‘And watch?’
‘And watch.’
Seventh 8mm:
SEX AND SUDS
150 feet (12 minutes), black and white, mute.
Which is how the idea for this film came about … It was shot on a bitterly cold Saturday at the back end of November.
Ward’s friend turned out to be a doddering old libertine called Dr Quantick. He must have been in his late seventies. He shook a lot and I thought perhaps he had Parkinson’s disease, but I guess he was just excited. He didn’t leave the bathroom once. He just stood there the whole time, but fortunately it was a big bathroom, as big as my room almost.
I used three actors. A layabout from Greek Street called Leon White who is an electrician in the West End theatres. One of Stephen’s dopey girls, Susan O’Reilly (though I doubt that was her real name), and a divorcee acquaintance of Veronica’s from Fulham called Eileen McElroy. Both Susan and Eileen were buxomish with big tits so the film opened with them in the bath together soaping each other’s boobs. Then they start playing around with the loofah and a bar of soap. Susan straddles the bidet and I did a shot of her pissing into it. While she is sitting there Eileen uses a dildo on her. The bathroom door opens and there’s Leon in his electrician’s overalls. He strips down and the three of them get in the bath together. There are the usual threesome scenes and the final shot is Leon coming into Susan’s mouth as Eileen masturbates him.
If Eileen hadn’t been a friend of Veronica’s I think I would have told Susan that I wanted a further shot of someone fucking her and done it myself. I quite fancied her for some reason. Strange because shooting these dirty films puts me off it more than anything. After the session I asked Susan if we could perhaps meet for a drink? She didn’t want to know.
I thanked Dr Quantick as we were leaving. He said I could use his bathroom any time I liked ‘as long as you bring some young ladies’.
Stephen had asked me to phone him right after the session and I called him from Oxford Circus underground.
‘Did it all go OK, Tim?’
‘Yes. Why, shouldn’t it have?’
‘Quantick wasn’t a nuisance?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Good. I must have a copy of this film as soon as possible.’
‘Why the hurry?’
‘I want to see my little beauty, Susan … that’s all.’
‘As soon as I’ve edited it together and it’s printed you can have one, OK? About a fortnight. I’ve got a lot on right now.’
‘You will phone me?’
‘Yes.’
I then rushed back home to see the very first edition of this new satirical show on BBC, That Was the Week That Was. Some of the Private Eye people were involved in it and it promised to be good.
I saw Stephen about two weeks later when he called by Modern Snax for a copy of Sex and Suds. He didn’t stop a minute. Just gave me £20 (the films had gone up in price) and zoomed off. I wouldn’t see or speak to him again for some four months. Something was about to explode in his face and he would never be the same again. In fact, it ended him.
It was late on a Friday when I got back home. I’d shut Modern Snax early but I’d gone for a drink in the French with Charlie and this had led to a bit of a pub crawl through Soho: after all, Christmas was only a couple of weeks away and the festive spirit always arrives early in Soho. I was sober, but a little the worse for wear.
Veronica was writing a letter when I got in (probably to her sister who had emigrated to Australia). She didn’t look up but said, ‘Your friend has been on the radio.’
What friend on the radio? Perhaps Sonny has been giving a talk about West Indian culture on the Third Programme? Or has French Joe been reminiscing about all the writers and painters he’s known in Soho?
‘Which friend?’
‘Stephen.’
‘What was he talking about?’
‘He wasn’t talking. He was the news.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Doing nothing. They just mentioned him. There were two models staying in his house and this black man turned up and started firing shots at them … with a gun. That’s all.’
With a gun? That’s all!? Christ almighty!
