Shirley

by Burgess, Muriel

  Shirley went in to enquire about the advertisement and came out with a job. ‘You’ll need a black dress,’ the Greek owner told her, ‘and my wife will find you a nice white apron to wear.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’ll look good, kala kala.’ She did look good, and many an office clerk slipped threepence under his plate for her. She picked up an Americanism and referred to her work as ‘slinging hash’. Years later she said, ‘I liked that job and I was very good at slinging hash in Frederick Street.’

  Shirley Bassey’s daughter was born in September 1954 and was christened Sharon. Shirley went back to work at the restaurant and remained there until the following February, leaving baby Sharon in the loving and capable care of her own mother. During the cold winter months, it was a particular pleasure to come home and sit with her mother and cuddle her baby by the warmth of the fire. It seemed to her a hundred times better than touring in a Joe Collins revue, freezing half to death in bleak digs on the sufferance of disdainful landladies who could barely contain their hostility to ‘a crowd of coloureds from God knows where.’

  The glowing coal fire was one of the best things about being home again, even though it meant constantly having to go out with a shovel in the freezing cold to refill the scuttle in the coalhouse. It was a chore which Shirley did gladly in order to spare her mother. She adored her mother. There was always a strong bond between them, and whatever Shirley did was all right with Eliza.

  Three of Shirley’s five sisters lived nearby. The two eldest had left Wales, Gracie to Milwaukee as a GI bride, Ella and her husband to London. The three who were left behind were all married: Iris, Eileen and Marina. Eileen and Marina both had children and Iris was eager to look after Sharon. The sisters often got together for a fireside gossip in their mother’s front room, a simple room with a minimum of furniture. There was a sideboard with a round mirror into whose edges family snapshots were tucked, a table with a chenille cloth, a sofa, a couple of stools and two chairs by the fire.

  Marina, the next youngest after Shirley, was the sister to whom Shirley was closest. They had walked to school together, hand-in-hand, and both had gone off to work at Curran’s factory for three pounds a week. Marina was also the one who most resembled Shirley and, later on, when her baby sister was famous, people would stop Marina in the streets of Cardiff to ask whether she was Shirley Bassey.

  During this time, Shirley’s sisters found it difficult to understand why her career was on hold. She was the only one with this enormous talent yet, at the age of eighteen, she seemed to have given up on her future. The first offer that came to return to the stage she had initially turned down flat. She had had a telegram from Ben, inviting her to audition in London for the job of girl singer with the Ben Johnson Ballet, who had a two-week booking in March at the Little Theatre in Jersey. She read the telegram and said an emphatic ‘no’.

  Her mother, whose faith in Shirley’s destiny, had remained unshaken, was astonished and bewildered. Had she known how miserable Shirley had been in the Collins revues, how she had hated touring, how she had longed for her mother and the familiar warmth of home, Eliza Mendi would have understood. But, typically, Shirley had never confessed to her unhappiness, and her mother was shocked at her refusal. ‘If you don’t go to an audition how will one of these agents ever see you?’ she asked. ‘You need an agent.’

  Shirley could have set her mother straight regarding the intentions of most agents. They were usually only interested in their percentage, but it would be a waste of time explaining this to Eliza, whose knowledge of the hard facts about show business could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. Instead, she detailed the expense that would be involved in going down to London – and, what about Sharon? How could she leave her?

  ‘Go!’ was her mother’s urgent response. ‘I’ll look after the baby.’ And so she went. Not because she wanted to, but to please her mother. For her own part, she had decided she was thoroughly disillusioned with show business. At the great age of eighteen, with only two third-rate tours behind her, she thought she knew it all: the big talk, the big build-up, the big let-down. As far as she was concerned, she was back where she started and she would rather have stayed at home with Sharon and put the theatre behind her.

  Or so she thought.

  4

  A PROMISE OF FAME

  ST VALENTINE’S DAY, 14 February, 1955, turned out to be a significant date in Shirley Bassey’s life. Over the years several people in the entertainment industry have made the comment that if Michael Sullivan hadn’t discovered her, somebody else inevitably would have done, but it is undeniable that theirs was a meeting of an unusual man and an unusual girl on that day. He had rare vision, she had great talent.

