RIP Les Reed

Les Reed, the songwriter behind Tom Jones' classic hits Delilah and It's Not Unusual, has died at the age of 83.

Les Reed, pictured with unlikely Adidas poster boy Tom Jones

Reed had been the pianist with The John Barry Seven and the conductor of his own orchestra but it's his incredible catalogue of 60+ hit songs that he'll perhaps be best remembered for. Here's just a few examples of those chart toppers;

Reed's songs were recorded by artistes ranging from big American stars like Elvis, The Carpenters and Bing Crosby to homegrown talents like Kathy Kirby, Lulu and Des O'Connor. He wrote the scores for the films Girl on a Motorcycle, The Bushbaby, One More Time, George and Mildred, Creepshow 2 and Parting Shots and he was also responsible for co-writing the 1967 novelty song Who's Doctor Who by then Doctor Who actor Frazer Hines and the B-Side to Leeds United's 1972 Cup Final single, Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! Better known as Marching Together, it's a song still sung by supporters of the club on the terraces both home and away to this day.

RIP

RIP Tania Mallet

Sad to hear of the death of Goldfinger star and fashion model Tania Mallet at the age of 77.

Born in Blackpool on 19th May in 1941 to a Russian mother and English father, Mallet entered the world of James Bond legend with the role of the ill-fated Tilly Masterson in 1964's Goldfinger. The model had, it is said, previously auditioned for the role of Bond girl Tatiana Romanova the previous year before Cubby Brocolli selected her to play one of Connery's love interests who met her fate thanks to Oddjob's steel-rimmed hat.

But it was the world of modelling that Mallet felt most comfortable in and, despite the fame and prestige of appearing in a Bond movie, she turned her back on acting and returned to the photography studio for the rest of the swinging sixties, leaving performing to her cousin, Helen Mirren, though she did appear in an episode of The New Avengers in 1976.

RIP.

RIP Shane Rimmer

Gutted to hear that Shane Rimmer, an actor who - if you grew up in the UK at any time in the 60s, 70s and 80s - has been such a part of all our lives, has passed away at the age of 89.

Canadian born Rimmer's most iconic role was one that only required his vocal talents, namely that of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds, but he was instantly recognisable for several supporting roles in some of cinema's biggest franchises; Star Wars, Superman, Batman, and a total of three James Bond movies, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, and The Spy Who Loved Me. Other film credits included Gandhi, Rollerball (pictured above), Doctor Strangelove, Reds, Out of Africa and Dark Shadows, whilst he appeared in TV dramas like Doctor Who, Coronation Street, Dockers, and the controversial 1977 April's Fools joke (which actually aired in June that year!) Alternative 3, a cod-science documentary about the 'brain drain' which revealed that the elite of society had actually left the soon-to-be-destroyed earth for a new life in space, that continues to resonate among conspiracy theorists to this day.

RIP

Too Hot to Handle (1960)

Why did I watch this nonsense? Well...

Yup, Too Hot to Handle is a Jayne Mansfield vehicle masquerading as a British Noir about the seedy underbelly of London's Soho. Mansfield is American showgirl Midnight Franklin, the girlfriend of (an incredibly miscast) Leo Genn's club owner and pimp, Johnny Solo, a cashiered ex-army officer who runs The Pink Flamingo. Solo finds himself is in the middle of a turf war with rival club owner Diamonds Dinelli (Sheldon Lawrence) and it becomes clear that his right-hand-man Novak can't be trusted. Well of course he can't, he's played by Christoper Lee! Though Lee's sporting a dreadful American accent for some unknown reason. Speaking of accents, Barbara Windsor makes an early screen appearance her as the top-heavy but underage stripper Pony Tail and is dubbed by an American actress. Again, why? The film is set in London, after all!

In the midst of the gang warfare there's a French journalist played by Carl Boehm who wants to write about Soho's erotic and exotic nightlife for a Paris magazine, but takes an interest in an enigmatic and clearly troubled Austrian dancer played by Danik Patisson, and who is clearly running away from something.

