Wordless Wednesday: Cheers!

The Breaking of Bumbo (1970)

Andrew Sinclair wrote his semi-autobiographical novel The Breaking of Bumbo in 1959. It told the story of a young Guards officer who, whilst undergoing various rites of passage in the regiment, becomes sympathetic towards the peace movement and organised student protest. A decade later, Sinclair formed Timon Films with Jeffrey Selznick with the sole intention of adapting his novel for the big screen. Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo were attached to direct but, following a falling out with the producers, it was left to Sinclair himself to direct the film which received one TV screening by the BBC on Sunday 17th August 1975, before fading into an obscurity that Network DVD have subsequently rescued it from.

Richard Warwick of If...fame stars as young Bumbo Bailey who enlists in the Brigade of Guards and initially seems destined for an orthodox military career - that is until he falls for the beautiful Susie (Joanna Lumley) who is a key player in a subversive agit-prop performance and political demonstrations group. It isn't long before he falls in with the group and begins to see just how unfair the system actually is. Embracing the anti-establishment, counter-culture cause, Bumbo sets out to convince his soldiers to come out in favour of the students protesting for peace (real footage of the anti-Vietnam protest at London’s US embassy in Grosvenor Square from March 1968 is included) in the hope that, united together, students and the military will be able to bring about a real change in the world. 

The scene in which Bumbo first puts his suggestion to the soldiers under his command in a pub after a regimental rugby match is arguably the film's highlight. The politics of the piece - the argument about why orders are followed blindly, especially when it pitches them against their own people - remains deeply valid and strong and there's a great moment where Bumbo's Sergeant Major (the always reliable Derek Newark, a much underappreciated character actor) tries to address the fact that Bumbo, as an officer, has the luxury of an education and class to consider orders and such ideas, whereas he and the ordinary guardsman seated there do not. To make his point that they are different, he remarks that Bumbo is holding his pint glass by the handle, whilst every soldier present (including a young Warren Clarke) grips their pints away from the handle.

Less successful now is the way that the radical politics are depicted. It's the typical swinging '60s idea of peace and love and counter-revolutionaries, with a tubby flak-jacketed John Bird leading the charge with a peculiar accent, melting the wax models of British heroes and dignitaries with a blow torch at Tussauds, and generally invoking stereotypical, colourful anarchy. I haven't read the original novel but I do wonder if it has dated somewhat better given that it presumably explores the beatnik era and the rise of the CND as opposed to the more cartoonish on-screen excess of 60s counter culture. Perhaps most damning for the film was the fact that the original release date was delayed, meaning that by the time it finally hit the cinemas in late 1970, the era of swinging and fashionable London seemed rather passe. It's not a great film and it doesn't really go anywhere until Lumley arrives, but its an interesting time capsule that offers a very touristy view of London at the time, and I found the central notion of a natural-born officer having the kind of change of heart that makes him consider the shifting sands our democracy is built upon an intriguing one. As a result, The Breaking of Bumbo ought to take its place alongside other lesser known or overlooked '60s pictures such as Privilege and The Jokers. 

Of course Joanna Lumley's career went from strength to strength after this film and she now enjoys national treasure status, but it's Richard Warwick who takes the acting honours here, reminding us that he was taken far too soon during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, leaving behind just a few memorable appearances in the likes of the aforementioned If..., Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, and Derek Jarman's Sebastiane and The Tempest. Also in the cast are a few familiar faces still working to this day such as Jeremy Child, Edward Fox (himself a former Guards officer), Simon Williams and Chris Chittell aka Emmerdale's Eric Pollard. Andrew Sinclair went on to direct the unholy trio of Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole in 1972's Under Milk Wood, before moving on to another hellraiser in the shape of Oliver Reed in the peculiar Blue Blood a year later. His last film was 1982's Tuxedo Warrior, starring Mancunian hardman Cliff Twemlow!

Just a note about the Network release. It claims to be uncut but that simply isn't true - missing from the film is a sequence featuring Lumley and Warwick in the nude, perhaps the former still has a power of veto to excise such scenes. And speaking of the divine Ms Lumley,I'll just leave this here...