  Michael Sullivan was an agent whose bread and butter was the booking of acts for the variety circuit. Fine-featured and good-looking, he had the cultivated speaking voice of a West End actor that impressed the managers of variety theatres. He’d built up his own theatrical agency, controlling the bookings for many venues, and had seventy-two acts on his books, but the agency was rapidly going down the drain thanks to the advent of television.

  In early February, he’d had a call from a theatre-owning client in Jersey who was looking for a two-week ballet season for March. As the man had put it, ‘Something sexy, you know the kind of thing. Pretty girls with long legs and a good-looking man or two to dance with them.’ So Sullivan had done a quick tour of the West End nightclubs and had found exactly what he was looking for at Churchill’s: a group of experienced coloured dancers whose men were dark and handsome and the women pale-complexioned and beautiful.

  He went backstage after the show to find that the company was available and eager to take the Jersey booking, and quick to agree with Sullivan that as it was a theatre job, not a nightclub, they could hardly be expected to dance nonstop for two hours. What was needed was a singer to fill in during the scene changes. Did anybody know a girl with a strong voice, he asked.

  It was Louise Benjamin from Shirley’s old touring mates, the Ben Johnson Ballet, who suggested a friend of hers near Cardiff who had a good strong voice, and that was how Shirley was sent a telegram by Ben Johnson which, but for her mother’s insistence, she would have ignored.

  About a week later, Michael Sullivan climbed the two flights of bare wooden stairs, in a rickety building in Great Newport Street, which led to the Max Rivers Rehearsal Rooms, to hold an audition with Shirley. His mind was preoccupied with the kid from Cardiff, as he thought of her – he wasn’t expecting too much, just enough to suit the package and keep the audience occupied during scene changes. All the girl had to do was stand there and sing.

  He opened the door to the rehearsal room to be hit by the familiar odour of sweat from generations of dancers, and the smell of stale cigarettes from the countless butts stubbed out by chain-smoking rehearsal pianists. Sullivan glanced round the room where Pam and Ben Johnson and Louise Benjamin were limbering up at the barre, while pianist Stanley Myers was seated at the upright, waiting to play for the audition.

  A girl dressed in tight black trousers and a shabby yellow sweater sat on the floor, legs outstretched, with the Johnson’s toddler on her lap playing with the chain the girl wore around her neck. This, then, was the ‘kid from Cardiff’. He was aware of her observing him with not overly friendly dark eyes; she, with the cynicism of a world-weary eighteen-year-old, was taking in the smart suit, the immaculate white shirt, the fashionable tie of the smart London operator.

  The agent crossed over to her and, holding out his hand, introduced himself. ‘I’m Michael Sullivan’. She shifted the child on to her hip, and returning his gaze without a smile, shook his hand and muttered her name.

  Sullivan wasted no time in small talk, but enquired briskly what she was going to sing. In a husky voice she told him ‘Stormy Weather’. Inwardly, he blanched, convinced that she had chosen badly and that she would never cope with the complicated key changes of the Harold Arlen classic. Did the kid think she was Lena Hom
e? Well, if she could sing in tune, she’d be worth eight pounds a week and her hotel room.

  The beleaguered agent had had a long, hard and none-too-successful day and was longing to relax in the pub with a stiff scotch and a cigarette. He left pianist Stanley Myers to run through the song with the girl while he went out for ten minutes. Shirley joined Myers at the piano, telling herself that it didn’t matter if she didn’t get the job. She’d stay the night with her sister Ella in Islington and go home to Splott in the morning.

  Louise Benjamin remembered that Shirley did not look happy that day in Great Newport Street, and although she tried to cheer her up, saying they’d have a great time in Jersey, she was acutely aware that Shirley was very different from the rest of them. Louise loved everything to do with show business and as long as she had a stage to dance on, she was happy to join in with the company and endure the hardships of touring. Shirley, as she well knew from their time in the Collins revues, would never adjust to that life. As Louise saw it, ‘Shirley knew she was going to be a star. She didn’t need or want the camaraderie of showbiz.’