Directed by future Bond director Terence Young, Too Hot to Handle (known in the US as Playgirl After Dark, capitalising seemingly on Mansfield Playmate of the Month credentials) is a confused and odd little film. The criminal aspect is quite strong really, and the film seems to want to say something about the sleazy side of Soho. This is evident in how the film treats Barbara Windsor's character Pony Tail. Much is made of the fact that she's clearly a naive young girl who, at just 16, is actually under age. Solo is breaking the law employing her, something which Mansfield's protective mother figure is quick to remind him. Later, Solo pimps Pony Tail to one of his major backers, the influential Mr Arpels (Martin Boddey) and the young girl is happy to oblige, dreaming of a promising future based on rumours of Arpels' film connections.  But there's no future for Pony Tail; Arpels' tastes run to sexual sadism and, when he realises Pony Tail really is an innocent and not just play-acting, he's frenzied enough to kill her. 

But this isn't social realism and, despite this strong storyline, Too Hot to Handle all too often falls back on a kind of cutesy, it's all a bit of fun really, frothy musicality, as shown in the song and dance sequences employed to play to Mansfield's talents as the audiences of lascivious  old men leer, letch and grope like it's all some kind of comical variety show or Benny Hill sketch. It's also an interesting picture for Mansfield; despite only being in her late twenties at the time Too Hot to Handle was made, her Hollywood career was already over by this stage. Repeated pregnancies culminated in Fox terminating her contract, and she was effectively loaned to European film studios where her star was still burning brightly. This was the first film she made in England (the second, also shot in 1960, being another misfiring noir called The Challenge) and it's quite unflattering to see her play the maternal figure to an actress like Windsor who was, in reality, only four/five years younger than her. Given that Windsor is playing much younger, it sometimes feels like Mansfield is playing much older. Then again, maybe the film is making the point that singing a song whilst wiggling your considerable boobs and bum at a load of grubby old men is the kind of thing that makes you old before your time. 

Ultimately, Too Hot to Handle just isn't interesting or engaging enough to convince as a good example of British Noir from this period and can be best described as an ill advised low budget flick that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Terence Young would go on to much better things, the tragic Mansfield would not alas.

Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

"...The British film industry of the 1950s repeatedly mined the war years for suitable material to turn into thrilling and entertaining movies – a sort of ‘Now the truth can be told’ account of the hours that were both Britain’s darkest and finest. It was the perfect marriage of a healthy British film industry and quintessential British stories of pluck and heroism and Sink the Bismarck! is a great example. It was highly praised at the time for its accurate account of the dangers and complexities of battle and the procedural portrayal of More’s Captain Shepard and his unsung backroom boys, it is not the ‘Now the truth can be told’ account that audiences initially believed it to be. There was the small matter of the Official Secrets Act standing in the way of Gilbert’s film. It would be another fifteen years before the work of Bletchley Park’s code-breakers would be declassified, so the interception and decoding of the Bismarck movements from from Luftwaffe Enigma transmissions are shown instead to be little more than hunches on the part of Shepard as he plays a kind of psychological game of chess with his nemesis, Admiral Lütjens (Štěpánek), the German officer responsible for the sinking of his last ship...."

Read my full review at The Geek Show

Girls With Guns

Angela Douglas in Carry on Cowboy (1965)

RIP Stanley Donen

Stanley Donen, the director of Bedazzled, one of my favourite movies, has died at the age of 94.

The former Broadway dancer will probably be best remembered for co-directing Singin' in the Rain alongside Gene Kelly, but he delivered a raft of classic old Hollywood musicals like Funny Face, On The Town, and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, smart and quirky thrillers like Charade and Arabesque and romances like Two For The Road and Indiscreet. He also made Staircase starring Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as a gay couple, and a couple of stinkers like Saturn 3 and Blame it on Rio.

He received an honorary Oscar in 1998.

RIP 

Some People (1962)

Pitched somewhere between the kitchen sink and a teen beat movie, Some People is perhaps best described as a cinematic advertisement for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme. 

