Mr Starlight

by Laurie Graham

  People think Sel was the big heart-throb, but I had a very big following myself. Sometimes they wanted a signed photo, sometimes they wanted my body. I had quite a few turn up at the Topanga Ballroom when we were recording, but we had security by then; a big boy called Ferd who knew ju-jitsu. Kaye had insisted. She said, ‘You don’t know who’s out there. You could get disfigured by some crazy with a knife. I don’t want you getting close to any fans without Ferd there to protect you.’

  Of course, I was at liberty to make my own arrangements, after hours, if a pretty girl wanted to show me her appreciation. I had one or two who were just using me, asking about Sel while I was trying to romance them, but generally I could see that type coming. And I never took any fans back to Strawberry Ridge. Me and Sel had agreed. Home was strictly home. He had some nice things by then: musical boxes, little animals made out of crystal. Even fans can be light-fingered. They’d take plants out of the garden, light bulbs from over the front door.

  Also, there was the point that Sel didn’t want people seeing him. ‘When I’m on, I’m on,’ he said. ‘I give them everything. But when I’m off, I want to please myself.’

  And they’d have been very disappointed to see Mr Starlight pleasing himself. Slouching around in a pair of baggy old shorts, eating ice cream, picking tickle fights with Ferd or the pool boy.

  We were becoming very popular with the older ladies, so another idea Sel had was to end every show on a holy note. He said, ‘I serenade them, I make them laugh. But these are church-going ladies, Cled. I want to cater to that side of things too. It’ll be a nice way to finish. “One Little Candle” or “I Heard the Voice of Jesus”, or “Danny Boy”. How you end a show matters just as much as how you begin it.’

  I said, ‘Not on a harmonium, I hope?’

  Kaye said, ‘I think it’s a terrific idea, but I’m just wondering how you’re gonna look, singing hymns in sequinned revers? How about a nice Pringle sweater?’

  So that’s what he tried, but it didn’t work. Out of a suit Sel looked quite a porker and wearing a woolly accentuated it. He said, ‘No. I’ll stick with what suits me. Let’s have just a head shot for the last number, and soft focus. That way the sequins won’t intrude.’

  One of those clever-dick commentators from New York called Sel ‘The Holy Glitterball rolling across the Midwest and gathering momentum’. But those Jesical endings became quite a feature and the viewing figures said it all. Sponsors were lining up to get us: One Step floor polish, Huntly lawn mowers, Brite tooth powder for smokers, Malto night drink. Sel had to record those bits separately. ‘After a show’, he had to say, ‘I find there’s nothing helps me unwind like Malto. Just add hot water and sleep tight. And remember, Malto now comes in vanilla flavour too!’

  We never needed to buy floor polish or anything like that any more. The garage at Strawberry Ridge was stacked so high with free gifts from our sponsors that the motor had to stand out front. It didn’t matter. You get no weather to speak of in California and, according to Sel, it was only a matter of time until General Motors would be giving us a Cadillac.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Your father’, Mam wrote, ‘is now drawing his old age pension, so he’ll be able to sleep under his own roof instead of traipsing the country looking for work.’

  Dilys said, ‘What did I tell you? Don’t send any more money to Mam. If you want her to have something, send it to me. Better still, hang on to it. If the life of luxury doesn’t materialise he might clear off again.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know. Mam’s not getting any younger. It’d be nice for her to have company. Have a man around the house again.’

  Dilys said, ‘She’s got men. Mr E’s always available if her hinges need oiling. If she can’t unscrew the top off a jar. And Uncle Teilo goes for his tea. Well, he did do, till Gypsy breezed in. Teilo’s nose is really out of joint.’

  I said, ‘But does Mam seem happy to have Dad back?’

  ‘How would you ever know?’ she said. ‘She’s always talked a load of old cobblers about him so I don’t bother listening. I’ll tell you what I think. The minute he twigs there’s no money he’ll be gone. You heard it here.’

  Three months, he lasted.

