Shirley’s phone call that morning was from the Sydney representative of the London Daily Sketch, asking if she would be available to talk to a reporter from their London office. She would? Then they would book a telephone call to her from London. Shirley thought it was just another routine publicity call to ask her how she was getting on in Australia.
That afternoon the call came through, but instead of the usual cheerful greeting a brisk male voice said, ‘It’s about your baby, we’re going to publish on Monday!’ Shirley was stunned, paralysed with shock, as she listened to this strange man’s voice. ‘You can’t stop us, we’ve got the birth certificate, that’s proof enough.’ He was talking about Sharon, her baby, her little daughter, as if she was some kind of commodity he was putting up for sale.
Shirley’s shock and devastation was not overdone. This was the Fifties, and if a girl of sixteen had a baby she got rid of it by adoption, fast. Never mind if she wanted to keep the baby; usually the family could not bear the social stigma or, as in Shirley’s case this baby had to be supported, so she sent part of her salary home every week. Sullivan had told her three years ago that if the newspapers found out about Sharon it might go against her badly and damage her career. In the popular imagination she was the tigress, the firebrand who tempted men, not the girl who hurried home to put a baby to bed. Brave single mothers were not welcomed by the English, and Australia was even more prudish. The news of an illegitimate child would not go down well here in Sydney.
When Shirley had the call Sullivan was unavailable, he’d said he was going to the cinema. Shirley sat on her bed, overcome with shock. She hadn’t fully recovered from her ordeal in London; she still had nightmares about that night at the Cumberland. Would it never end?
She told Sullivan that she had lain down and closed her eyes. She could only take so much. Her whole being slowed down, and she must have fallen asleep. When she opened her eyes again she felt strangely numb and she didn’t know why. To her surprise it was time to go to the theatre. Shirley said later that the shock had completely eradicated the phone call from her mind. All she knew was that she must go to the theatre.
At the theatre she went on as usual and was into her first song when her memory came back ‘The telephone call! . . . It really hit me like a blow,’ she says. ‘For three years I’d had this secret, now it had ben ripped away from me and there it was. My wickedness would be splashed across a newspaper for everyone to see. I loved my daughter, I was not ashamed at all. But it was the way this was being done to me, so cold, so calculated. Selling my dearest secret for money. I seemed to turn to stone. I could not sing. I don’t know what happened to me. And then someone put an arm around my shoulders and led me away to my dressing room.’
Sullivan had heard enough. He took over, he knew exactly what to do, they’d still got time. If this little bastard wanted to hurt Shirley, he knew he could find another newspaperman who might be willing to spike the little swine.
Arthur Helliwell, Tony to his friends, had a Sunday column in the high-circulation tabloid, The People. Tony had been with Sullivan that night at Churchill’s nightclub three years ago when they had seen Ben Johnson’s Ballet for the first time and Louise Benjamin had said, ‘I know a singer called Shirley Bassey.’ If the British public read an article slanted in Shirley’s favour – and God knows the kid needed some luck – if the article came out the day before the Daily Sketch exposé, it would help her.
Sullivan put in an urgent call to Tony Helliwell and explained what had happened. Shirley then talked to Tony for three quarters of an hour. She told him the truth about what had happened to her, how much she had wanted her baby, how she had never considered allowing Sharon to be adopted in spite of great pressures. Sharon lived with her sister because her mother worked. If she had her way Sharon would be here in Australia with her. Shirley poured out her worries and her hopes. Tony said he would do his best, and his column on Sunday would be mostly Shirley’s story.
An Australian magazine interviewed Shirley at Sullivan’s instigation and the article was headlined, ‘Give the girl a break.’ In London on Sunday The People’s column scooped the Sketch’s unkind article, but on Monday the Australian radio and local newspapers did make the most of what they considered a juicy scandal. Reading the papers, Shirley grew increasingly anxious about appearing at the Tivoli that evening.
When she burst through those pink and grey folds of the oyster shell what would she find? A half-empty house? Would she smell the hatred and distrust that can rise like a miasma from an audience? Would they boo her? Shirley was very vulnerable, alone on that stage and very frightened.
