Shirley

by Burgess, Muriel

  The background music ends, and Ross Parker slips into his seat at the piano. The orchestra plays an introduction and, floating across the heavily perfumed atmosphere, a disembodied voice announces, ‘Miss Shirley Bassey’.

  A slim dark girl in a dramatic white dress appears in the spotlight. She is very young. Her face still has the rounded contours of youth, but her expression is intriguing – half innocent, half knowing. This girl knows exactly what she is doing; she has been trained to give the illusion of sophistication. She raises a long, slender arm, displays a hand with long and graceful tapering fingers, and then she begins to sing.

  The audience comes to attention. What a voice! By the time she performs her big number, ‘Help Me Burn My Candle’, everyone is held in her thrall. She is wicked, she is saucy; she invites every man in the room to ‘burn our boats together’ and, when she finishes, the room bursts into applause that seems as if it will never end. They don’t want her to go. Eighteen-year-old Shirley Bassey is a sensation.

  In the dressing room afterwards, Ross Parker hugs her, Michael Sullivan hugs her. Michael is ecstatic. He knows that this is a breakthrough, he knows he was right all along. This girl has magic, she can rise to any occasion, and she has a showcase at the Astor where she will be seen and heard by the right people.

  Berry and Sylvia went to see Shirley at the Astor. Years later, Sylvia recalled how she looked around the room at the sophisticated audience of rich middle-aged men and beautiful women, and the glamorous hostesses weaving between the tables, and thought that it was an awful lot for a young girl to cope with. Then Shirley made her entrance and opened her mouth, and was everything Michael Sullivan had always said she would be.

  Sullivan had already calculated his next move. He had learnt that Ross Parker was one of Jack Hylton’s favourite songwriters, and that the two men liked each other. Jack Hylton was a very big name indeed, famous for his West End musical shows, and Ross had promised Michael an introduction next time Hylton came into the club.

  Jack Hylton had been famous for a long time. During the Thirties he had beguiled the younger set with his own band which played on the radio. Then, during World War II, his music had given heart while the bombs were falling. He belonged to the big band era, when world-famous musicians such as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller were at the height of their popularity, and Hylton’s music was transmitted constantly on the BBC. Shirley had more than probably sung along with his band as she packed her saucepans in Tiger Bay.

  Hylton, a shrewd Yorkshireman, had got out of the big band business and become an impresario, producer and theatre owner. He had bought the Victoria Palace and the Adelphi in the Strand, and had a lease on the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, all of which were used mainly for musicals, family entertainment and comedy. Some of the Hylton shows were homespun, but he also presented big, glossy American musicals.

  One evening, Jack Hylton arrived at the Astor, accompanied by the French comedian and cabaret producer Robert Dhery. Ross, as promised, introduced Michael Sullivan to the short, middle-aged, bespectacled Hylton, who still spoke with a pronounced Yorkshire accent. The two men talked about TV, in particular the nightly show that Hylton had arranged to stage for Associated Television. Then Shirley made her entrance.

  After the tumultuous applause which always greeted the end of her act, Hylton turned to Sullivan and said, ‘She’s very good, you know. Do you think she could open at the Adelphi tomorrow night?’ Sullivan swallowed hard. This was too much too soon, even for him. ‘I’ve got to find someone to fill a small spot,’ Hylton continued. ‘The girl I’ve got is in hospital with peritonitis, and I think this girl would do. It’s only for two weeks until Tony Hancock can take over.’

  Without pausing to consider any of the negative implications, Sullivan agreed.

  ‘Be at my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and we’ll sort out her songs.’

  Only then did the realisation dawn that Shirley would have to do three shows a night: two performances nightly at the Adelphi Theatre, and her cabaret at the Astor at one o’clock in the morning, but Sullivan refused to allow this to bother him. He knew what this chance offer could lead to – Jack Hylton was in television in a big way, and he had his own nightclub, the Albany, from where his late-night shows were televised. He was a very important man and, through him, Michael could realise his dream of introducing Shirley to an audience of millions through that little box which would soon be in every living room.