  ‘Your father’, Mam wrote, ‘has gone back to Shrewsbury for a little holiday. There wasn’t a lot for him to do here, especially with me so busy with Maid of the Mountains.’ She’d been playing for the Aeolian Operatic Society at Digbeth Hall. ‘Isn’t it funny how we’re all in the world of entertainment now, apart from Dilys and your father.’

  Dilys said, ‘That’s not right. There’s no bigger comedian than Gypsy. Know what he told her? He had to see a man about some racing pigeons. Well, he’s gone.’

  I said, ‘Did he ask you for money?’

  ‘Never came near,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t dare. And now, listen to this. Mam’s decided she would like a telephone after all.’

  ‘It will make it easier for your father to keep in contact,’ Mam wrote, ‘and I shan’t allow neighbours to take advantage. I shall have a saucer beside it for them to leave their thruppences.’

  ‘Halle-bloody-lujah,’ Dilys said. ‘Now I can check up on her without trailing over there. You should see her when she answers it. She picks it up as if it’s going to bite her. Next thing is the bathroom. I think she’s softening.’

  I said, ‘As long as she doesn’t want gold-plated taps.’

  ‘Well,’ Dilys said, ‘who can say what we’ve started? She ’ll be bathing in Channel Number 5 before she’s done.’

  So we started being able to talk to Mam again, or at least we talked to her and she shouted back. I suppose she thought her voice wouldn’t carry. Uncle Teilo appeared to have slipped back into Dad’s vacant chair. ‘Teilo wants to take me to Blackpool for the Illuminations,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going.’

  I said, ‘Go! Enjoy yourself! You never go anywhere.’

  ‘I do enjoy myself,’ she said. ‘I’m rehearsing Bless the Bride with the Aeolians. Did I tell you they’ve been on strike at Greely’s? Thank goodness Selwyn took you away from all that. Bunch of communists.’

  I said, ‘Our new record’s doing pretty well.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘Oh, now what was it I had to tell you? Teilo?’

  I could hear him in the background. I said, ‘Has he moved in with you?’

  ‘He has not!’ she said. ‘He’s just popped in for liver and onions. It’s not worth cooking for one. He says a girl you used to know on the clubs, Avril. She’s appearing at the Hippodrome. Frankie Laine is top of the bill. Teilo says that could have been you if you’d stayed here. He didn’t need to stay here, Teilo. He had Selwyn to take him to the heights of fame.’

  As far as Sel was concerned we hadn’t quite scaled the heights. ‘Television gets your face known,’ he said, ‘but it’s live appearances that get people excited. It’s time to go back on the road, really meet my public.’

  But Kaye Conroy said she’d taken us as far as she could. ‘You need a promoter,’ she said. ‘You need a whole buncha people for a touring show. And I’m supposed to be a retired person. If I don’t start following Hubert around in the golf cart once in a while, there’s no telling. He might trade me in for an older woman. Talk to Kick. I think he’s looking for a change.’

  Kick Valentine was our musical director on Mr Starlight Sings. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m ready to travel. Where are we going?’

  Sel’s first idea was he was going to organise everything himself. He didn’t trust people to do things right.

  Kaye said, ‘Sure. Next stop the morgue. You’ll kill yourself! You gonna start stitching on your own sequins? You gonna fly your own plane? Why don’t you just ease up a little, be a little more trusting? Why don’t you talk to somebody you worked with before?’

  And that was how we came to link up with Milo Freeman again, to take Mr Starlight Live out on the road. A full-length show, with an eighteen-piece band, a backing quartet called the Joytones and a s
upport vocalist, who sang during Sel’s costume changes. It took weeks to find the right girl. They were too glamorous or not glamorous enough. Too much personality. Too many ideas of their own.

  He said, ‘This is Mr Starlight’s show not Opportunity Knocks.’

  In the end the job went to Kitty O’Malley and as far as I was concerned she didn’t have too much of anything. We had quite a thing, me and Kitty. I’d say, ‘If you can’t sleep, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Oh, Cled,’ she’d say. ‘I don’t know if I could trust myself!’

  I’ve found fame to be a great aphrodisiac.