RIP Peter Wyngarde

Jason King star Peter Wyngarde has died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital at the age of 90 following a short illness.

A unique talent, Wyngarde shot to fame in the 1960s with his role as the campy flamboyant author turned sleuth Jason King in the ITC drama Department S. So popular was Wyngarde in the role that, when it came to a second series, ITC decided to relaunch it solely around his character, and Jason King was born, making Wyngarde an international star. Australia was so besotted with the actor and the Jason King character that, following his being voted 'The man most Australian women would like to have an affair with', Wyngarde was mobbed at Syndey airport and was so roughly manhandled by the lust crazed ladies of Oz that he was hospitalised for three days. At the height of his fame, Wyngarde even released an album; When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head is a psychedelic offering that has to be heard to be believed. My favourite track from the album is his version of The Attack's Neville Thumbcatch

Despite his ladies man pin up status, in reality Wyngarde was homosexual and had, for some time during the 60s it is alleged, enjoyed a relationship with fellow actor and flatmate Alan Bates. One of his first major roles was in the controversial 1959 ITV drama South, which saw him cast as a Polish army lieutenant during the American Civil War torn between the love of a plantation owner's niece and a fellow officer. Broadcast live, this groundbreaking drama was said to be the first to tackle homosexuality on British television just two years after the Wolfenden Report. The Daily Sketch critic at the time remarked "I do NOT see anything attractive in the agonies and ecstasies of a pervert, especially in close up in my living room" Wyngarde's sexuality became public knowledge in 1975 when he was fined £75 and convicted of an act of gross indecency when caught cottaging with a lorry driver. The revelation put an end to his career as a leading man, but he did memorably go on to star as Klytus in Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon five years later. 

Wyngarde was presumed to have been born in France in 1927 (he offered various contrasting accounts of his birth over the years) and grew up in the Far East. During WWII he was interned alongside other European and US citizens (including the young JG Ballard) in Lunghua, Shanghai. Upon ceasefire, Wyngarde came to the UK and initially studied law at Oxford for three months before taking a job in advertising. He made his theatrical debut in 1946 and his first television appearance was in Dick Barton Strikes Back just three years later. In 1961 he starred alongside Deborah Kerr in The Innocents, Jack Clayton's acclaimed adaptation of the Henry James story The Turn of the Screw. Wyngarde went on to guest star in a number of ITC dramas including The Saint and as Number 2 in The Prisoner, as well as starring as John Cleverley Cartney in the infamous A Touch of Brimstone episode of The Avengers. Other roles include that of Timanov in the 1984 Doctor Who serial The Planet of Fire and Langdale Pike in The Three Gables from the 1994 series The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

RIP

RIP Daliah Lavi

I'm really saddened to learn of the death of the wonderful Daliah Lavi who was, for my money, the best of the '60's Euro Cuties and one of my first crushes. The Israeli actress, model and singer was 74 when she died at home in Asheville, North Carolina on the 3rd May. Her funeral is to be held in Israel. 

I have previously blogged about this divine woman and her life and career in more detail here.

Such a beautiful woman. 

RIP

RIP Richard Neville

Richard Neville, co-founder of the legendary and controversial 1960s counterculture magazine Oz, has died at the age of 74.

The Australian had been suffering from Alzheimer's his wife Julia Clarke Neville explained in announcing his passing, adding that his death was not a shock.

RIP

The Party's Over (1965)

A story of beatniks, of sex, drugs, jazz, necrophilia and suicide, The Party's Over has a very acrimonious and difficult history. Its makers fought a two-year long battle with the censors before the Rank Organisation hacked it to ribbons and sold it on to an exploitation company. Thankfully, those lovely people at the BFI restored its original 1965 version and made it available to the masses as part of their Flipside series of offbeat British movies from the '60s and '70s.

Does it live up to the hype?

Well no, not really. Not to me anyway.

