A couple of weeks ago I received an email relating to a post I made in January about Manchester's Don Tonay. The email was from his daughter Donna and, after some back and forth, I got some answers to the questions, opinions and myths that were evident in that original post about one of Manchester's most intriguing businessmen and a key figure in the early days of Factory Records. With Donna's permission, here is the answers she provided me that shed some light on her late father.Included in this post are photographs she kindly shared with me of Don. I hope you enjoy...
I started by asking Donna just what her father's ethnic background was, given that it was the source of much confusion and conflicting opinions among the Factory set;
"My Dad always said he was from Dublin. But we are not really sure" she replied. "We know he changed his name but we don't know what it was before. My Mum has a lot of theories about that. It was either during the war to avoid going back or to get away from his family. Who knows. He would never tell you"
"He definitely was Irish. He knew Dublin like the back of his hand. I have had a DNA test and I have come back as 70% Irish so I think that was true. His friend, Phyllis, Phil Lynott's (Thin Lizzy) mum said they were neighbours when they were children in Dublin"
I asked her about Don's life prior to owning the Russell Club, home of the Factory nights;
"He opened the first blues in Moss Side called the Monton house. Engelbert Humperdinck used to try and get in every night, but he was too young so my Dad said he was throw him out most nights"
"He owned property all over Moss Side and rented it out. If they didn't pay their rent he would smash the toilet so they had to move out. He said it was cheaper to buy a new toilet"
"When he met my mum they travelled around the country opening illegal gambling dens, as gambling was illegal in the '60s. In their place in Bristol, Cary Grant used to come in"
"It was my stepdad, who was one of the Quality Street Gang, that allegedly put the Krays back on the train (when they arrived in Manchester with an eye on taking over the city). The Thin Lizzy song, 'The Boys are Back in Town', is about them"
One thing that everyone seemed to agree upon, I said, was that Don Tonay was a handsome, tall and well-dressed gentleman. A cool man who was a world away from the blunt northern club owner stereotype played by Peter Kay in 24 Hour Party People. Donna agreed and confirmed this;
"My Dad was always well-dressed and well-spoken. He wore silk socks and handmade shoes. He was also 6ft 4". Saying that, he could always scruff it and get cracking with whatever needed doing in the clubs or many shops that he owned"
Returning to 24 Hour Party People, I asked if the family were consulted at all on the production;
"We were not consulted. A friend of mine was friend with one of the cameramen who got me onto the set where I had an argument with Tony Wilson, as my dad had only just died of a massive heart attack on the 19th September 2000 and this was November of that year when they were filming. He (Wilson) had the good grace to apologise. You see, there would be no Factory without my dad, he bankrolled it all."
Donna concluded with her belief that her mother should write a book. It's one I emphatically agree with. Hollywood film stars, music legends and gangsters, it would make for great reading!
By the late 1960s, a lot of critics were shaking their heads in dismay and writing the obits for Richard Burton's career. He was, to their mind, a great actor who had simply squandered his talent on unwise choices. An actor whose best known role was not as they had hoped, the Shakespearean greats, but was instead that of Mr Elizabeth Taylor in the ongoing, glitzy and gaudy pantomime of their marriage. They were Brangelina, they were Kim and Kanye, they were Posh and Becks. They were all those and more; the celebrity power couple before the term had even been coined and, in that less celeb crazed time, Burton being so high profile meant just one thing to the critics - wasted potential.
But the critics were wrong. Granted, Burton made some truly horrible decisions from the late 1960s and up until his untimely death in 1984, there were roles in populist fare that kept him from treading the boards where they felt his talent thrived and yes, he often sleepwalked through some of these appearances, but he was far from washed up. Because when Burton felt the material was worth it, he gave it his all and when he did, he was capable of turning in a fine performance that positively crackled upon the screen. His role in Villain of gangland kingpin Vic Dakin here, allows for just such a performance - a role so meaty he could truly get his teeth into and enjoy it with absolute relish.
When we talk of classic British gangster movies, we talk of Get Carter (which Villain came hot on the heels of) and The Long Good Friday; films which benefit from two truly iconic gangster characters in Michael Caine's enforcer Jack Carter and Bob Hoskins' mob boss Harold Shand. These are characters which can stand comfortably alongside the greats from Hollywood, the home of the traditional gangster genre, with Caine as chillingly cobra-eyed as a Bogart or Raft, and Hoskins as snarlingly feral as Edward G Robinson. It's a shame therefore that Villain isn't as well known and as celebrated as these two films, because in Burton's Dakin we perhaps have our own James Cagney. Just look at that final speech he has here, it's right up there. Seriously, by the time the credits roll you won't care that Burton couldn't really do a cockney accent. He is Vic Dakin, and that demands your respect.
