JOAN COLLINS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (28)

Show-biz is a very competitive profession and usually you need oodles of talent to progress to the top. Now and then an artiste with less talent but plenty personality dominates the stage by somehow arriving in the public eye at the right moment and projecting her well-crafted persona to a global audience. Such an artiste is Joan Collins, for years a run-of-the-mill starlet, who left it late before exploding on-screen as the manipulative dominatrix Alexis Colby in Dynasty, the nightmare of respectable married women and the secret fantasy of all red-blooded males.

Sultry Joan Collins

Joan Collins (1933-  ) is now a venerable 83. She was born in Paddington and was brought up in Maida Vale, West London, the daughter of Joe, a theatrical agent and Elsa, an erstwhile nightclub hostess turned dancing teacher. Her father was a Jewish South African and her mother was Anglican. She had a younger brother Bill, a property agent, and sister Jackie (1937-2015) who found fame as the authoress of raunchy “bonk-buster” novels.

Her ambitious parents managed to send Joan to RADA and she was only 17 in 1950 when she was talent-spotted by the Rank Organisation, becoming a starlet under contract to the studio. She was certainly pretty and inherited her parents’ work-ethic, though the publicist’s description of her as “Britain’s Elizabeth Taylor” was over-the-top. She appeared in minor roles in a succession of unmemorable films and did little better with a 1955 Fox Hollywood contract. The only dimly remembered The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing with Ray Milland and Land of the Pharaohs with Jack Hawkins, where she had star-billing, were both box-office flops.

Joan’s private life began its eventful progress. Deflowered by actor Laurence Harvey aged 18, she wed in 1952, her first (of 5) husbands, actor Maxwell Reed. He allegedly drugged and raped her and they were divorced by 1956. In Hollywood she was befriended by Nicky Hilton of the hotel dynasty who boasted constantly about the size of his own, his father’s and his brother’s manhood. In the early 1960s Joan had a fling with handsome actor/singer Harry Belafonte on set in the Caribbean and later took up with toothsome 22-year old Warren Beatty. Our Joan was no bashful wall-flower!

Joan emotes as The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing 

Joan the princess in Land of the Pharaohs

Joan dropped out of the film world in the early 1960s as she had married successful actor/songwriter Anthony Newley in 1963 and wanted to start a family. They had a son and a daughter but Newley was described by Joan as “pathologically unfaithful” and they were divorced by 1971.

Returning to tread the boards, Joan’s career did not prosper – some obscure sit-coms and dud films. However she returned to the spotlight in the late 1970s by featuring in the soft-porn epics The Stud (Joan cast inevitably as a nymphomaniac) and The Bitch, both adapted from novels by her sister Jackie. Both films were decidedly tacky but made lots of money for the producers (not Joan). But at least people were talking about her again.

Joan vamps it up as The Bitch

Meanwhile Joan married record producer Ronnie Kass in 1972 and they had a daughter but her 3^rd marriage ended in divorce in 1983 (his substance abuse and financial mismanagement blamed). Husband No 4 only lasted 1985-7: he was Swedish singer Peter Holm, a druggie, claimed Joan – her choice of mates has certainly been questionable. Other admirers (there is said to be a cast of at least 3 dozen) included US property tycoon “Bungalow” Bill Wiggins, so called because, says Joan, he had nothing much on top!

The 1980s were to be Joan’s heyday. In 1981 she landed the role of Alexis Colby in the struggling US TV soap opera Dynasty. Joan as Alexis was the erstwhile wife of Denver oil multi-millionaire Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) who had remarried the earnest and naïve Krystle (Linda Evans). The advent of Alexis moved the series towards the various machinations of the two wives with belittling and humiliation for Krystle and bitchy triumphs for Alexis. With her exaggerated shoulder-pads, flattering wigs and cut-glass accent Alexis was a Wow embodying assertive womanhood in all its glory. By 1985 Dynasty was the most-viewed of all soaps, deposing Dallas for a year but the increasing absurdity of the plots tired its audience and its ratings had fallen sharply by the time it was cancelled in 1989. But Joan had made her fortune.

Alexis, Blake and Krystle from Dynasty 

Joan has lived a regal life ever since but she has been far from idle. She acted creditably in the West End in Noel Coward classics and became very familiar in British Airways and Cinzano commercials. She has taken to writing and apart from 3 volumes of (scandalous) memoirs, she has written 10 (sic!) novels and at least a dozen books about beauty – she admits to one Botox session bur asserts that she has never had cosmetic surgery. She contributes an occasional sharply witty Diary column to the eminent Spectator magazine.