It tells the story of three teddy boys (Ray Brooks, David Andrews and David Hemmings) who find their existence rather aimless when they each lose their motorcycle licence following a traffic accident. Looking for something else to do, they decide to resurrect their musical ambitions and find an unlikely supporter in Kenneth More's churchwarden, who offers them the church hall to rehearse in and begins to encourage them onto the straight and narrow path with the prospect of the DofE award. This latter opportunity is delivered much to the consternation of the bitter and unimpressed Andrews, who threatens to upset everything for the group, including Brooks romance with More's daughter played by Anneke Wills.

I've always had a soft spot for Clive Donner's 1962 film, largely because of my appreciation of actors like Ray Brooks and Anneke Wills who play the young lovers from opposite side of the tracks here and who I've loved ever since Brooks was in Big Deal and Wills in Doctor Who. He is a leather jacketed, attractively cherubic and bequiffed motorcyclist whilst she is the sensible and delectable blonde churchwarden's daughter, clearly attracted to a bit of (minor) rough. 

Wills' autobiography has some great anecdotes about the film, from reminiscing about co-star David Hemmings' prodigious amount of bogies up his nose, and finding out she had caught crabs (co-star Angela Douglas was on hand to prise the lice from her mons pubis and squish them into a bar of soap with her perfectly manicured nails) to being received by the Duke himself, who saucily remarked "I liked you in the bath" in reference to one memorable sequence in which Wills' character shrinks her jeans by sitting in a tub of hot water. You can't really blame Phil the Greek; Wills has an amazing bum that looks great in tight denim.

Speaking of dirty old men, this was also the film that the aforementioned Angela Douglas met Kenneth More, the extremely married and twenty-six-years her senior star, who would eventually leave his wife to marry her in 1968. The pair remained together until his death in 1982. More's role as the churchwarden who inspires Brooks and his pals to undertake the DofE was one which he waived his fee for and played for nothing, believing greatly in the moral and character building benefits of the scheme.

What makes Some People stand out from similar fare made around this era is the fact that it is set in Bristol rather than London. It all helps to add some local colour, including a test flight of the supersonic research aircraft the Bristol 188, captured by second-unit director Nicolas Roeg. Look out too for Harry H. Corbett in the small role of Brooks' father, conveying a great emotional depth in just one stumbling father and son heart to heart that hints at his own dissatisfaction with life which ultimately spurs Brooks on to doing something worthwhile. 

Less The Young Ones (as it's not really a musical; no one breaks into song outside of the band rehearsal sequences for example) and more Serious Charge, Some People is a good way to pass ninety minutes and bask in early '60s nostalgia.

RIP Gordon Banks

The 1966 World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks has died at the age of 81.

628 appearances in a fifteen year long football league career, with 73 caps for England. A sportsman and a gentleman. A sporting great.

RIP

RIP Albert Finney

Devastated to hear that one of my cinematic heroes, Albert Finney, has died at the age of 82.

Salford born Finney shot to fame in the early 1960s, cementing a screen persona as the original (and best) angry young man in groundbreaking films like The Entertainer and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He became synonymous with Woodfall Films and a British New Wave movement that sought to bring northern working class life to the screen as realistically as possible, and Finney was unmistakably the real deal. What Brando was doing for American cinema, Finney was doing for the UK. He followed it up of course with Woodfall's bawdy romp Tom Jones and became an icon of the swinging 60s and a major international star.

The tail end of the '60s and '70s saw him stretch himself both in front of and behind the camera. He directed Charlie Bubbles, his one and only directorial effort and a highly personal film penned by fellow Salfordian Shelagh Delaney in 1968, and financed another Salfordian Mike Leigh's first film, Bleak Moments in 1971. Indeed Finney would never forget his Salford roots and would do much all his life to help the arts and culture in the city (he was key in developing the Lowry for example) and to encourage young people's opportunities. He could have comfortably continued to play straightforward leading man roles as he had done in the previous decade, but the 1970s saw him approach more character based roles, including the title role in the musical Scrooge and (for my money the best) Poirot in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express. This continued into the '80s with roles in The Dresser alongside Tom Courtenay and Under the Volcano, whilst the 1990s saw him feature in a variety of work from Dennis Potter's Karaoke and Cold Lazarus on television and becoming a favourite of US filmmakers like the Cohen brothers (Miller's Crossing), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and Tim Burton (Corpse Bride and Big Fish). In more recent years, Finney found himself providing stately support in big budget blockbusters  such as the James Bond film Skyfall (a very amusing cameo) and its rival, the Bourne series.