  It did finally occur to him that Shirley would have to spend five hours every night at the Adelphi, even though her spot was in the first half. Jack Hylton was a stickler for the whole cast being present for both the opening of the show and the finale. Tomorrow would be a very exhausting day for his star-in-the-making.

  Shirley had a strict rule that nobody should wake her before midday. Her friend Bernard Hall, a dancer who later toured with her as her road manager, recalled how he would go in to her at twelve noon and very gently touch her eyelids until they fluttered open. It was a way of ensuring a happy start to the day, but that was of no concern to Michael on that morning when work preparations had to be made for the Adelphi show. His phone call, nearer eleven than twelve, brought a furious response from Shirley. ‘Eff off; I want to sleep. Go away!’ At that moment she couldn’t care less what Jack Hylton’s demands were.

  Sullivan, already carried away with visions of star-making headlines in the newspapers, knew this chance was too good to lose. He took a deep breath and yelled back, ordering her to get up and get ready; he’d be round to pick her up in ten minutes.

  His biggest problem that morning, however, was to find Ross Parker who had apparently vanished. Without him, there wouldn’t be a new star, because Hylton wanted Shirley to sing ‘Burn My Candle’ in the show, and there were no band parts for the Adelphi orchestra. There were no band parts for any orchestra. At the Astor, the number was sung to piano accompaniment only, and Parker hadn’t got around to scoring it yet.

  Eventually, Ross was tracked down in Brighton, where he had gone to relax for the day. The Adelphi orchestra’s enterprising leader, Billy Ternant, had to copy down the scoring by phone, down which the composer sang it to him. The next problem was the gold lamé sheath dress that Hylton wanted Shirley to wear. It was too big for her and had to be safety-pinned up the back, which meant that she must remember never to turn her back to the audience. The six-fifteen opening of the first show was held back for quarter of an hour to give Shirley and the musicians enough time to rehearse.

  When the pressure was on, Shirley would grow icy calm. No longer did she lose her temper or begin to panic as she would have done not that long ago. It was others who let her down. Comedian Dave King, for example who, though well-primed by Sullivan, forgot Shirley’s name when he introduced her. But it didn’t matter, Shirley overwhelmed the audience with another unforgettable performance.

  Next morning the newspapers lived up to Michael’s hopes and expectations: ‘Shirley the Shy Bombshell . . . From Cardiff’s Dockland to West End Triumph . . . Jack Hylton’s newest discovery.’ That last brought a wry smile from Sullivan. So Jack Hylton had discovered Shirley Bassey, had he? Oh well, you couldn’t win ’em all.

  On the Saturday when Shirley’s two-week run ended at the Adelphi, Michael invited Shirley’s mother and two of her sisters, Ella and Iris, to see the show. Afterwards in the dressing room he opened a bottle of champagne and invited them to witness the signing of Shirley’s new contract with him. Shirley was guaranteed twenty-five pounds a week for the first year and sixty pounds a week for the second year. Thereafter, artist and manager would enter into a fifty-fifty partnership.

  Sullivan’s sights were really set on a contract he hoped to sign with Jack Hylton for Shirley to appear in Hylton’s new show, Such is Life, that would open at the Adelphi in December 1955. A long run in a West End theatre would keep Shirley in the public eye and also save the money needed for travelling on tour. Jack Hylton did agree to sign Shirley,
at sixty-five pounds a week – not a great deal – but Michael was sure he could find her lots of nightclub work.

  That was another of Sullivan’s mistakes. In his determination to make Shirley a star he had been pushing her to the limit for months. He treated her more as an automaton than as a young girl who could get tired and miserable and miss her mother and her baby. A girl who might one day explode through fatigue and resentment.

  Rehearsals started and Shirley was given ‘The Banana Boat Song’, a number made famous by Harry Belafonte. Shirley’s version would be completely different from Belafonte’s calypso, far more sizzling and sexy. Her attractive costume was right for her, dazzling and provocative, yet simple enough in its design to reveal her fresh, youthful qualities. The dress was sleeveless, with a low round neck, and a long white bodice embroidered with a circular motif picked out in sequins. This joined a floor-length skirt, frilled and full, with each frill edged with the same sequin effect. On her head she wore a silk turban, ornamented with high plumes of multi-coloured feathers, leaving only a little of her hair still visible. Among the chorus of girls in white crinolines, lacy pantaloons and frilly bonnets, Shirley looked like an exotic flower.

