahue and Barbara Walters, he began to wonder how his father would react if the same charges were leveled against him. Seeing the role in terms of his father was the breakthrough Irons needed. It helped him imagine himself accused of such a crime; it also solved the problem of his and Claus's disparate ages.

How would his father have reacted? I asked. "The only alternative to tears," Irons said, "would have been to tough it out and give nothing away"—something, he added, that the public hates people for doing. To this paternal identification Irons added a measure of Danish reserve, a dash of charisma, pomposity, charm, boredom, and a hint of weirdness. To round out the characterization, he concocted an ever so slightly accented voice—a voice that would have a certain upper-class British authority and plumminess without quite simulating the von Biilow boom. Beyond shaving his head, Irons was not at great pains to duplicate Claus's appearance. He worked within the perimeters of his own physique and look.

Would it have helped to meet Claus? I asked. No, it would have complicated things, Irons thought. In any case Claus would probably not have been allowed to see him, given the terms of his agreement with Sunny's family. In exchange for dropping legal action against him and permitting his and Sunny's daughter, Cosima, to share in the family estate on an equal basis with the other children, the implacably hostile heirs had insisted that Claus never speak or write or give interviews about the case.

Playing opposite the character of Claus in Reversal of Fortune is not so much his wife as his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, all too convincingly played by Ron Silver. Dershowitz not only masterminded the successful appeal after Claus was convicted of attempted murder in 1982; he wrote the popular account of the case on which the present film is based. Although there are mercifully few courtroom scenes, Reversal of Fortune is concerned primarily with the law rather than a cafe-society marriage on the rocks. Schroeder plays down the conflict between Claus and Sunny and plays up the conflict between Claus, the aging playboy wallowing in patrician privilege on Fifth Avenue, and Dershowitz, the down-to-earth Jewish radical functioning out of a messy kitchen full of whiz kids.

Finding no redeeming moral aspect to Claus's case, the priggish whiz kids in the film are disinclined to work on it until Dershowitz demonstrates that a fundamental constitutional issue is involved. Sunny's old mother (egged on by her second husband, a former gun salesman at Abercrombie and Fitch, who loathed Claus) had spent a fortune to make a case against her son-in-law, and the private investigators she hired were not constrained by the Bill of Rights to the extent that the police would have been. Therefore, the evidence turned up during Kuh's search of Clarendon Court—which would have been inadmissible if gathered by govemment agents—was accepted by the judge. Dershowitz saw this as a civil-liberties issue. It wasn't fair to permit rich people to hire their own private police.

In his book Dershowitz comes across as infinitely persevering and cunning: the ideal lawyer to have on your side when the odds are against you. (Dershowitz's transformation of the alleged murder weapon—the insulin-coated hypodermic needle first mentioned in Vanity Fair— into a key piece of evidence for the defense was a stroke of genius.) As in the book, the lawyer appears to be crass and self-promoting—in some respects as arrogant as his arrogant client. (After the appeal had been won, Claus referred to his savior as "Errol Flynn capturing Burma single-handed.") Although the film portrays Dershowitz as the nice guy, there are hints that the director does not really warm to nice guys. This is all to the good. By suggesting that Dershowitz is as much of an operator as Claus, Schroeder counteracts the simplistic black-and-white concept of the script and makes the tension between the two antithetical men seem less dramatically contrived.

As for Sunny, Schroeder says he sees her as "the emotional center of the film." He's right, of course, but unwise to have cast Glenn Close in this part. For better or worse, Close is identified with women who are diabolically manipulative (Dangerous Liaisons) or maniacally aggressive {Fatal Attraction), and just as a Stradivarius violin is said to reverberate with old tunes, this actress reverberates with old roles. True, she is convincing as one of those drunken Wasp women; true again, Sunny was often the worse for booze or pills. But there was nothing aggressive about her. She may have been spoiled and self-indulgent and prone to tantrums—the quintessential poor little rich girl—but she was also intensely feminine and vulnerable; unlike Close in style, demeanor, and temperament. Grace Kelly had the look and the ersatz distinction—that dancing-class distinction that socially ambitious mothers used to din into their daughters—but even Kelly would have been defeated by Sunny's softness and pathos. As a director, Schroeder is free to take whatever liberties he likes with his characters, but this particular liberty works against him. Sunny emerges as a wacky virago whom any self-esteeming husband could not be blamed for wanting to eliminate. Bang goes history as well as mystery.