He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar four times in his career and once for Best Supporting Actor, and he won a BAFTA, an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance as Churchill in the 2002 TV movie The Gathering Storm. He refused a CBE in 1980 and a knighthood in 2000 on principle (good man!) and overcame a battle with kidney cancer in 2011.

There won't be another like him. A true great of cinema. RIP

Wordless Wednesday: Par for the Course

Silent Sunday: Poor Cow

RIP Clive Swift

Clive Swift, the Liverpool born British actor known to millions for his portrayal as henpecked Richard Bucket in 90s sitcom Keeping Up Appearances has died at the age of 82.

Swift many credits also included Born and Bred, The Old Guys and in two editions of the BBC's celebrated Ghost Stories For Christmas; The Stalls of Barchester and A Warning to the Curious. He also starred in films like Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, John Boorman's Excalibur and David Lean's A Passage to India, as well as making two appearances in Doctor Who; firstly as Professor Jobel in 1985's Revelation of the Daleks and in 2007 Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, as Mr Cooper.

RIP   

RIP Windsor Davies

Very sad to hear of the death of Windsor Davies at the age of 88 on Thursday.

The burly, deep-voiced Welsh actor was best known for playing the Sergeant-Major in Croft and Perry's classic WWII set sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum which ran from 1974 to 1981. It was a role that not only made him a household name but also saw him typecast (not that he seemed to mind) as the bullish soldier putting others through their paces in everything from films like Carry on England and Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall to children's series like Marmalade Atkins and Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks. When he wasn't playing the sergeant-major then he was often cast as policeman, appearing as one on TV in the likes of Z Cars, Softly Softly, Callan, Special Branch, Detective, The Mind of Mr J.G. Reader, and The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, and on film in The Playbirds, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Endless Night, and Not Now, Comrade.

Other memorable roles include starring opposite Donald Sinden as rival antique dealers in the ITV sitcom Never the Twain which ran from 1981 to 1991, and the Welsh rugby comedies, Grand Slam and Old Scores. He also starred in Carry On Behind, played General Tufto in the BBC's excellent 1998 adaptation of Vanity Fair and David Lloyd George in Channel 4's Mosley. His last appearances on TV included guest appearances in Casualty in 2000 and in My Family in 2004, before retiring to France. His wife passed away in September last year and he is survived by five children.

RIP

Silent Sunday: Watch What You Say

RIP June Whitfield

Sad to hear that June Whitfield passed away yesterday morning at the age of 93.

Whitfield had been a constant in British comedy since the late 1940s, creating an impressive through-line from Jimmy Edwards to Jennifer Saunders, with Terry Scott inbetween. As a result, this feels very much like the end of an era.

Born in Streatham in 1925, Whitfield made her stage debut at the age of just three years old, as part of Robinson's Dance Studio. She graduated from RADA in 1944 and began to appear on radio alongside the likes of Wilfred Pickles in the immediate post-war period. In 1951, she was part of the London cast of South Pacific and scored her big break two years later in Edwards' radio show Take It From Here, playing Eth, the fiancee to Ron Glum. This would become so beloved by the nation that they would later have their own spin-off entitled The Glums.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s Whitfield worked alongside the likes of Frankie Howard, Arthur Askey, Benny Hill and, memorably, Tony Hancock in the iconic episode, The Blood Donor. But it was her partnership with Terry Scott that many will remember her for. The pair first worked together in the 1960s sketch series Scott On..., this led to a sitcom Happy Ever After, which in turn led to their most famous collaboration Terry & June which ran for 65 episodes.