Written by American expatriate Marc Behm (co-author of Charade and Help!) and directed by Guy Hamilton (later famous for several Bond films) The Party's Over is set in Chelsea and centring on the search if an American heiress by her fiancé, and his discovery that she has fallen in with a group of  nihilistic beatniks led by a charismatic Oliver Reed.

It's interesting to note that Hamilton was actually offered Dr. No in 1962 but he turned down the first outing of 007 to make this landmark swinging London movie instead. It's an intriguing initial first step away from the kitchen sink dramas of the first half of the decade but, as you can tell from the plot outline and the controversies that surrounded it, it's a much darker and more pessimistic swinging 60s picture than the surrealist kaleidoscope of colours that played out the decade. 

It's a striking and subversive anti-establishment film which unsurprisingly ruffled the feathers of the BBFC and Rank, leading to Hamilton removing his name from the butchery that was eventually released. Oliver Reed, still then a relative unknown, stars as Moise, the clique's 'leader'. What's most striking about Moise - and indeed the rest of his comrades - is that he's clearly very well educated; these aren't illiterate ruffians posing a threat to England's moral values, they're the urbane, intelligent enemy within whose hedonism and search for kicks seems unstoppable even, at times, for Moise's tastes.

"The 'message' was that they should by all means opt out but society would have to be replaced by something." Hamilton said. "It wasn't my function to tell them what that should be, but just opting out is insufficient." That message is loud and clear from the opening shot, a beautiful, near iconic, look of the partied-out group drifting aimlessly homewards across the Albert Bridge at dawn. It's a shot that looks so bleak and melancholic - at stark odds with so much of the 'let's do the party right here' type of movies that were The Party's Over's peers - that it easily sums up the insufficieny Hamilton is referring to.

Unfortunately, the film cannot achieve the promise of the controversy that surrounds it and it's too often a rather po-faced morality tale that isn't helped by some strange choices - most notably Mike Pratt's ludicrous American accent. Nevertheless, it scores high for nostalgia and John Barry's score - which pre-empts much of his later work on the Bond films to the extent that some of the interludes are exact carbon copies of the brassy blast lead-in to the infamous Bond theme - really helps set the very evocative mood of time and place, alongside the crisp black and white cinematography of Larry Pizer.

RIP Margaret Forster

News of another sad passing, novelist Margaret Forster - writer of Georgy Girl and Diary of An Ordinary Woman - has died from terminal cancer of the spine at the age of 77.

Forster had previously been diagnosed with cancer four decades ago resulting in a double mastectomy. Born in Carlise, Forster won a scholarship to Oxford and was a teacher at an all girls school when her writing career took off with the publication in 1965 of Georgy Girl, the story of a hapless young woman in swinging sixties London who, much to her surprise, is pursued romantically by an older man - her father's boss - and her pregnant flatmate's lover. 

A huge success, the novel was turned into a film the following year starring Lynn Redgrave, Alan Bates, James Mason and Charlotte Rampling, with a memorable theme tune provided by The Seekers.

Forster wrote many more novels, alongside memoirs, biographies and historical works and her final novel, How To Measure A Cow, is set now for posthumous release next month.

RIP

Felicity Kendal in The Mayfly and the Frog (1966)

Doesn't The Good Life star look positively swinging on her scooter here in a still from the 1966 Wednesday Play, The Mayfly and the Frog?

Regrettably, beyond the star pairing of veteran thesp John Gielgud (making his debut in an original play for TV film) and Kendal (setting out on her career), I found Jack Russell's play, just too arch and old fashioned to be enjoyable.

The play kicks off with Kendal's scooter being unceremoniously tipped over by Gielgud's chauffeur driven Rolls Royce at a filling station in a Belgravia mews. When the Roller fails to stop, a disgruntled Kendal gives chase, determined to receive recompense for the broken headlamp the collision caused before heading on to Dover. She arrives at a huge Mayfair mansion and is given short shrift over the telecom. Undeterred, and ingeniously defying the amazing expense devoted to keeping intruders out, the girl enters the mansion via an open window to find Gielgud naked in the bath, whereupon a verbal battle of wits and wills soon plays out. 