  We opened the show at the Mount Storm Arena, Cincinnati with the worst band I ever had the misfortune to appear with. Kick had used a local contractor to put a band together and when rehearsal time came, the afternoon before the show, five of them didn’t turn up, four ladies on saxophone and a cornet player, couldn’t get away from their day jobs. And that was only the start. Even when we had them all assembled Kick couldn’t get them to finish a number in unison.

  Sel heard the racket. He said, ‘OK, get rid of the monkeys. Where’s my band?’

  Kick said, ‘Sorry, Sel. Just give me another half-hour with them. It’s the guys. They’re holding back, allowing the girls to finish first. Funny, really.’

  Sel said, ‘I’ll tell you how funny it is, Kick. You just used up the one blooper you’re allowed. So by the time I get to Omaha you’d better have a real band for me, rehearsed and ready to go.’

  Kick said, ‘They’re called for two o’clock. Until I see them I don’t see what else I can do.’

  Sel said, ‘That was before you forfeited your night’s sleep. You can travel overnight. Rehearse them in the morning. Rehearse them till they’re perfect. This is Mr Starlight you’re working for, not Amateur Night.’

  I felt sorry for Kick. Sel could be like that. Nice as pie one minute, then screaming and shouting because everything wasn’t laid out exactly how he liked it in his dressing room: dusting powder at three o’clock; photo of Mam at eleven o’clock, cuff link case at twelve o’clock; costumes hung in reverse order on the rail; Crackers’s water bowl placed on its special mat. It was like a parade ground back there some nights and Sel was the sergeant major, but as soon as it was showtime he was different again.

  The house lights would go down and there’d be a drum roll. Then Kick Valentine would come on while we were playing ‘Starlight Serenade’. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he’d say, ‘tonight Starlight Entertainment is proud to present, truly a star of stage, TV screen and hit parade, the one and only … Mr Starlight!’

  And we’d play him on. He liked stairs to trot down, which wasn’t easy to arrange at some venues so we started travelling with our own little set of steps covered with red carpet and he’d stand on them, waiting, behind a back curtain. ‘Well, look at you all!’ he’d say. ‘Fancy you being here! Now I really feel like singing!’

  We played the Gladstone Bowl, Kansas, Bluff Runs, Omaha and the Mile High, Denver, all sold out. He did three costume changes every show and in the second half he’d go down into the audience to let them admire Celeste’s handiwork.

  Some smaller places we played we didn’t have a band. Just me on piano and Don Smith on bass. Those were the nights when he’d do a chat routine with me. ‘Meet my big brother, Cled,’ he’d say. ‘Cled, are you awake?’

  ‘I think so,’ I had to say. ‘If I’m not, there are an awful lot of people sitting around in this dream.’

  ‘Cled,’ he’d say. ‘Do you know where you are?’

  ‘Yes,’ I had to say. ‘Stage left, first half, second number.’

  Milo said, ‘They love you, Selwyn. There’s only one thing I’d say. Keep them wanting more. No encores. Just say goodnight and go.’

  That was how his beg-off came about. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he’d say. ‘You’ve all been so kind; now I’m going to let you go home. Night night! Sleep tight!’ And it didn’t matter how much they stamped and whistled, he’d never go back on. They’d put it out on the loudspeakers – ‘Mr Starlight has left the building’. But there’d always be fans waiting outside, hoping to get lucky.

  Milo said, ‘We should think about your fan clubs, Selwyn. They’re springing up everywhere. Maybe give a little reception before a show? Let some of them come and meet you in your dressing room?’

  Sel said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Milo said, ‘What’s to think about? These girls are your fans. Without them what are you?’

  ‘A star,’ he said, ‘and a star keeps a certain amount of distance. I don’t want any of them getting any big ideas.’

  By the time we got to Las Vegas, Star! magazine was after him for his life story.

  Me and my brother [he told them] are very close. He’s a good deal older than me and he was still an amateur when I’d turned professional, but we’re a good partnership, so when agents started asking me to come to the United States, I insisted that Cled had to be part of the deal. That’s the kind of family we are. Sometimes folk can’t believe we’re brothers. But Cled provides a good dependable backing and I provide the glamour. He looked out for me when I was knee high to a grasshopper so the least I can do now I’m a star is keep him on my team.