  Taking a breather in the pub next door Michael Sullivan, who always chain-smoked when he was worried, lit another cigarette and reflected on his present difficulties. Variety shows, his mainstay, were already playing to half-empty houses and it was obvious to him that, as TV encroached further, half the provincial theatres would have to close. After all, people could now enjoy variety shows on the box in the comfort of their homes without paying the price of admission. One Hippodrome had already gone bust, owing him two thousand pounds, and despite the seventy-two acts he had painstakingly built up, he was broke.

  Sullivan needed to find a star, and he needed it badly. Like all agents, he dreamed the impossible dream of discovering an unknown talent whom he could nurture and who would make them both a fortune. He was thirty-five and so far this million-dollar ticket had not turned up. Oh well, for the moment he’d better deal with the kid from Cardiff and pray to God she had enough competence to solve his immediate problem . . .

  Back in the rehearsal room, he took a good look at the girl who was running through her paces with Stanley Myers. As soon as she saw him, she moved to a position behind the piano almost as if she were trying to hide, but not before the agent noticed that she’d got a good figure, and good legs under those dusty trousers. Still, she wasn’t a patch on her friend Louise, whom Sullivan considered a knock-out beauty.

  By now Shirley, cowering behind the upright, looked patently frightened as if she were about to face the executioner. Making an effort to put her at her ease, Sullivan said, ‘Just try your best, that’s all we need’ and gave Myers the go ahead to begin.

  The opening bars sounded on the piano and the girl opened her mouth: ‘Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, Stormy weather . . .’ The voice was in tune. Well, that was something. And it was strong. ‘Since my man and I ain’t together, Keeps rainin’ all the ti–ime . . .’ Wait a minute, forget strong. This voice was unusually powerful. It soared, it grabbed a high note and held it, flawlessly changing key. Then it unleashed a storm of sound, passionate and exultant. It was quite extraordinary.

  Michael Sullivan was suddenly scared of what he was hearing. Out of the blue he had a vision of a great orchestra playing. He could hear the strings, the brass, the drums in his head, and reaching above it all, the rich and thrilling sound of this girl’s voice. He shivered, and shook himself back to reality, wondering if he was going a little crazy. He had never heard a voice in audition that affected him so powerfully.

  Shirley followed ‘Stormy Weather’ with ‘Jezebel’. No, he hadn’t been imagining it, she sang the notes high, clear and true. Sullivan glanced round the room expecting to see the others sharing his reaction, but other than some vaguely encouraging glances from Ben, Louise and Pam, and a smile from Stanley Myers nothing happened. Pam fastened her little girl into a baby chair, and the three dancers returned to their exercises.

  Sullivan was bemused and disappointed, but came down to earth as he realised that these Johnson ballet people had toured with Shirley, had heard her sing hundreds of times over and took it for granted. He hurried over to the singer, bursting with excitement but reminding himself to play it cool. He congratulated Shirley on having a good voice and told her the job was hers, then went over to Myers and said ‘Great voice.’ Stanley was one of the best musicians in London, and if anyone could judge the girl’s potential, it was he.

  ‘Yes. Good for a beginner, but needs a lot of work.’

  Before the group repaired to the pub, Sullivan drew Shirley aside and told her he was certain he could help her with her career. She appeared strangely unresponsive and he later remembered saying to her, ‘You act as if this doesn’t mean a lot to you. Don’t you want the job? Don’t you want me to take you on?’

  ‘You might change your mind,’ she replied.

  ‘What if I say that I’ll fly out to Jersey for your first night?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What if I say that I’ll pay you a salary while I teach you all the things you have to know?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like appearing on television, making a record, doing a top-notch variety tour with second billing.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ But Shirley was no longer unresponsive. Her large dark eyes were alert and sparkling, and Sullivan saw what beautiful teeth she had when she allowed herself to smile.