Joan appears to be happily married since 2002 to half-Peruvian theatrical producer Percy Gibson, 35 years her junior. She has apartments in London, New York and Los Angeles and a stunning pink villa in Saint Tropez. Her views are refreshingly Conservative, supporting Brexit and causing apoplexy among Corbynistas, Remoaners and the bleeding hearts in the green rooms of self-regarding Theatreland. She had the honour of being one of the few celebrities invited to Maggie Thatcher’s funeral. Joan is of course a monarchist and was immensely pleased to be awarded the DBE in 2015 for her services to charity. The NSPCC and the Shooting Star Chase Children’s’ Hospice are her main sponsorships.

Joan receives her DBE in 2015

Dame Joan Collins makes no pretence at scaling the peaks of her profession and the celebrity life can often seem vacuous. But she has definitely been a great entertainer.

Joan, you are a grand old trouper – well done!

SMD

27.02.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

KENNETH WILLIAMS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (27)

I have written about actors and actresses of the greatest distinction who packed and electrified West End theatres or enlivened artistic seminars and Thespian workshops. Now I pay tribute to an artiste who never reached those heights but whose appearances on film or TV were eagerly anticipated by his hordes of British fans and who has given audiences enormous pleasure.

Kenneth Williams

                                                

Kenneth Williams (1925-88) was born in London the son of a barber, Charlie, (whom he greatly disliked) and waitress Louie (whom he adored). He claimed Welsh ancestry. Modestly educated, he became an apprentice draughtsman at a cartographer. During the Blitz he was evacuated to the home of a bachelor vet in Bicester, Oxfordshire and got a taste for educated middle-class life. He acquired an upper-class accent which became his trademark. Called-up to the Army, he worked at map-making for the Royal Engineers Survey team in India. Towards the end of the War he joined the services entertainment organisation and would appear in concert-parties entertaining the troops.

Learning this new trade, he became a busy actor when he returned to London and appeared in small roles in West End plays and latterly in revues. He never played Hamlet but he was The Dauphin in a production of Shaw’s Saint Joan. In truth although he later starred in the West End in My Fat Friend in 1972 spindle-shanked Williams was never much better than an adequate actor.

But he began to find his true métier: radio still had a huge audience and it had a requirement for “funny voices”. Williams could provide dozens of them. In the greatly followed Hancock’s Half-hour from 1954-58 he affected a camp-gay accent and introduced his giggling catch-phrase “Stop messing about!” He moved on to the Kenneth Horne comedy shows Round the Horne and Beyond our Ken creating characters like Rambling Syd Rumpo, the folk-singer, and outrageously gay Sandy in the duo Julian and Sandy with Hugh Paddick.

In 1958 the Carry On series of broad British comedy films started and the franchise lasted until 1978. Williams appeared in normally leading roles in 26 of the 31 films. The plots were farcical, double entendres abounded, the slapstick comedy was predictable and sometimes dire. The public loved them though the tinkling box-office did not enrich the actors – Williams was usually paid a flat fee of £5,000 per film – but rather the producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas.

Kenneth Williams was instantly recognisable with his nasal exaggeratedly upper crust accent, the flared nostrils, his contempt for underlings and the look of pained surprise when hectic events did not move in his favour. Often the unsolicited target of the affections of towering Hattie Jacques or romantic Joan Sims he never prospered in love and was regularly outwitted by Cockney-Aussie Sid James of the lecherous cackle. Whether he was the villainous Khazi of Kalabar, superior Dr Tinkle, stabbed Julius Caesar (“Infamy, infamy, they all have it in for me!”) or French revolutionary Citizen Camembert, assisted by his bumbling servant Bidet (Peter Butterworth), Williams could be depended upon to raise many a belly-laugh.

The Khasi of Kalabar

The stricken Caesar

Citizen Camembert with Joan Sims

    

Dr Carver with Charles Hawtry

                                              

Williams moved on to become a radio and TV “celebrity”, always an ephemeral calling, but he was very professional and excelled for years on the radio show “Just a Minute”. He was a regular on TV chat-shows with a reputation as a bright and witty raconteur. He was self-educated and was in many ways surprisingly erudite. For years he was a member of the council of Equity, the actors’ trades union.