  I said, ‘You’ve got some ginger, making me sound like a charity case.’

  ‘They put words in my mouth, Cled,’ he said. ‘That’s magazines for you. You say one thing and they twist it into something more interesting.’

  I said, ‘You could have mentioned who wrote “Busy Being Lonely”. That would have been interesting.’

  ‘It never came up,’ he said.

  I should have seen which way the wind was blowing.

  Sel loved Las Vegas. It was too rough for my taste, like a place out of a cowboy picture. In those days it always seemed liable to get blown away or covered with sand but that never bothered him. He liked his bone china and his gardenia soap, but he liked cowboy towns too. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ll buy a parcel of land here. I’d like a place of my own.’

  His house in Malibu was only half built. Ocean Star, it was going to be called.

  I said, ‘You’re stretching yourself a bit, aren’t you? How many houses can one man need?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What kind of star has one home? Better to buy houses than pay hotel bills. I think I’ll build a bungalow here. Vegas is a bungalow kind of town.’

  We did two more runs of thirteen shows for Kaycee and cut a long-playing disc of our most requested songs, then we went east, back on the road.

  I said to Kitty, ‘We could share a room this time, get to know each other a bit better.’

  I knew she was keen from the way she hung around Sel, using him to get closer to me.

  She said, ‘I think we have to be professional about this, Cled. We’re part of a team and we can’t afford to let our passions run riot.’

  Playing it cool, as they say. She was a sexy little minx. If her legs hadn’t been so shapeless she could have been a real pin-up.

  Every show was sold out before we’d even left home and everywhere we went Sel was mobbed. Ladies wanting to touch him and a lot of them you’d have thought were too old to be interested in any such thing. He was two hours signing autographs in Pittsburgh and in Baltimore the police couldn’t control the crowds.

  Milo said, ‘One of your fans lost her footing and got trampled. You should visit her in the hospital.’

  Sel said, ‘That’s a great idea. I’ll wear just a grey two-piece.’

  Kitty said, ‘A sweater’d be better. Friendlier.’

  He was always being sent jumpers by his fans, but knitwear didn’t really flatter him. In my opinion a sports jacket would have been the thing for visiting hospitals, but he didn’t own a sports jacket.

  He said, ‘While I’m there we should do some other stuff. Visit some sick kiddies.’

  Milo said, ‘That’s my boy!’

  Sel said, ‘Send out for teddies. Teddy bea
rs and dollies and fluffy dogs. I’ll go laden!’

  There was a picture of him in the papers the next day, chatting to a little boy in an iron lung.

  He said, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It only takes an hour, it costs peanuts and the publicity’s great.’

  Milo said, ‘We’ll make it a regular feature from now on. This has gone down so well.’

  Just as well because the show itself got a very nasty write-up. ‘Now with Added Frosting’ it said.

  British phenomenon Mr Starlight has made glitter his trademark but he proves the old adage that glitter doesn’t always signify gold. His songs are sentimental, his voice is unremarkable and he parades pictures of his dreary family in an attempt to convince us he’s just like one of us. No need to try so hard, Mr S. We’re convinced! Take away the rhinestones and what do you have? A third-rate crooner with an ingratiating smile. Mr Starlight’s current tour looks set to break box office records, which just goes to show you can fool an awful lot of the people an awful lot of the time.

  Sel didn’t care. He said, ‘Give me that review. I’m nearly out of toilet paper.’

  In Wilmington Milo arranged a ‘surprise’ hospital visit, so Sel could hand out fluffy toys and have his picture taken with a kiddie in a wheelchair.

  Kitty said, ‘You know what’d be neat? If everything had your name on it. Like the bears could wear Mr Starlight bow ties, and the dolls could have stars on their dresses.’

  Sel said, ‘Great idea. Look into that, would you, Milo?’

  In New Jersey Sel agreed to give his first backstage reception for members of his fan club. ‘As long as it’s kept under control,’ he said. ‘We’ll give them tea and biscuits, and signed photos.’