Dakin is a gloriously complex and creepy monster, obviously inspired by the Kray twins (who had been convicted of murder the year prior to filming) though with a particular emphasis on the certifiable Ronnie. When we first meet him he suggests a girl makes a cup of tea whilst he busies himself slashing her boyfriend's face off, his vicious nature also spares room for a sneering contempt for the ordinary nine to fivers of society ("Stupid punters - telly all week, screw the wife Saturdays") but at the same time this taciturn tough is utterly devoted to his dear old mum, who he treats like a mixture of royalty and precious bone china, taking her down to Brighton every weekend, feeding her whelks and then - as Nigel Davenport's detective remarks - drives home at 30mph to ensure she doesn't get hiccups.
As with all our cinematic gangsters Dakin makes a fatal mistake that sees his power snatched away from him. Receiving a tip off from one of the clients of his lucrative protection racket, Dakin and his firm try their hand at armed robbery, with disastrous consequences. But this overreaching error isn't borne of some ambitious desire to expand his empire; Dakin's folly stems from the fact that he is starting to feel his (middle) age, and fears he is seen to be going soft in the eyes of Ian McShane's young chancer, Wolf. And going soft is the last thing he wants when it comes to Wolf, because he's in the middle of a rather tempestuous love affair with the younger man.
Burton claimed he had no trouble pretending he fancied McShane, indeed he said he found it rather easy because he reminded him of Elizabeth Taylor! I always get envious watching Ian McShane films from the '70s because Burton was spot on, he was such a handsome fella, I wish I looked like him back then!
Gritty and atmospheric, Villain is wonderfully evocative of '70s London with its crisp location shooting and its fashions of flares, roll neck sweaters and sideburns. Those long-gone London streets are populated by a great number of character actors and familiar faces that offer up an instant nostalgia hit to any British viewer of a certain age, and they deliver bluntly authentic dialogue (shocking in its day I presume) that came from the pen of no less a writing partnership than Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, better known for their comedies such as The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen Pet.
Directed by first-timer Michael Tuchner, this is an acutely-observed piece with a great sense of place and character. It's a shame that Tuchner's potential never seemed to be achieved after this - he crossed the pond and back a few times to produce a series of TV movies and low budget offerings, some of them over here being good (the Play for Today Bar Mitzvah Boy, and reuniting with Clement and La Frenais to make the big screen spin off of The Likely Lads in '76) but most of them over there seem decidedly humdrum (Hart to Hart revivals and several movies of the week) along with some you simply struggle to categorise (Mr Quilp - a musical adaptation of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, and the Smith and Jones vehicle Wilt) He did make the big screen adaptation of Alistair MacLean's Fear is the Key the year after this though, and that's on my to-watch list.
In conclusion, whilst Villain isn't the British crime drama that deserves immediate reappraisal (that is of course Peter Yates' brilliant Great Train Robbery inspired 1967 film Robbery) it is nonetheless worth your time for a truly interesting lead performance by Burton and some really authentic progressive moves in the crime genre (the homosexual gangster, his seedy connections to parliament, the decline of old fashioned crime and uncompromising dialogue) But the downside is that its narrative is just too small-fry compared to Get Carter and The Long Good Friday and that is why ultimately it remains in the shadows.
It's an interesting one to revisit this, after watching Legend.
As a compare and contrast exercise, Legend is much more about light and shade and, dare I say it, glamour than The Krays. Peter Medak's film is utterly preoccupied with the dark heart of its subject matter, delivering a sinister film dripping with portentous, doom laden menace right from the off with its opening animated frame of Ma Kray's avian, natal dream. Billie Whitelaw is impeccable as their mother, Violet and it is her relationship with her boys that takes up so much of the action, something which Legend perhaps wisely shuns for much of its running time and, when it does depict her it chooses to paint her in a much less sympathetic light than this film does.
So, this is much darker. But with so much of the story playing out more like a horror film than any gangster movie - complete with spooky identical twin children playing the junior Krays delivering their lines in unison - it's a real shame that it wimps out on exploring the psychotic nature of Ronnie Kray in the same manner that Legend does. In The Krays, Gary Kemp's portrayal suggests little more than a hot tempered hood, and his psychoses and also his sexual preferences are presented in the most chaste and safe of manners. It's also fair to say that the former Spandau Ballet stars, the Kemp brothers (who are not twins it's worth pointing out), are not really great actors; Martin's not too bad in the role of Reggie but Gary has big shoes to fill with Ron. Neither match up very well to Tom Hardy's dual performances in Legend; as I say, Ronnie's character is lessened and Gary Kemp would never have been able to convince if they fully explored him anyway, and the movie fails to tell the story of Reggie's ill fated marriage to the tragic Frances as effectively as the latest film either, despite some strong performances in these scenes from Martin Kemp and the lovely Kate Hardie.