‘Was anyone shot, hurt?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’
Who were the two models? Were they girls I had photographed or what? I ran down the stairs two at a time and phoned Stephen. I could not get through to him. The phone had been left off the hook …
The shots in Wimpole Mews that Friday night would, over the coming months, ring around the world like those at Sarajevo had nearly fifty years earlier. These shots heralded the unfolding of what became known as the Profumo Affair, the name coming from Jack Profumo, Harold Macmillan’s ‘Minister of War’, who had been shagging one of the models who had been fired at, a Christine Keeler (how apt that Profumo means perfume in Italian). I didn’t know her, thank God, and I didn’t know her mate either, some blonde with the preposterous name of Mandy Rice-Davies, soon to be known throughout Albion as Randy Mice-Davies. News of the ministerial shagging came out after Profumo had denied it and then he had to resign (I think that was the sequence anyway). Each week the papers were full of new stuff about Stephen and his friends. Keeler sold her memoirs to the News of the World and there were rumours about all sorts of goings on. A Russian diplomat called Ivanov was mentioned as being a friend of Stephen’s and then it turned out he was reputedly having it off with Keeler while she was also doing it with Profumo. The affair now became a matter of national security.
The newspapers teased the story out daily from Ward’s tangled past. Whenever you picked up a newspaper there were pictures of some new girl who had once drifted into Ward’s orbit, some new story of sex and drugs, some new tale about Lord this or that. Russian spies were all over the place. Macmillan put a brave face on it all but his government was crumbling.
For the first few weeks I was convinced that my little arrangement with Stephen was going to come tumbling out. Somebody was going to say something and then hordes of journalists would be turning up at Porchester Road or at Modern Snax. But they didn’t. Neither did I recognise any of the ‘Ward girls’ who were being paraded almost daily in the papers.
Stephen wouldn’t say anything about our cosy arrangement because, of course, that would only get him further in the shit. Veronica wasn’t going to go around incriminating herself either, for the same reason, so who did that leave? It left Sonny and Charlie. Charlie knew I knew a geezer called Stephen who occasionally pushed girls in my direction, but he had no reason to link my Stephen with Dr Ward. So that left Sonny … and Nelson and Anton. Sonny knows exactly who Stephen is, but can he be trusted? He’s a bit unpredictable but I can’t see him calling attention to himself with all the skulduggery he’s got going on. The last thing he wants is the Old Bill snooping about, which is precisely what would happen if his name appeared in the papers. Nelson and Anton? They’d be a real danger if some journalist with a chequebook started waving money under their noses, but how would a journalist know about them? They’d have to be found. They’re too out of it and too wrapped up in big fat mamas and ganja to flog themselves down Fleet Street.
Who else is there? The girls of course. The girls Stephen sent along. They are the real wild cards in the pack … but again, would they incriminate themselves? Would they have to? Couldn’t they just blow the whistle on me … and Stephen?
This worried me all over Christmas and down through January of 1963. The coldest winter for years and I’ve got the worry of this! Any moment now I was going to be tumbled. Any moment now there was going to be a knock on the door and I was going to be Public Pornographer Number One with my face plastered all over the papers. I lay low. Just went to work each day. Didn’t contact Stephen or Ronnie or anyone. I’d battened the hatches down. I was waiting for things to blow over…or up.
Then I woke up one morning in the middle of February (the 14th actually, the day Harold Wils
on became the new Labour leader) and realised that I was now worrying unnecessarily. If I was going to be exposed it would have happened by now. The papers were just interested in Ward and Keeler and Rice-Davies and the satellites that orbited about them, Profumo, Lord Astor, Douglas Fairbanks, and Keeler’s two West Indian lovers, Lucky Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe. This was where the action was. The rest was peripheral. Thank fucking Christ neither Christine nor Mandy had ever turned up at a session! I’d be on the public grill by now.
Eighth 8mm:
BEATNIK SLUTS
125 feet (10 minutes), black and white, mute.
This featured two girls I’d got talking to in Modern Snax, June and Paula. Both fresh down from Leeds and very cute.
It was shot in a flat in Sandringham Mansions on Charing Cross Road opposite Dobell’s jazz shop (where earlier that Saturday I had picked up George Russell’s Ezz-Thetics, a Riverside LP, with the most amazing version of Monk’s Round Midnight, featuring Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet and alto).