  When Such is Life opened, Shirley Bassey and her song stole the show. Later, in 1958, when she made a recording of ‘The Banana Boat Song’, it went straight to the top of the charts, out-selling Harry Belafonte’s version.

  The critics adored Shirley. ‘She was all-electric and uninsulated,’ they wrote, ‘this eighteen-year-old from the Cardiff docks has hit rain-washed London like a freak heatwave. This may be a revue for the coach trade, but Miss Bassey is in the limousine class.’

  Shirley’s social life took off. She was invited here, there and everywhere by a horde of interested males. Prior to her new-found popularity, she’d had a kind of steady boyfriend who had taken her to the movies in the afternoons for the past few months – Shirley was crazy about the cinema – then he’d take her home to Olivelli’s and go up to her room for the farewells. He never went to the theatre with her, or took her out after the show. They were fond of each other in a youthful sort of way; Terence, or Pepe, as he was known, was a year younger than Shirley, and the contrast with her former lover, Robert Hartford-Davis, couldn’t have been more pronounced.

  Pepe had a sister named Gloria, who got on well with Shirley, and comfortably off middle-class parents who lived in Bayswater. Had Shirley not become popular so suddenly, or so desirable to other men, their affair might have gradually fizzled out, as these affairs do, but Pepe became violently jealous and the ground was gradually being laid for his own very dramatic and disastrous entry into the world’s headlines.

  The first inkling of what lay ahead came late one night when Pepe lurked in the shadows outside Olivelli’s, waiting to see who brought Shirley home. He watched her say farewell to her escort, and when the taxi drove away he rushed up to her room. There was a lot of shouting and threatening on his part and then he punched her in the face.

  The next evening in her dressing room at the Adelphi Theatre, Michael Sullivan, who had been alerted by Shirley’s dresser, Helen Cooper, marched in. Shirley was sitting at her dressing table, patting make-up over her swollen jaw and cut lip. ‘How did this happen?’ he demanded. She explained what had happened and how Pepe had punched her. She was obviously very frightened and upset. She had never imagined he could be so violent.

  ‘Why did he hit you?’ Sullivan asked.

  ‘I’d stood him up a couple of times, and he threatened to beat me up if I did it again,’ Shirley confessed, before begging Michael to do something about it. She didn’t want Pepe to come near her, and was more than willing that Michael should phone Pepe’s mother and see that she kept her son away.

  Not only did Sullivan telephone the mother of Terence Davies, but he went to Bow Street police station and had a word with a friendly detective who said he would give the boy a confidential word of warning. Sullivan was surprised that Shirley found the time and energy for such a full social life because he was piling on the personal appearances as much as he dared. She was doing TV spots for Jack Hylton at his club, the Albany, and a weekly local radio show. She rather liked opening new stores, especially those that sold dresses because she was always given a sample or two. Michael was eager to get her recording career started as soon as he could, and he always insisted that she make time for a lady journalist’s interview.

  There was real and steady money to be earned by appearing in midnight cabaret at industrial balls, like the Boiler Makers’ Ball at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, where Shirley had said, ‘I don’t think they like me. Did you see the way some of those women glared at me?’

  ‘It’s not you they’re glaring at love, it’s their husbands. They like you too much.’

  January 1956 brought Shirley’s nineteenth birthday and a happy Sullivan, who felt they were at last beginning to make money. They had a guaranteed twelve-month run of Such is Life at the Adelphi, plus Shirley’s late-night club act which should help his bank balance. He signed a contract for her to appear at the Embassy Club every night, and to please Jack Hylton he could always persuade her to squeeze in one more TV appearance on Jack’s show at the Albany Club. ‘It’s a wonderful way to promote you. Everyone in the south of England knows the name Shirley Bassey because of TV.’

  Together, they had rapidly scaled extraordinary heights. From a rehearsal room off Shaftesbury Avenue on St Valentine’s Day in February 1955, to a featured spot in a big West End show and more high-class cabaret work than she could cope with within the space of a year, was quite an achievement.