She emerged through the clouds of chiffon and everyone seemed to be holding their breath, even the orchestra. A brief silence, then someone shouted ‘Keep your chin up, Shirley!’ Another yelled, ‘Good on ya, Shirl!’ The Australian audience knew it took guts to stand there in front of them. Sympathy for the girl suddenly overflowed and the clapping started. The applause grew, there was cheering, and Shirley bowed low to her audience. Then she brushed away her tears and sang.
After the show Shirley went back to her dressing room which, empty at the beginning of the evening, was now filled with flowers. Sullivan had not been at all sure which way the pendulum would swing. An audience cannot be influenced by a newspaper article, even if they’ve bothered to read it; admiration for a performer comes from the heart. Sullivan had kept the flowers hidden. If things went wrong they might be used as a comfort, but this was what they were really meant for – a celebration.
Shirley felt some good had come of this latest ordeal, despite the agony and fear. Her daughter, Sharon, was now hers in front of the world. During the rest of her Australian tour, the people took Shirley to their hearts. When they were in Melbourne and the Queen Mother arrived on a State visit, Sullivan and Shirley were invited to a garden party. Shirley was excited at the prospect; she adored the Royal Family.
By the time they’d been in Australia for six months Sullivan knew it was important to go back to England or they might risk losing the momentum of Shirley’s career there. As an added inducement to leave Australia, he told Shirley that her belated birthday present now had a number plate ‘SB 19’. ‘Two years late,’ declared Shirley, but no girl minds losing a couple of years off her age.
Before they left Shirley developed abdominal pains that would not go away. It was the old trouble of an inflamed appendix and the doctor who was called advised her to stop swimming, whether in hotel pools or the sea, until the pains went away. The three of them, Sullivan, Lily and Shirley were going home via Hawaii and San Francisco.
Unable to swim, Shirley went shopping instead. Honolulu was designed for ardent souvenir hunters like Shirley, and she spent every dollar she had, determined to give her family the best gifts ever – and there was a big Hawaiian doll for Sharon.
Sullivan had warned Shirley about the dollar shortage and overspending and refused to pay Shirley’s hotel bill. How did she think he was going to find the money?
‘I don’t know, you’re my manager. You find it.’
Sullivan lost his temper, Shirley lost her temper and there was a great row. This was not unusual, everyone knew that they quarrelled constantly, but this was a particularly nasty one. Shirley shouted that she didn’t expect him to give her the money, she just wanted to borrow it. ‘Find me the fare to Milwaukee,’ she cried, ‘and I’ll go and stay with my sister Gracie and get out of your way.’
He snapped back that he wasn’t in the States for fun, he’d come to find Shirley some lucrative bookings.
‘You’re supposed to be my manager,’ she shouted at him, ‘and you can’t find me one hundred dollars.’
Shirley telephoned Berry and Sylvia in Reigate and asked them to wire money to her. She returned to London the next day and the Beresford Clarkes met her at the airport. Shirley had learned a lesson she never forgot. She had finally realised that she had to come to grips with her financial affairs and, in the years to come, she
learnt as much about money matters as an accountant. Managements held their breath when she arrived. It wasn’t easy to do Shirley Bassey down on a contract.
She had learned her lesson the hard way. Sullivan afterwards insisted he had left money for her at the hotel, that he had returned to the hotel later to make sure she was all right, and discovered she had not taken his money. Instead she had left him a note. In it she wrote, ‘I hope you are happy with what you have done. May God forgive you because I never shall.’
It is quite likely that she meant those last few words, and probably the relationship between Shirley Bassey and Michael Sullivan began to deteriorate from that day. Berry was sure that Sullivan would never have abandoned her, but now he and Sylvia had a sick, unhappy girl on their hands and the first thing was to get her well. The consultant who was called in to see Shirley agreed that her appendix needed watching and she must rest.
She was in an ideal place to recuperate, a large country house on the top of Reigate Hill that had thirty rooms and acres of land. Shirley fell in love with Sylvia’s white Pekinese dog called Bumble. ‘I wish I had a little dog like this to sit with me in my white Jaguar,’ said Shirley and then mentioned Michael for the first time since her return. ‘And where’s the Jaguar that he promised me?’ Which meant that she was now prepared to overlook the quarrel in San Francisco.