Nor does the art direction serve the story as usefully as it might. Externals were all-important in the von Billows' lives. Sunny's fashion-plate allure; the claustrophobic opulence of her surroundings (so unlike the dingy mansion where the film was shot); the rarefied, orchidaceous atmosphere in which she and Claus cocooned themselves away from the real world, away from all but a very few friends: all this had a great deal to do with the course of events. At the preview that I attended, Jerome Zipkin, master of Reaganite revels, put his finger on a tiny but significant detail. Irons was brilliant as Claus, he said, but what about those tawdry cigarette cases? "Heaven knows what base metal his was made of; hers was mother-of-pearl. That's not what the von Billows were all about." He was right. The von Billows were the incarnation of old-fashioned luxe, and their cigarette cases were Faberge, not Fortunoff. Newport has a reputation for lavishness, but few if any of their millionaire neighbors lived such a lavish and such an unhappy life as the von Billows. That's what they were about.

If I have harped on the discrepancies between the film and reality, it is because I have known Claus for forty years and was seeing him on an almost daily basis when the events that triggered his two trials occurred. Toward the end of the first trial, I went up to Newport to keep him company while the jury was out. Waiting day after day in an asylum-green room in the courthouse was agonizing. Each time the doorknob turned, Claus, hitherto as imperturbable as Rodin's Thinker, would steel himself not to wince at the imminence of a verdict. To distract ourselves, we played gin rummy. Claus would reminisce about the fashionable days of yore: with Daisy Fellowes in Venice, MarieLaure de Noailles at Hyeres, Dado Ruspoli in Saint-Moritz. When escapism to cafe-society heaven failed to keep anxiety at bay, we would search for rays of hope in the psychological profiles that the lawyers had prepared on each of the jurors. Further hope was at hand outside the courthouse, where gaggles of "Clausettes"— groupies who had adopted the accused as a folk hero—were waving "Free Claus" banners. Most of his friends felt that he was innocent of the charges brought against him; guilty, if at all, of indifference. Coldblooded, if you will, but his small reserve of compassion had been sorely tried by Sunny's abuse of alcohol and pills as well as her abuse of his rights. (Claus's principal grouse was that his wife thwarted his attempts to have a career.)

In the evenings we would return to Claus's motel, eat lobsters, and drink more than we should of the excellent wine that Mark Birley of Mark's Club and Annabel's had sent to Newport. After dinner we would go up to the weird, boxlike rooms he had rented for the duration of the trial—like the set of Dr. Caligari— and continue to drink. Gone were the gold boxes, the Sevres vases filled with freesias, the Cartier knickknacks. In their place were a plate of cookies, some scotch, and a devotional book. Claus would go through the avalanche of mail and take telephone calls from unknown female fans of the sort who pursue goodlooking men accused of murder. "Listen to this one," he would say. "You don't know me. I was Miss New Hampshire a while back, and my measurements are still..." "You don't know me. My name is Marucca. I'm calling from Ibiza, and I'm flying over to be by your side." "You don't know me. I'm a widow from Kalamazoo, and I've bet my house, trailer, and car on your innocence. You better be innocent. . . " (After the guilty verdict, the widow threatened action.) Claus chatted them up as courteously as if they had been grand duchesses.

One of the fan letters sounded more promising than the rest; at least it was written by someone on the fringes of Claus's world. The writer turned out to be a very Hungarian Hungarian named Andrea Reynolds. Her flamboyance made the Gabor sisters look like Little Women. After the first trial, Andrea whipped Claus's sagging morale into shape and, no question about it, gave him hope. But even his staunchest supporters were dismayed when he moved her into Sunny's Fifth Avenue apartment, which she proceeded to take over and partially redecorate. This "Hungarian hussar" (Claus's term for her) alternately wooed, manipulated, and on occasion terrorized friends, lawyers, potential witnesses, and journalists. ("You Commie pinko faggot," she yelled at one of them.) As Dershowitz said, "Her presence was seen and felt at every twist and turn." In the end even Claus had enough of this "tigress." After Helmut Newton's photographs of them in leather appeared in Vanity Fair (Andrea's idea, Claus said), they broke up. Christine Baranski, who plays her in the movie, captures her Magyar bossiness to perfection. A year or two later, Andrea embarked on a romance with the Honorable Shaun Plunket, a close friend of the royal family's by virtue of being a brother of the late Lord Plunket, the Queen's muchloved equerry. They have been married for more than a year and live conveniently near Harrods, but the doors of Buckingham Palace no longer yawn open. Apparently the Queen denies herself the pleasure of Andrea's company.