There was however a dark side to Williams’ private life. He was gay, which nobody really cares about nowadays, but he was career-building at a time that homosexual acts were criminalised in Britain; the law was only changed in 1967. His home life was unhappy in that his father Charlie was a bully, a homophobe and a violent drunk who played the Methodist patriarch at home. He would jeer at his son, calling him “a pansy” (and worse), causing Kenneth to lock himself in this bedroom and seethe. In 1962 Charlie suddenly died in agony at home after drinking carbon tetrachloride (a cleaning fluid) from a bottle labelled as “cough mixture”. An inquest found a verdict of misadventure but the police for a period suspected Kenneth of poisoning his father. Their file must have remained open as a year or two later Kenneth was refused a US visa because of this suspicion. In the event no charges were ever brought.

Kenneth Williams was a highly repressed and fastidious homosexual. Although he moved in circles quite ready to take a trip to Morocco to cavort with local “rough trade”, Kenneth himself was untactile and claimed to have lived an almost completely chaste life. He went to Morocco with his outrageous friend the playwright Joe Orton and Orton’s partner (and later murderer) Kenneth Halliwell. Williams also accompanied gay couple Clive Dennis and Tom Waine to Morocco and was much offended when they introduced a local hunk and encouraged intimacy and when they doctored his breakfast with hashish! Dennis and Waine became his best friends – Tom Waine was said to be the love of Williams’ life, apparently a platonic love.

Williams had an acid tongue and made himself unpopular on the Carry-On set by making disparaging comments about the acting talents of most of the team. He was on friendly terms with Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor and Hattie Jacques but he had a running feud with Sid James. Apart from his closeness to his ailing mother Louie, Kenneth had only a few show-biz friends – Stanley Baxter, Gordon Jackson, Sheila Hancock and Maggie Smith.

His pen was even more lethal. A selection from his diaries was published posthumously and his bitchy comments revealed his insecurities, his sense of failure and his gathering depression. As a lover of calligraphy and as a professional cartographer Williams’ diaries are physically astonishing. He would use differently coloured inks to write about say, the theatre or about his mother: stranger still, he changed his handwriting style entirely, depending on the subject. He can be seen as about five different personae – a riddle and a rich case-study for the perceptive psychiatrist.

Kenneth Williams died in 1988 after taking an overdose of barbiturates. Officially it was accidental but it might have been intentional. His last words in his diary were: “Oh, what’s the point….?”

It was a sad exit for an unhappy and frustrated National Treasure.

SMD

20.02.17

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

KEEPING A CIVIL TONGUE

The tone of public debate has sharply deteriorated in recent years. Insult is piled upon innuendo, issues are personalised and hence diminished, rantings and ravings are substituted for rational debate. These lapses from polite behaviour offend the ladies, alarm the children and frighten the horses. A common enough rebuke 50 years ago was “Kindly keep a civil tongue in your head” nowadays more seen in the breach than in the observance. If educated people have one duty it is to maintain standards. Readers, rally to the cause!

Alex Salmond tries to throw his weight about

In Britain, we are all reasonably familiar with some prominent serial offenders. Alex Salmond, bully-boy erstwhile leader of the SNP, whose noisy mob besieged Nigel Farage chanting moronically “Nigel, you’re a bawbag, Nigel, you’re a bawbag!” (to translate: bawbag= ballbag=scrotum) lost it in the Commons a few days ago in a heated clash on a procedural ruling by the emollient Deputy Speaker. Salmond’s tirade was typically disgraceful and inappropriate.

Manic Amber Rudd

Dennis Skinner, a grumpy perennial

 

Other parties, alas, have their own attack-dogs. Amber Rudd, the new Home Secretary, teetered on the frontiers of acceptability with her exaggerated advocacy of the Remain cause during the Brexit campaign. Labour is an emasculated force at present under the bizarre leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, but Dennis Skinner, the tantrum-flying notorious Beast of Bolsover still lurks around Westminster though Ed Balls, the head-banging lieutenant of Ed Miliband, lost his seat in 2015 and later charmed rather than alarmed us as a contestant in Strictly Come Dancing!