And yet, The Krays is still an OK film. As I said in my review for Legend there isn't many films out there officially exploring the bloody reign of the brothers and, as this is the first, it deserves our attention. It's a film I can still vividly recall watching for the first time, because I was only 10 or 11 years old at the time. It was when the film was released onto VHS and me and my mates all wanted to see it as we were fascinated by gangsters and gangster movies; one of our favourite playground games was 'Al Capone and The Untouchables'. My parents said we could watch it providing we got it from the video club ourselves - in other words, if the person in the store was daft enough to loan out an 18 to a bunch of 10/11 year olds then they would allow us to watch it. We spun them some fib about being sent to the shop to get it for our dad, which they swallowed and let us rent it out. With our sticky hands we hurried back to watch it in our front room on a hot summer's day with the curtains drawn, so we could see the screen properly. About 30 minutes in, around the time Ronnie slices a guy's face in half, one of our lot - the most vocally keen to watch, in fact - left my house looking decidedly green around the gills! Because of that viewing experience at such a formative age, I can pretty much recite whole lines from the film word for word, and I found myself doing so tonight even though its been several years since I last watched this.
Oh and I still have a crush on Kate Hardie.
Did anyone else think Tom Hardy's Ronnie Kray looked like Patrick Marber ?
That aside, Legend is a wonderful evocation of 60s London and the Kray twins 'Legend'. Now, the story of Ronnie and Reggie Kray isn't new to cinema - the infamous twins were previously the subject of The Krays, an OK 1990 movie starring Spandau Ballet brothers Gary and Martin Kemp - but it is surprising to think that their notorious gangland empire has only been told on the big screen a total of three times now (with a straight-to-DVD cash in The Rise of The Krays coming hot on the heels of this film) Simply put, there's room for more than one telling of their tale especially as the film points out, everyone in London in the 1960s had a story about the Krays (and anyone outside of the capital invariably has a story concerning how their town simply said no to them; a folkloric tale of how your local criminal fraternity or police force met their armed might with nothing but grit and directed them back to the Euston train) Legend is LA Confidential screenwriter and director Brian Helgeland's take on the twins and it's surprising to see how much an American actually gets it.
Helgeland's script is based on John Pearson's celebrated true crime biography, The Profession of Violence, a brilliant read that has rarely - if ever - gone out of print since it was first published in the early 70s. Helgeland has cleverly constructed the material to focus around what one could argue was a love triangle at the heart of the twins criminal empire; Reggie loves Ronnie and Ronnie loves Reggie, but Reggie also loves Frances, the sister of his driver played by the striking Australian actress Emily Browning and who provides the film's narrative hook with a personable, intimate voice over. Cleverly, Helgeland both mines '60s nostalgia and centres Reggie and Frances' relationship on a shared love for lemon sherbets but, just like that sweet, things can turn sour and bitter -there's just too much love burning away in this particular triangle and, though its depicted dreamily enough to start with, it can only ever lead to a hate filled fatal fallout and Frances' voice over finally quashes that foolish, sentimental old myth that the Krays 'only ever hurt their own'; with Frances' story, it's all too clear that innocents got hurt too.
But the main thing to see Legend for is Tom Hardy who plays both Ronnie and Reggie Kray in a move that is a real tour de force. He manages to make both performances so utterly distinctive that for much of the time you will, like I did, forget you are watching the same actor in two different roles. He is nothing short of brilliant here and if you thought his Bronson was a terrifying and unnervingly hilarious monster then you haven't seen anything until you've seen his Ronnie Kray.
There's able support too from the likes of David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Mel Raido, Paul Anderson, Sam Spruell and, as Charlie Richardson, the Krays South London rival, Paul Bettany.
Without a doubt this is the best movie about the Krays, surpassing even the thinly veiled depictions of their reign of terror such as The Long Firm, but you'll be surprised just how tame some of the violence actually is - not for Legend the shock inducing scenes like the infamous sword in a snooker hall moment from Peter Medak's 1990 take. Clearly Helgeland is more interested in the emotional side - what made the brothers tick and how the people close to them that they wanted to care for and look after such as Frances got burned - and the shoulders they began to rub on account of their infamy; Joan Collins and Barbara Windsor are namechecked, Chazz Palminteri turns up as the Mafia connection, John Sessions (a former Harold Wilson in Made In Dagenham) pops up here as Lord Boothby, whilst Kevin McNally steps in as Harold Wilson, but it's a shame that Aneurin Bernard's scenes as David Bailey (a role he had previously played in the BBC4 biopic We'll Take Manhattan) seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor. The film is lavishly designed by Tom Conroy and beautifully shot by Dick Pope whilst Carter Burwell provides a memorable music score which is peppered with familiar hits of the day, some of which are sung in the film by Duffy in a role as Timi Yuro, the chanteuse in one of the twins' clubs.
But, that title - Legend is such a non-event isn't it? Why not, The Profession of Violence?