It's a traditional culture clash/opposites attract story with a swinging 60s beat; the vivacious and cheeky Kendal in her biker jerkin and jeans, meets the fusty great tycoon. He believes in ownership and preservation, keeping rare and expensive paintings on the walls, whereas Kendal possesses nothing but the clothes she's standing in and a positive manner which means she sees the bright side in every corner of the world she has travelled to. Eventually, Gielgud's aristo (boasting the grand name of Gabriel Quantara - sounds like a villain from The Avengers doesn't it?) comes to view his secluded sanctum, his money and minions in a different light, as he becomes hopelessly enamoured by the vitality of the girl he christens, amongst other things, 'The Mayfly'

It's all just a bit too creaky now for me to fully enjoy, though the two leads are enchanting enough and it's quite amusing to see Gielgud dismiss the boyishly beautiful Kendal as "a child hermaphrodite", "a bisexual" and an "imp"

Fancy it? See it for yourself on YouTube 

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started  here

The Best House In London (1969)

It doesn't surprise me that so few people seem to know The Best House in London; you either haven't seen this near forgotten swinging 60s film, or you have and YOU have forgotten, or you have and you'd rather not admit to it!

The film comes perhaps a little too late on the heels of the decade's fascination with Victoriana, and a little too early on for the corny sexploitation films the following decade would see the British film industry sink to. 

Joanna Pettet (famous for that other spectacular, famous faces filled tongue in cheek comedy of the 60s, Casino Royale) stars as the militant leader of the League of Social Purity, Josephine Pacefoot, a woman who devotes her time to saving fallen women and wishes to get the capital's prostitution trade outlawed. The government however (represented by satirical favourite John Bird) is reluctant to oblige, believing that prostitution benefits society and that the girls provide a service without which a gentleman would have to trouble his wife for. "There'd be rape on the streets!" Bird protests at one point. His plan therefore is to follow 'the French system'; a state sponsored bordello which would get whoring off the streets and into the plush Libertine Club in London's Belgravia. Disguised as a convent school (of course) the brothel, populated by such familiar dollybirds as Margaret Nolan, Hammer's Veronica Carlson and Penny Spencer, offers something for every discerning gentleman including mud wrestling, orgies, whippings, lewd games of chess, costume roleplay and young virgins.

But there quickly appears to be a snag; there aren't enough young ladies of ill repute to go round. Cue David Hemmings in one of two roles he is given here (God knows why!) who takes to infiltrating Pettet's League of Social Purity for new blood. Cue one particularly unrepentant storyline which sees a fifteen year old girl called Flora (Carol Friday) who, having been kidded into joining the League by thinking it is a brothel, get to fulfill her lifelong ambition and voracious sexual appetite as a genuine prostitute at last. It's the kind of addition that perhaps explains why this film isn't a regular in the TV schedules today. 

As I said, this is just one role for David Hemmings. The actor had been catapulted to fame with Blow-Up in 1966 and, by the time The Best House In London was made just three years later, Hemmings had racked up a further 7 film roles. There's no real reason to give Hemmings two characters to play here (the roguish, moustache twirling toff infiltrator and the kindly, whiny hero and supporter of the League) other than to increase his already prolific output! Much as I like Hemmings, this duality does not in any way shape or form display his virtuosity and he's far from a Sellers like chameleon. The only difference he brings to each role is a dark wig and moustache for the blackguard, and a blonde wig and clean shaven for the innocent hero - and both are played relatively poorly. I read once that Hemmings, cheekily, asked for two salaries during this film. I think he barely deserved the one!

It's in no way a good film but it holds some curiosity and appeal for any fan of 60s made bawdy bonanzas. The script by future It'll Be Alright On The Night host Dennis Norden packs just as many sniggering double entendres as any Carry On instalment and, in littering the story with cameos from real and fictional Victorian figures such as Dickens and Wilde, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Jekyll, clearly influenced graphic novelist Alan Moore for his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. Director Philip Saville (who would go on to direct many great Play For Today's and single drama for the BBC) wisely fills the screen with a host of familiar faces including Warren Mitchell, George Sanders, Willie Rushton, John Cleese, Queenie Watts and even Tessie O'Shea, who all jostle about amid the colourful and somewhat lavish, larger than life depiction of Victorian London, complete with a multi-coloured psychedelic looking airship!