Meanwhile, poor Sunny still lies insensible in the Harkness Pavilion (part of New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center). She reportedly continues to receive many of the attentions— from hairdressers, beauticians, manicurists, and masseuses, as well as doctors and nurses—that she received before she was hospitalized. All this costs a bundle: somewhere around three-quarters of a million dollars a year, it is said. She is apparently not in a vegetable state, but reacts to stimuli. However, her brain must surely not be in any condition to formulate thoughts, as the film, which starts and ends with the comatose Sunny giving a voice-over monologue, would have us imagine. For those of us who were fond of Sunny, some early shots in the film—an overly clinical scene of the wretched patient being rolled over and spongebathed—seem not only tasteless but more to do with the director's fixation on suffering than with the legal maneuvering that is the focus of the film.

As for Claus's existence since the acquittal, he lives the life of an elegant London bachelor. He has just left a somewhat cell-like flat in South Kensington for more spacious quarters in the same neighborhood. Given Claus's taste, it was bound to be stylish: a few fine things salvaged from the past, stacks of the latest political and financial books, a bottle of champagne on ice. He regularly drops in at his Saint James Street club (Brooks's) to write letters, read the papers, and eat an indifferent luncheon. He likes to travel—ideally with his daughter, Cosima, sometimes with one or another of the would-be society ladies he continues to attract. Old-fashioned people tend to give him a wide berth, but he can still count on some faithful cronies: quite a few Guinnesses; Donald Munson, the epicurean oilman; John Aspinall, the zoo man; Taki, the sharp-tongued Greek columnist; Mark Birley; Paul Getty Jr.; divers Goldsmiths; and so on.

Claus is also popular with the younger generation. To judge by a recent birthday party organized by the Birley and Aspinall scions, this can be a mixed blessing. Frustrated at being ejected from Annabel's for throwing their socks at rich Arabs, they decided to give a custard-pie party. A bevy of old tarts in boots was employed to bombard the guests with hundreds of pies. After tossing an unsuspecting boy into a huge cake, black extras dressed as Tonton Macoutes surrounded their victims in the target area, where they were soon covered in guck. Poor Claus skidded in the mess and had to be carried off to the hospital. When I last saw him, he was still on crutches. Such are the penalties of attending upper-class frolics.

Claus's beautiful daughter, Cosima, also attended the party, but survived the mayhem. This cool, courageous girl has a way of emerging from distressing circumstances unsullied, and, one trusts, unscathed. She now lives on her own in London, where she is popular with the jeunesse doree—outings with Prince Edward, dinners at Buckingham Palace. Cosima is the greatest consolation of her father's life.

Sunny's two elder children by Prince von Auersperg, Alexander and Ala, who has recently remarried and is now Mrs. Ralph Isham, have sold the Fifth Avenue apartment and sumptuous Newport "cottage" that was the scene of Sunny's tragedy. In honor of their mother, the Auersperg children have founded the National Victims Center, which aims to defend the rights of victims of violence. After instituting programs all over the country, the N. V.C. held a gala this fall to promote its image in New York. An award has been inaugurated. Appropriately, it bears the name of the retail tycoon Milton Petrie, whose generosity to victims of notorious assaults (such as Marla Hanson, the model who had her face slashed) has generated so much publicity.

When not traveling, Claus, too, immerses himself in good works. In his loneliness his heart goes out to the lonely, he explains, and so he makes regular visits to some of the two hundred homes that have been set up in England to shelter people who have nobody to talk to, nobody to listen to their woes. Claus tells of having been recently assigned to a Ghanaian man, a former leper who claims to have been cured of his affliction at Lourdes. "I have often been accused of liking the sound of my own voice," Claus says. "In fact I'm an excellent listener." Just as well. The Ghanaian will be spared Claus's painful jokes against himself, which Jeremy Irons delivers to such shockingly good effect in the film.