David Niven - Early Film Career

Early Film Career

When Niven presented himself at Central Casting, he learned that he needed a work permit to reside and work in the U.S. This meant that Niven had to leave the U.S., so he went to Mexico, where he worked as a "gun-man", cleaning and polishing the rifles of visiting American hunters. He received his Resident Alien Visa from the American Consulate when his birth certificate arrived from England. He returned to the United States and was accepted by Central Casting as "Anglo-Saxon Type No. 2008".

Due to his role in Mutiny on the Bounty, he came to the attention of independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn, who signed him to a contract and established his career. Niven appeared in 19 films in the next four years. He had supporting roles in several major films: Rose-Marie (1936), Dodsworth (1936), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937); and leading roles in The Dawn Patrol (1938), Three Blind Mice (1938), and Wuthering Heights (1939), playing opposite such stars as Errol Flynn, Loretta Young and Laurence Olivier. In 1939, he co-starred with Ginger Rogers in the RKO comedy Bachelor Mother, and starred as the eponymous gentleman safe-cracker in Raffles.

Niven joined what became known as the Hollywood Raj, a group of British actors in Hollywood which included Rex Harrison, Errol Flynn, Boris Karloff, Stan Laurel, Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman, Leslie Howard and C. Aubrey Smith. According to his autobiography, he and Errol Flynn were firm friends and had decided to rent Rosalind Russell's house at 601 North Linden Drive as a bachelor pad. Russell later named the house "Cirrhosis-by-the-Sea".