I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967)

As some of you may have guessed by now (I know Michael O'Sullivan has) I've commenced something of a Carol White fest since watching Dulcima earlier this week. It's primarily for Letterboxd, the film review site I post on, but I'm naturally sharing some of the reviews here, including this one for the second Carol White film I've watched today (the first being The Fixer) 1967's I'll Never Forget What's'isname....

Andrew Quint (Oliver Reed) has the lot. A successful job in advertising, a wife and children and two incredibly attractive mistresses (one of whom is Marianne Faithfull no less!) but  we meet him on the day he decides to jack it all in in the most spectacular fashion; striding purposefully across swinging London with an axe slung across his shoulder, he enters his office and attacks his desk with it before offering his resignation to his overweight Machiavellian and effete employer played by Orson Welles.

Intending to get back to basics he returns to the job he had when he came down from Cambridge, that of a literary agent with a small magazine called The Gadfly run by his friend Nicholas played by Norman Rodway. There he meets secretary Georgina (Carol White), and the pair begin a rather gentle tentative affair. But like the Mafia, it appears that once you've signed up to advertising it isn't all that easy to leave it behind... 

I'll Never Forget What's'isname reunites director Michael Winner with star Oliver Reed and writer Peter Draper (The System and The Jokers) for this Modish and acerbic and satirical exploration of the rat race and how success and its inherent affluence cannot be traded in for the simple honesty of the ideals once held in youth.

Being honest I've never truly enjoyed a Michael Winner film that much, but these swinging 60s entries made alongside Reed and Draper offer a modicum more satisfaction than his later output. His kaleidoscopic style here nicely accompanies the tongue in cheek potshots Draper's script offers on their go-getting generation and mutual contemporaries with some nifty editing and interesting shots but, like a lot of Winner films, there's a real dark and violent undercurrent which is more at home here with both the disturbing and tragic counterpoint to the final act and the rather bitter message on offer - that once you're in the rat race you can never get out.

The film is perhaps now best known for 'doing a Tynan' and being the first film to use the word "Fuck" (though an adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses, which also came out that year, also has a stake in that claim) It comes near the end of the film when, lured back to make another advert for Lute, Quint delivers the ultimate scathing examination of his lot, mixing footage of atom bomb explosions, and mass graves with Marianne Faithfull (who else?) shouting "You fucking bastard!" It's meant to be the two fingered salute to end them all, the dog biting the hand that feeds him but, ironically, it's celebrated as a masterpiece and wins an award, making for an interesting and distinctive darker take on the swinging sixties than many other films of that era.

But the trouble is, like all Winner films, there doesn't seem to be an awful lot on offer other than its main message. Sure its delivered fashionably enough but perhaps it needed to actually be more of a character study on Quint himself than it actually is and in many ways the flash, quirky visual style hinders as much as it helps the film. Indeed, characterisation is not one of his or Draper's strong suits and poor Carol White gets the glamourous dollybird role she always wanted,  but little else. Her part is so paper thin - a virginal, beautiful saviour for Reed's Quint - that she has little to offer in her big break away from the more authentic and credible work she had done with Ken Loach. 

It's left to Oliver Reed to carry the film on his broad shoulders and he does well as a brooding depiction of modern dissatisfaction; handling the scenes in which he loses his cool and control as brilliantly as one would expect from such an electrifying, physical actor.

Wordless Wednesday : Bus Stop

Tom & Pattie

Tom Courtenay & Pattie Boyd

(Thanks to Michael at Mike's Movie Projector for this image)

World of Leather

Britt Ekland and Lord Lichfield, photographed by Terry O'Neill, 1970

Who Needs Boris Bikes?

This girl showed London where it was at cycle wise long before the Honey Monster Mayor!

Spotted on the retrogirly site