Michael arrived with the press and photographers and a white Jaguar with blue leather upholstery, and a big blue bow. Sylvia had arranged something else. In the driver’s seat sat a little white poodle with a blue satin ribbon around his neck, straight from the Pilgrim’s Rest Kennels on Reigate Hill. As Sylvia said, ‘I’m not sure which Shirley liked best, the Jaguar or the dog.’
Leslie Grade was unimpressed with the press photographs of Shirley and her Jaguar. ‘They’ll be saying Shirley who?’ he said scathingly. ‘She’s been away too long.’ He agreed to send Shirley off on a provincial tour, but she had to climb back to the position she had held before she had gone to Australia.
Getting Shirley lost for a few days was Sullivan’s first publicity ruse. SHIRLEY BASSEY MISSING! NATIONWIDE SEARCH FOR GIRL SINGER. IS SHE STILL ALIVE? Sullivan’s ruse worked. Even the police believed him. The country was alerted to her face on the front page of every newspaper. Then a wily journalist found out that Sullivan had bought a return ticket to Bath, and the ruse turned sour. Sullivan had holed up a disgusted Shirley in a hotel in Bath. She was spending her time watching television while everyone was looking for the missing star. The police nearly locked up Sullivan, and Shirley was able to leave the hotel in time for her first night at the Chiswick Empire. Someone threw an egg at her from the gallery. It missed and Shirley thought it was some nice person throwing her a flower.
Sullivan’s next plan focused on the biggest show business event of the year, one that would be televised and transmitted to every sitting room in the land. It was ‘The Night of a Hundred Stars’, to be staged at the Palladium at midnight in late July. Shirley just had to be up there with Sir Laurence Olivier and all Britain’s biggest stars.
He rang the organiser and gave him a message that could not be ignored. Miss Shirley Bassey is very anxious to help your deserving charity and is prepared to offer her services. But it seems that her name has been overlooked. Can it be that there is some colour prejudice in operation?
Certainly not, came the answer. Sullivan was promised a return telephone call and in a few minutes Shirley was in. Sullivan was jubilant, he knew that Shirley would walk away with the show. She simply gloried in illustrious surroundings, and the more stars that surrounded her, the more she could shine. They both worked very hard, rehearsing without let-up. Shirley would walk down a staircase. The impact of any performer coming down a staircase is always sure-fire. The dress would be beautiful and daring. She would astonish and excite as she sang ‘The Birth of the Blues’.
And that is exactly what happened. There was a great roar of approval and sympathy for this girl, whose private life and reputation had been shredded so unfairly on the front pages of the newspapers. She sang what the papers next day called the most exciting rendition of ‘Birth of the Blues’ ever heard in London. The man with the golden trumpet, Eddie Calvert, joined her, and the two of them stole the show. Shirley brought youth, glamour and, above all, her voice and Eddie Calvert his virtuosity. The audience broke into tumultous applause. Shirley had proved she was inimitable, and unbeatable. After that night, she was in demand as never before.
Johnny Franz of Phillips Records had always believed in her. Now he asked her, and not Michael Sullivan, what she wanted to record, ‘Choose a number for the other side of this record,’ he told her. She knew exactly what she wanted. Les Paul, a musician who had often played for her in the past, had played a number for her on his piano, and she had fallen instantly in love with it. ‘What’s it called?’ asked Johnny Franz.
‘“As I Love You”. It’s wonderful, Johnny. You know it has this middle eight, which is me. I can change key and hit. Then attack! I love it.’
‘You can’t have it,’ Johnny said flatly. ‘It’s against all the rules. You can’t have two ballads on the same disc. You’ve got to give me a beat number.’
Shirley wouldn’t give up. ‘This is me. This is my song. Please Johnny. I’ve always done as you asked, now give me this song.’ She won. Shirley recorded the song and gave it everything she had. Both Johnny Franz and Shirley knew it would be a hit. When it came out that year, 1958, it was top of the charts, then it was top again in March 1959. Shirley loved it. She knew this was a song that suited her voice. At the same time she recorded, ‘Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me.’ It was jazzy and bright, but as far as she was concerned, ‘As I Love You’ was her favourite. The two songs climbed the charts together.