The rise of alternative comedy in the 1980s seemed to sweep away much of the twee middle class suburban values of the previous decade's comedy, but June Whitfield emerged not only unscathed but somewhat cherished. A guest appearance in French and Saunders in 1988 led to Jennifer Saunders asking her to play her mother in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous which made its debut in 1992 and has continued, in one form or another, until the big-screen film version just two years ago. The sitcom introduced Whitfield to a new generation of fans who rightfully regarded her as a comedic national treasure. Her most recent TV work was in the 2014-2016 BBC1 sitcom Boomers and several guest appearances as a nun in EastEnders.

Radio continued to be a favourite medium of Whitfield's even when she was at the height of her TV fame. She was a regular performer on Radio 2's The News Huddlines with Roy Hudd from 1984 to 2001 and portrayed Miss Marple in a series of 12 radio play adaptations from 1993 to 2001. She also starred in four Carry On films and was made a Dame in 2017.

RIP  

RIP Thomas Baptiste

With peculiar, tragic timing BBC2 transmitted The Ipcress File this afternoon, which I settled down to watch for the umpteenth time. In among the cast, playing a pipe-smoking American agent, is Thomas Baptiste - who I learnt today has passed away earlier this month at the age of 89.

Born in Georgetown, British Guiana to a wealthy landowner, Baptiste arrived in England in 1950 ostensibly to study agriculture, but instead he took up a factory job and went to college to study music. It wasn't long before Baptiste began mixing with London's bohemian set, which included journalist and Labour MP Tom Driberg and theatre director Joan Littlewood. He subsequently Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, turning down the opportunity to study at the Royal Academy of Music, and a career as an actor began.

Aside from The Ipcress File, his many film credits included Sunday Bloody Sunday,  The Wild Geese, The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, The Dogs of War, Shaft In Africa, Two Gentlemen Sharing, The Class of Miss MacMichael, The Secret Laughter of Women and Russ Myers' Black Snake aka Sweet Suzy. On television he portrayed Coronation Street's first ever black character in 1963; bus conductor Johnny Alexander (pictured above with his wife, played by the actress Barbara Assoon) who was sacked following a racist altercation with builder Len Fairclough. He also starred in the excellent Wednesday Play, Fable, which posited the notion of apartheid in the UK, with the white population as the underdogs, and in the black soap opera Empire Road, as well as guest appearances in numerous programmes such as The Saint, Yes Minister, and Till Death Us Do Part. In the theatre, he played his hero Paul Robeson in Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, Caliban in The Tempest and the lead role in Othello, and subverted several roles; including the dustman Dolittle in Pygmalion and George in a black version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He also co-founded the African-Asian committee of the actor's union, Equity.

RIP.

Out On Blue Six: Gerry & the Pacemakers

My local ITV news programme, the legendary Granada Reports, met with Gerry Marsden of Gerry & the Pacemakers this evening who had some momentous news to share...he is retiring from performing after 60 years.

He may be packing public life in, but the strains of his hit Ferry Cross The Mersey will forever be heard as commuters and tourists depart from the Mersey Ferry into Liverpool...

Whilst his other big hit, You'll Never Walk Alone, will still reign at Anfield...

Thank you for the music, Mr Marsden

End Transmission

Girl on a Bicycle

Deborah Watling

Georgy Girl (1966)

"...Of course, if it were made now, Georgy needn’t opt for compromise, as single-parent families are much more accepted in modern society, but it’s important to remember that in the 1960s such a life was near impossible. That’s why I cannot agree with the negativity some heap upon this film. I can see why it would be more satisfying to see Georgy defy society by realising her own self-worth and maternal capabilities enough to abandon Joss, jilt Leamington and head off into the sunset with the baby, but around the corner would be the very same social workers who tore the children from Carol White’s arms in Cathy Come Home, because that’s what life was like then. By all means, hate the period, but not the film. Georgy Girl is only ever reflective of its time, an extraordinary moment which – much like the various influences upon it – saw the demise of the old and the birth of the new."

See my full review at The Geek Show