The flat belonged to a geezer, Eric Klein, who frequently came into Snax and had something to do with horse betting. I’d lent him a tenner when he was down on his luck and he’d never got around to paying me back. I cornered him earlier in the week and told him that I wanted to use his flat for the afternoon. I wanted to take a girlfriend there. We had nowhere else to go. He agreed. I told him I wanted the place spotless and I didn’t want him turning up. He kept his side of the bargain.
The girls eventually arrived and changed into what passes as beatnik gear: black tight-fitting pants, floppy sweaters, hair tied back, sandals, dark lipstick. I suppose they’d pass as beatniks to the punters who go to watch this rubbish.
Johnny and Nello, two Soho no-hopers, arrived about an hour late. So I had an hour of listening to the Beatles! The girls were gaga about them and had just bought Please, Please Me. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred listening to Adam Faith and Craig Douglas – at least there is no mistaking their lack of talent and originality.
Johnny and Nello had both been drinking. Nello came the moment Paula touched his cock and shot it all over June’s neatly folded Gor Ray skirt that was over a chair. As he couldn’t get it up again he had to mime the rest of the time.
The film was badly shot, badly thought out and badly acted. I gave the guys a fiver each for old times’ sake and they buggered off. I paid June and Paula a tenner each. I gave each of them two of those crisp new fivers that have Britannia on them without a helmet on. They’d only just been issued. The girls had never seen them before.
Paula walked up to me as I was loading the Eumig in its case and just put her hand on my crotch.
‘Don’t you fancy some?,’ she said, very matter-of-factly.
‘I guess I do,’ I replied.
While still rubbing my trousers she turned to June and said, ‘Hang on a jiff. I’m going to do it with Tim before we go.’
‘Go ahead,’ was the reply. ‘I’ll watch if you don’t mind.’
So, while June hand-jived in the armchair to the Beatles, we did it on the couch. And I enjoyed it.
‘That didn’t take you long, Tim,’ said June, ‘you need to discipline yourself.’
‘Paula isn’t complaining,’ I said, rather foolishly.
‘She wouldn’t. She’s a lady,’ replied June with a laugh.
I asked for that.
‘Not very good at all, my son,’ said Ronnie in his third-floor Soho office. ‘If I were to buy this I wouldn’t be doing right by Mr Narrizano. He’d think I was on the take from you … and we wouldn’t want him to think that, would we? We don’t want to do anything that would upset the goose that lays the golden egg, right?’
‘Right. So you’re not buying it?’
‘It is a piss-poor piece of work … and no mistake.’
‘You’re right. What do I do with it?’
‘Take it home and keep it and when you’re an old man without any friends in the world you can get it out and remind yourself of all the good times you’ve had.’
I guess it had to happen in the end. A refusal. I was forty-odd quid out of pocket.
I cheered myself up by buying the Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane LP at Dobell’s. It set me back 39s. 8d. Veronica was out when I got home that night so I got smashed on gin while listening to Monk and Trane.
Ninth (and last) 8mm:
THE BOYFRIEND’S SURPRISE VISIT
125 feet (10 minutes), black and white, mute.
This was shot a couple of weeks after Beatnik Sluts on Friday, 8 March, in Porchester Road. Brenda Butler and Elaine Cutter were two contacts through Veronica. Brenda worked in a hairdresser’s in the Edgware Road and Elaine in a shoe shop at Marble Arch. They were both better looking than their names implied. Charlie was supposed to turn up for this session but when I got home there was a message pinned to the telephone saying he couldn’t make it. I’d laid the money out on the Eumig and the stock and the girls were expecting to be paid. Sod it, I thought, I’ll do this one myself and I did. Fittingly, perhaps, it was the last film that I made.