I do not want to be lily-livered about the give-and-take of our adversarial political culture. Issues will be debated passionately and little quarter given to one’s opponent. Yet there are limits to the language that can be deployed. In a much more deferential age in the 1940s, Nye Bevan caused outrage in Tory ranks by describing them as “Lower than Vermin” provoking Winston Churchill to label Bevan “A squalid nuisance” – indeed later Bevan, a guest, was kicked down the steps of White’s Club by an irate Tory member, who immediately had to resign. I acknowledge that it is impossible to expect a return to Victorian days when Prime Ministers could be honoured by flowers. Eagle-eyed Gladstone was called “Sweet William” after the modest cottage-garden bloom and worldly Disraeli was associated with the unlikely Primrose by none other than Victoria herself. Mind you, The Darling Buds of (Theresa) May does have a ring about it.

"Sweet William" Gladstone?

"Primrose" Disraeli?

A blue-print for civilised political debate can be found in the regular TV newspaper reviews undertaken by Andrew Pierce, consultant editor of the Daily Mail and Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Mirror. They exchange many a hard and biting blow as their political views are far apart but they do not interrupt each other, raise voices or talk over their antagonist. There is a strong undercurrent of friendly banter which makes their appearances very watchable.

Kevin Maguire and Andrew Pierce debating in a civilised fashion

Civilised debate was also once the norm in the United States, but the arrival of President Trump has changed the atmosphere there. I know there is much to criticise in the Trump buffoonery and posterity will hardly believe that the trumpet (a noisy brassy instrument) and trumpery (useless material) were not named after Donald J. But give the guy a break. His ban on refugees and travellers from certain countries was telegraphed in his campaign and given the terrorist threat, many incumbents would do much the same. It probably plays well with a majority of the electorate.

Donald Trump, a target for hysterical abuse

The anti-Trump agitation is wholly over-blown, hysterical and counter-productive. The bi-coastal Establishment will need to adapt to Trump. He is a populist not a racist nor Fascist (despite his invocation of Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist America First of 1941) and his rough edges will be smoothed over with the demands of office. The noisy street demonstrators, the sore loser Democrats and the unrestrained social media need to calm down: the slurs aimed at Melania and the mockery of 11-year old Barron are simply despicable. I advise them all to Keep a Civil Tongue in their Heads!

SMD

10.02.17

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

CITY SNAPSHOTS (7) - JERUSALEM 2017

Many great cities are more than just bricks, concrete and bustling populations – they also have a mythic quality. Paris, London, New York and Rome have this quality in spades. Perhaps the most highly symbolic city of them all is Jerusalem, a holy city for Christians, Jews and Muslims - A City upon a Hill, Jerusalem the Golden, Next Year in Jerusalem, the Hills and Daughters of Zion, just some of the cloudy and fable-laden epithets attached to this famous place.

A Visionary Version of the New Jerusalem

The gap between hopeful imagination and everyday reality is often wide and Christian visitors returning from Jerusalem sometimes express disappointment. They complain that the place is hot and dusty, the streets narrow and noisy, the sites underwhelming other than for the archaeologist or the seriously devout, while hawkers of all kinds add the confusion of a Levantine bazaar to the mix, not to mention the perils of terrorism and sectarian conflict. I am talking about Old Jerusalem, the devotional heart of the city, while modern Jerusalem is lively enough but lacks any great charm.

Jerusalem carries a heavy weight of turbulent history on her broad shoulders. She is said to have been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times. Founded in about 1500 BCE by the Canaanite tribe, the Jebusites, it was seized in about 1000 BCE by David, King of the Israelites.  The First Temple was erected by David’s son Solomon, making the city the capital of the Kingdom of Judah and the centre of the Jewish religion. After much conflict and division, this Temple was destroyed in the early 7^th century by Philistines, Arabs and Ethiopians. The Jewish kingdom was overwhelmed by the Babylonian Empire and its leaders went into captivity there in 597 BCE though they were allowed to return and a Second Temple was built under the auspices of Cyrus the Great of Persia in 516 BCE.

The Western (Wailing) Wall

The Al-Aqsa Mosque

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Dome of the Rock

The Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 198 BCE and the city became a vassal state of Egypt. In 37 BCE Judea came under the control of Rome. In 66 AD the Jews revolted and were routed by Emperor Titus who expelled the Jews entirely from the city and destroyed the Temple. The Jews were only allowed one annual visit to pray at the Western Wall. The Byzantine Empire cherished the city as a Christian shrine and Constantine’s mother Helena founded the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the supposed site of Calvary with relics of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, along with many other churches.