  Later that night, walking down Shaftesbury Avenue towards the Mapleton Hotel, where he and his wife lived, his head was full of the sound of Shirley Bassey singing ‘Stormy Weather’. Somebody had once told him that there were 674 theatrical agents in Britain and all but four of them were Jewish. Sullivan was a Roman Catholic and he’d certainly had to work hard to be one of those four. And now his dream was going to come true. Certain that he wasn’t making a mistake or going out of his mind, he resolved that he would make Shirley Bassey into a star, no matter what it took. The first thing it would take was money, and, at that moment, he didn’t have so much as the return fare to Jersey.

  Looking back on this eventful day much later, Shirley Bassey said, ‘I wasn’t sorry when I had to leave Hot from Harlem and I wasn’t sorry when I went to work in the Greek restaurant, but I was very sorry when I had to leave little Sharon and go to London for that audition. She was only six months old. I hated leaving her. When I got to London I spent all my money on phone calls to my sister to see if the baby was all right.’

  Shirley’s mother had held a conference with her daughters as to what they would do if Shirley got the job in Jersey. Her elder sister Iris loved the baby. It was decided that she and her husband, Bill, would take care of Sharon in Shirley’s absence.

  The decision was not an easy one for Shirley to take. She was worried that her sister might grow too close to the baby and not want to part with her. She was a lovely baby, and a good one. Shirley had named her Sharon in memory of her father’s pet name for her, when as a baby herself, she had been his ‘Sharon’, the pet name of the Queen of Sheba. Shirley had settled in well to her new role as mother and breadwinner and, although she was on her feet all day in the Frederick Street restaurant, when she got home, her fatigue vanished.

  Fame, it had seemed, was no longer the spur to Shirley’s desires. The sleazy experience of touring with the chorus line of Bay Girls, who seemed to have little function other than to arouse and titillate male audiences with their ‘exotic’ sex appeal, had tarnished her dreams of show business. Now here she was again, about to join a show because she had auditioned only to please her mother.

  This time, however, things just might be different She had met someone who appeared to be part of the ‘real’ entertainment business, an experienced agent who told her that she had a great voice and a real future, and seemed to mean it. He wasn’t just a flash guy with a big car and the line that went, ‘I’m worth a lot of money. I know someone who owns a nightclub in Soho and if I tell him to give you a job, he wi
ll.’ This genuinely looked as though it might be the breakthrough, but Shirley had suffered so much disappointment so quickly that even now, in the midst of her excitement, she tried to protect herself, telling herself it would probably fizzle out as it had always done.

  The morning after the audition, Michael Sullivan set about the business of turning Shirley Bassey into a star. It was going to be a long haul, and the first thing he needed was some ready cash. This he hoped to get from his friend and occasional business partner, Leonard Beresford Clarke, who lived in Reigate.

  Berry, as he was called, was an accountant by profession, but was also completely stagestruck. During the wartime Blitz, Berry had worked in the Fire Service. One of his mates had owned a circus before the war and kept Berry enthralled with tales of circus life. The upshot was that Berry joined forces with his mate in running the circus after the war, and found it thrilling to be involved with ‘the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd’.

  Michael Sullivan, then a youngster of sixteen, joined the circus for a time and met Berry there. Sullivan was bursting with ambition to become an agent, and was full of ideas. In the years that followed, when Michael came up with a good proposition, Berry would finance it. Shirley Bassey was now the proposition that Michael would have to ‘sell’ to him.

  Berry was honeymooning in Guernsey with his new bride, Sylvia, who was starring as Dick Whittington on ice at the local theatre there. Sullivan had produced and directed the show, and every chorus girl on ice had come to detest him. Sylvia, who admired his skill, nonetheless admitted that he was a very hard taskmaster, something Shirley would come to learn for herself Meanwhile, Sullivan organised his trip to Jersey for Shirley’s first night, planning to go on to Guernsey and sweet-talk Berry – always provided that his ‘discovery’ was as good as he anticipated.

  While he made his plans, the Ben Johnson Ballet – Ben, Pam, Louise, Cynthia from London and the American, Elroy – plus their four musicians and their girl singer, arrived in Jersey. To Shirley’s surprise and delight, they were driven to a decent hotel in St Helier, where there would be three proper meals a day and no cooking in the landlady’s bathroom. She still, however, had to share a room, but she and Louise, both Tiger Bay girls, got along well enough.