As Shirley had two records right at the top she was asked to sing whichever song she preferred on the most popular music television programme, The Top Twenty Show with Joe Loss and his orchestra. Naturally she chose her favourite, ‘As I Love You’. This song had been her baby from the beginning, she had cosseted it, sung it on all kinds of spots, on radio and television, and accepted fees as low as five pounds just to plug it, just to get it where she knew it deserved to go, to the top of the Hit Parade.
Sullivan, however, wanted her to sing, ‘Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me,’ on the TV show and, without telling her, deliberately sent the wrong music to Joe Loss. Expecting to sing, ‘As I Love You,’ Shirley went to the Top Twenty studio to give her favourite song its final accolade. She was astounded and disappointed when she discovered what Michael had done. She was also furious, and the crack in their relationship widened further. It was, after all, a stupid and arrogant action for Sullivan to have taken. And it was one that Shirley would not forget.
Shirley had now moved into a home of her own, a furnished flat in one of the apartment blocks in Dolphin Square, near the embankment between Chelsea and Victoria. Dolphin Square was quiet and attractive, a popular and fashionable place to live. None of the apartments were particularly large or grand but they were comfortable. It was very central, and the people who lived there often just needed a ‘pied à terre’ in London: members of parliament, businessmen and women, writers, actors. It was a safe place for a woman on her own.
Shirley’s flat was in the same block where she and Bernard Hall had said goodbye the year before when he went off to Monte Carlo. One of Shirley’s favourite features in the Dolphin Square complex was its large swimming pool. Shirley was a good swimmer and she loved the sport.
She was beginning to earn big money now, but both she and Michael knew that as soon as their current agreement expired, the next contract – if there was one – would be very different.
Shirley drove her white Jaguar down to Cardiff to see her mother and Sharon regularly so Annis Abraham was no longer needed to meet her train. However, she often called in at his nightclub before she returned to London, and it was there that she met his two partners, Clive Sharp and Maurice King. They were runni
ng a new discotheque-cum-drinking club in Soho, in which Annis had a share, and Shirley promised to call and see The Showbiz Club soon.
Michael had seen a show, The Folies Bergère, at the Winter Garden in Blackpool and realised that this was the perfect vehicle for Shirley. It had featured a beautiful dark girl who sang and danced. He discussed the idea of renting the sets and props and turning The Folies Bergère into a brand new show in London. It would be retitled Blue Magic, and open at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
All these arrangements were put on hold when Shirley, still doing her variety tour for Leslie Grade, appeared in Birmingham. Michael had stayed in London but Berry was with her and, of course, her little poodle, whom she had named Beaujolais. In the middle of the night Shirley rang Berry to say she was in terrible pain. A doctor was called and gave the usual grumbling appendix diagnosis with assurances that she’d be all right tomorrow. Berry was not convinced, he remembered the sick girl he and Sylvia had met at London Airport. ‘I think she ought to go into hospital, and we find out once and for all what’s really wrong.’ Berry may well have saved Shirley’s life. If he hadn’t intervened it might have been too late. The appendix had ruptured and she had peritonitis. She was found to be seriously ill and needed an emergency operation. After she recovered from the surgery, she needed a long convalescence, so Berry took Shirley and Beaujolais back to Margery Hall and Sylvia in Reigate.
The warmth and kindness of that household was exactly what Shirley needed to help recovery. ‘She loved home cooking,’ remembered Sylvia. ‘Spotted Dick was one of her favourite puddings. She loved the family atmosphere of our home. My old mum and Shirley got on like a house on fire. My sister used to bring her baby and we’d tuck her into Shirley’s bed. She was happier than I’d ever seen her. Sometimes I wondered whether what she was doing was worth all that stress and trouble. She had a great talent, no one could do it like Shirley, it had brought her fame and money but there didn’t seem time for happiness. In the end, I think I decided that she had this overwhelming need to be famous, she had a need to use her voice so she just had to get on with it.’
Shirley Page 15