The film opens with the two girls chatting and listening to records. They get fruity over Cliff Richard and start amusing themselves. When they’ve stripped down and got on the bed I walk in and surprise them and then join in the fun. It wasn’t too difficult using the camera on the tripod but it wasn’t easy giving the girls directions while I was on camera. Still, the film didn’t turn out too bad.
Brenda was wearing a Maidenform bra. This gave me the idea for a better title than The Boyfriend’s Surprise Visit. How about I Dreamt I was Buggered in my Maidenform Bra? A good title but for two things: (1) Ronnie doesn’t have a sense of humour, and (2) there was no buggery in the film. But a good title nonetheless.
‘Very nice, my son! I never knew you had it in you. Very nice indeed. I thought you snap artists just liked watching and not doing anything.’
‘Is it good enough then, Ronnie?’
‘Is it good enough?’
That was my question.
‘Well, Tim, old son, it is like this: things have moved on a bit lately.’
‘What’s moved on?’
‘The old blue film lark.’
‘Moved on? What’s moved on?’
‘There are some lads in town now who can shoot a film in colour.’
In colour? I couldn’t believe it.
‘Where do they get it processed, then?’
‘I don’t ask them a question like that, Tim. That’s their professional secret. They might do it abroad for all I know. The black-and-white market is shrinking a bit. The other thing is that over in Sweden and in Germany they’re making good films. I can buy them by the hundred over there, ship them back, put a hefty mark-up on them. The price comes out dandy. They’re all colour. Some of them even have sound. No hassles this way. Know what I mean?’
‘What about Customs?’
‘What about them? You cost it that one shipment in five is going to be seized. Simple.’
‘So you don’t want the film then?’
‘I’d love to have it, Tim. But I’ve got all this other stuff. Take a tenner, son.’
‘Have the film anyway … I’ve got no use for it.’
‘I’ll take it. I’ll give you a call if we ever order up any prints.’
‘I’ll see you, Ronnie.’
‘Yeah, see you around.’
And as all good things come to an end, my career as a director of blue films was over there and then. I was ill-inclined to pursue it further.
The Profumo Affair creaked on and the eponymous ‘Minister of War’ resigned from Macmillan’s government after he admitted lying to the House of Commons about his relationship with this ‘model’, Christine Keeler (a photographic model? It seems so, according to informed gossip down in Fleet Street). He had originally said there had been no impropriety. Then when it was proven that there had been, away he went. The government was getting shakier by the day. The Labour Party had a field day and lat
ched on to the scandal like a dog to a bone.
I frequently thought about Stephen but I didn’t try and contact him. I figured he preferred it that way. He knew where I was if he needed anything. And then, in the middle of April, late on a Sunday night the bell went and who was it on the doorstep?
‘How are you, Tim? So good to see you,’ declared Stephen.
‘I’m fine. What about you?’
‘I’m fine. Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’
‘But let me ask you something first.’
‘Yeah, what?’
‘The police haven’t been round to see you, have they?’
‘No. What about? They haven’t been here.’
‘About me? About anything?’
‘No police have been here at all.’
‘That’s the truth?’
‘That’s the honest truth, Stephen.’
‘OK, then.’
I ushered Stephen in and followed him up the stairs. He was carrying a medium-sized suitcase. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.
We got into the room and I made him a gin and tonic while he chatted to Veronica.
‘I want you to do me a favour, Tim.’
‘What?’
‘I’m about to be arrested.’
‘Arrested!? What for? What are they arresting you for?’
‘All sorts of nonsense … but they are going to do it.’
‘The police?’
‘Who else?’
‘Christ.’
‘I want you to look after this suitcase for me until the whole business blows over.’
‘Sure, yeah. What’s in it?’
‘Personal things. I need to leave it somewhere safe.’
‘Leave it here.’
‘Good. Now over the next few weeks, months, you might read some strange things about me in the papers. Don’t believe all you read. Just trust me. There’ve been reasons for different things. When it’s all over I’ll … put you in the picture. But now, just trust me.’
London Blues Page 17