  Shirley, however, felt very differently about her place in Sullivan’s scheme. She hated having to wait around every night until the end of the show to appear at the grande finale. She would then have to rush off to the Embassy nightclub, every time giving her best for the audience. It was a killing pace. She missed her friend Pepe, who had been someone to turn to, someone her own age. Everyone around her in this business was so much older than her. Life in the spotlight was proving an exhausting affair, and a lonely one.

  Each and every person who ever worked for Jack Hylton hated his rule that all the cast must appear in the opening and the grande finale of his shows. Jack had a nasty little habit of arriving unexpectedly to sit in his box for the grande finale and count the smiling faces on the stage. He could immediately see which chorus boy had raced off to catch his train to Brighton, or whether Shirley Bassey was late again.

  The finale of this particular show was very noisy and colourful. It was set on a Mississippi Showboat, and Al Read, the star, absolutely loved it. He was togged up in an immaculate white dress suit and large white top hat decorated with the Stars and Stripes. The girls in the cast wore white crinolines and bonnets and the men were in satin coats and striped white trousers. Shirley was told to stay in her ‘Banana Boat Song’ Creole costume, and because everyone was ordered to wear a tall minstrel hat, she wore hers on top of her turban. The idea was that every member of the cast would come running down the stairs and wave an ecstatic farewell to the audience. Shirley, who sang her heart out twice nightly, was forced to sit twiddling her thumbs in her dressing room and wait for that moment.

  On one particular night, Michael arranged for Shirley to appear on one of Jack Hylton’s TV shows at the Albany Club, which would take place straight after the finale at the Adelphi. She’d then have to do her stint at the Embassy Club. He’d ordered a taxi to wait for them outside the stage door and whisk them from venue to venue.

  Shirley was fuming with anger as she hurried backstage for the finale. It wasn’t as if she was making a fortune doing all this, she was getting a paltry twenty-five pounds a week and just a little extra for the club appearances. She arrived at the position where the stage manager lined up the company for the finale.

  ‘Bassey, you’re late again,’ he shouted. ‘So bloody what?’ shouted Shirley back, and in moments they were going for each other, shouting every name they could t
hink of. Shirley was the clear winner in the insults department and, after one particular taunt, the stage manager shouted, ‘You can’t say that to me,’ and promptly smacked Shirley’s face. She immediately gave him a hefty wallop back.

  She was distressed when she arrived back in her dressing room, after the finale. ‘He hit me,’ she wailed. ‘Just because I was late.’

  ‘Did you hit him back?’ asked Sullivan, knowing all about the Shirley of old who had learned how to pack a punch in Tiger Bay.

  Shirley threw her turban and minstrel hat into the corner of the dressing room and burst into tears while Sullivan, who knew that an offended stage manager could seriously damage any girl’s career, went in search of the injured man. He brought him back and negotiated a peace settlement. Shirley said she was sorry, he said he was sorry, they shook hands and that was that. The taxi was ticking away outside the stage door, and Sullivan asked the dresser to help Shirley change into her evening gown for the Albany. ‘I can’t go, I’m ill,’ cried Shirley. ‘I want to go home.’

  As Michael moved towards her, she threw a jar of cold cream at him and then had hysterics. ‘What do I do?’ he asked the dresser.

  ‘Calm her down,’ she said. Michael again made a move towards Shirley, who screamed even louder, throwing at him everything she could find. He shouted that she was billed to appear on television and, by God, she was going to appear on television. His hand rose and he realised he had slapped her face. Immediately he felt guilty. The theatre manager came in to see what the ruckus was all about, and it was he who finally managed to quieten Shirley down. The dresser helped her change and, whispering words of comfort, led her to the waiting taxi.

  Shirley sat beside Michael whimpering softly like a child recovering from a tantrum. Then the taxi drew up outside the Albany Club and Shirley realised she wasn’t being taken home after all. ‘You’ve conned me,’ she shouted, in a fury all over again. Sullivan bundled her out of the taxi and into the club, where she started to yell for help. By now frantic, Michael bundled the struggling, protesting young woman into the ladies’ room and kept her there, causing consternation with his presence, let alone Shirley’s tantrum.