The city was largely Christian until the rise of the Muslim religion and in 650 Jerusalem fell to the Abbasid dynasty. The Muslim population grew quickly but they were tolerant of Christians and Jews. The later Fatimid dynasty held different views and in 1020 destroyed all the city churches. In 1021 the Dome of the Rock was rebuilt substantially as we see it now and in 1035 the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the 3^rd most sacred site for Sunni Islam, was completed. Persecution of Christians by Arabs inflamed the faith and cupidity of Western Europe, the Pope called for a Crusade and the brutal seizure of Jerusalem occurred in 1099 with a shameful massacre of Muslims and Jews. The largely Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted until 1291 but Jerusalem herself was recaptured by the Kurdish Saladin in 1187. Various local strongmen asserted control. To give an idea of the flavour of Jerusalem in 1482, a highly intolerant and partisan Dominican priest described Jerusalem thus:

 "A collection of all manner of abominations". As "abominations" he listed Saracens, Greeks, Syrians, Jacobites, Abyssinians, Nestorians, Armenians, Gregorians, Maronites, Turcomans, Bedouins, Assassins, a sect possibly Druzes, Mamelukes, and "the most accursed of all", Jews. Only the Latin Christians "long with all their hearts for Christian princes to come and subject all the country to the authority of the Church of Rome".

After some time Jerusalem was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 where it stayed 400 years until 1917 when the victorious British General Allenby, disdaining a mounted entry, walked in by the Jaffa Gate.

The Jerusalem handed to a British League of Nations Mandate over Palestine had been in decline many years. Arab power was in Cairo, Baghdad or Damascus, or in remote areas where oil could be found. The city’s population was barely 20,000; it was of no strategic value and was little more than an antiquarian curiosity. But this was to change. The Zionist movement to revive a home for Jews attracted a trickle of Jews at first, becoming a flood as persecution in Poland and Germany gathered pace. The British were conscious of their duty to protect the interests of local Arabs who became increasingly alarmed by the Jewish influx. US public opinion pressed for shelter to be given to the refugees, though the US itself strictly limited access to America. Commissions and plans by the bucketful reported in vain; Palestine was polarised between Arab and Jew and violent inter-communal clashes were frequent. The British tired of the thankless task of holding the ring and in 1948 ingloriously scuttled. WW2 and its aftermath had seen a horde of Jewish displaced persons and during the war the Arab Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, disgusted the West with his support for Hitler and for his hateful vituperation against the Jews.

 

David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel on 14 May 1948

The British left,  Israel was proclaimed and the Arabs went to war against it. A furious fight erupted in Jerusalem but the Jewish Army foiled the Arab forces from Egypt, Syria and Transjordan. Only the Old City remained in Arab hands and when a truce was called Israel secured for itself a narrow coastal realm hemmed in by the Egyptian Sinai, the West Bank of the River Jordan and the Syrian Golan Heights. The Sinai campaign in 1956, the 6-Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War saw Israel seize the Old City of Jerusalem, all the West Bank of the Jordan, most of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Israel has been a success militarily and as a fulfilment of the Zionist ideal. It is democratic, largely Western in its culture and economically prosperous. It has tried to make peace with its neighbours with mixed results with Palestinian demands impossible to satisfy. The “international community” is mainly hostile and the UN Security Council does not recognise Israel’s wartime gains, pending a general settlement.

The status of Jerusalem is a highly contentious matter. Israel has proclaimed it her capital (as has the Palestinian Authority) and confirmed easy access to the Holy Places, subject to security considerations. It is now a city of 809,000 inhabitants, at least two-thirds Jewish. It will now never be surrendered by Israel to the Arabs. There is a possibility President Trump will grant US recognition to Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, which will create a crisis. We can only hope wisdom will temper fixed ideas and a lasting peace settlement emerges.

Yet “Jerusalem” is not simply a matter for a guide book. It is a transcendental notion of yearning, of aspiration and of reaching a final destination. It can best be evoked in that sinuous passage in the Introit to Mozart’s Requiem when the soprano voice proclaims:

Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAOHez4meA

The British particularly cherish William Blake’s vision of Jerusalem, to the rousing music of Sir Hubert Parry:

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=041nXAAn714

SMD

03/02/2017

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017