1971: Golden year for music?

A new tome on the key albums of 1971 should be worth investigating - as long as it is not as heavy as that recent book on 1966 (which I reviewed a while back). The author here, music jounalist David Hepworth, makes a good case for 1971 being a golden year, and looking at the key albums of that year I tend to agree - I was 25 then and deeply into music as vinyl record albums were entering their golden period.

Music fans of course will have their own golden period (that 1964-67 period was terrific for me too) - that time of their first immersion into pop culture, for younger people it may be the punk or disco years of the late 70s, but that singer-songwriter was at its peak in the early '70s as music by black artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Sly Stone evolved and caught the changing times. Led Zeppelin and The Who also released some of their best work - the Zepps were not for me, but I loved The Who's WHO'S NEXT - and of course The Doors L A WOMAN (having seen them at that all-nighter in 1968, as mentioned before) then there were The Rolling Stones ... and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton did some great stuff too and Rod and Elton were at their early best. Joni and Carole dominated the year too with their enduring albums - Carole is even doing TAPESTRY in full at a concert in London's Hyde Park this July, 45 years after recording the album ...

How about this lot all from 1971:  A golden year indeed! I had them all at the time .... and a lot still now. One could say in 1971 rock was still inventing itself, we did not realise how lucky we were to be living through it at the ideal age - but we do now. Of course the next year 1972 brought us Stevie Wonder's TALKING BOOK and seeing and meeting Joni again - see label - and '73 ushered in Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON as the long-playing vinyl album took over the world - see Music-1 label. 

• Marvin Gaye – Whats Going On
• Sly & Family Stone – There’s A Riot Going On
• Carole King – Tapestry
• Joni Mitchell – Blue
• James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim
• David Bowie – Hunky Dory
• Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
• Doors – LA Woman
• John Lennon – Imagine
• Janis Joplin – Pearl
• Carly Simon - First album 
• Elton John – Madman Across The Water
• Rod Stewart – Every Picture Tells A Story
• Cat Stevens – Teaser and the  Firecat
• Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson
• Traffic – Low Spark of High Heel Boys
• Jeff Beck – Rough and Ready
• Van Morrison – Tupelo Honey
• Led Zeppelin IV
• Who – Who’s Next
• Emerson Lake & Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition
• The Band – Cahoots
• Barbra Streisand – Stoney End, Barbara Joan Streisand

Top 60 female singer/songwriters ....

Our "Daily Telegraph" compiled a list of the top 60 (that many?) female singer/songwriters and I was pleased to see Joni Mitchell came out on top ....

1: Joni Mitchell. Canadian Roberta Joan Anderson (aka Joni Mitchell) began her career busking in Toronto but went on to become one of the leading figures in folk music in the Sixties and Seventies. For her pure vocals and thoughtful lyrics, which range from socially conscious to deeply confessional, Mitchell is seen as one of the voices of her generation. Her 1971 album BLUE often ranks well on lists of the greatest albums of all time.

The others? In order from Nr 2 onwards:

Kate Bush / Patti Smith / Dolly Parton / Carole King / Kirsty MacColl / Chrissie Hynde / Nina Simone / Adele / Amy Winehouse / Bjork / Janis Joplin / Madonna / 

14: Peggy Lee. Arguably America's first female singer-songwriter, Peggy Lee entered the public consciousness at a time when it was highly unusual for commercial singers to write their own material. Born into a poor North Dakota family in 1920, Lee began her career at a local radio station, where she sang in exchange for food. She would collaborate on original songs with Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones, but is best known for her equally inventive cover-versions. Lee heavily rewrote Little Willie John's hit song, Fever; her lyrics are now more famous than those of the original. Lee later wrote the co-songs for Disney's The Lady and the Tramp. With her blonde hair and outspoken manner, "Miss Peggy" was reportedly the inspiration for The Muppet Show's Miss Piggy.

Stevie Nicks / Taylor Swift / Sandy Denny / Lady Gaga / Barbra Streisand / P J Harvey / Edith Piaf /

22: Joan Armatrading. Born in Saint Kitts in the Caribbean, 64-year-old guitarist and singer Joan Armatrading moved to Birmingham with her family when she was three. She left school at 15 and was sacked from her first job at a tool manufacture for playing her guitar during tea breaks. Armatrading released her first album in 1972, and went on to have hits in the Seventies by blending jazz and folk, and in the Eighties with a more commercial pop sound. She won an Ivor Novello Award for her songwriting in 1996.

Joan Baez / Billie Holliday / Rickie Lee Jones / Loretta Lynn / Debbie Harry / Sinead O'Connor / Kate and Anna McGarrigle / Cyndi Lauper / Carly Simon / Lauryn Hill / 

33: Aretha Franklin. Soul legend Aretha Franklin began her musical career as a gospel singer in church, and was later taken on tour by her preacher father. The Tennessee native became a star in the Sixties singing jazz and Motown standards. Her 1967 re-working of Otis Redding's Respect - which was adopted as an anthem for change by the civil rights movement - gave her a number one in the US in 1967, and she followed this with further hit singles Chain of Fools and Say A Little Prayer. In the Seventies, Franklin began to write more of her own songs, including Call Me and Rock Steady. The 70-year-old became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Patty Griffin / Lucinda Williams / Tori Amos / Siouxsie Sioux / Tracy Chapman / Regina Spektor / Erykah Badu / Bonnie Raitt / K D Lang /Gillian Welch / Emmylou Harris /  

45: Sade. British-Nigerian singer Helen Folasade Adu is better known as Sade, the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning soul, jazz and R&B band of the same name. As the group's chief songwriter, Adu was the driving force behind hit singles Your Love is King and Smooth Operator. The band have sold over 110 million albums worldwide, making Adu one of the most successful British female musicians ever. In 2002, she received an OBE for services to music and dedicated it to "all black women in England".

Roberta Flack / Gretchen Peters / Alicia Keys / Aimee Mann / Dar Williams / Laura Marling / Shania Twain / Ani Difranco / Odetta / Cat Power / Norah Jones / Judee Sill / Beth Orton / KD Tunstall / Sarah McLachlan.

Phew! I know and like most of these of course - ok, there are a few I am not familiar with - but it almost seems a list of 60 female singers, but of course Peggy Lee wrote a lot of songs, and singers like Barbra and Aretha have song-writing credits too.  The only omissions I can think of are Laura Nyro, Janis Ian and Francoise Hardy. Has Annie Lennox written songs? 

The full list can be explored here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/the-60-greatest-female-singer-songwriters-of-all-time/joni-mitchell/

A new Funny Girl ...

50 years after the original 1964 Broadway (and London in 1966) production of FUNNY GIRL, there is finally a new major production. It is currently rehearsing at the London Menier Chocolate Factory, a nice small theatre with cafe and bar (I was there earlier this year for Sondheim's ASSASSINS), so I wondered how they could stage this show with those big production numbers. Well it seems they are not ....

Funny Girl in 1966

In fact it may not be the same show at all. I have to declare an interest here - I saw the Broadway version when it played several months in London at the Prince Charles Theatre in 1966. I was 20 and somehow we got front row seats, and the young Streisand was the talk of the town.  It was the first big show I saw on stage and I was a total Streisand nut then ..... Michael Craig was her Nicky Arnstein (left, with Streisand). 
There have been other out of town productions since but no major London production, as presumably Streisand had made the part of Fanny Brice so much her own, particularly after the success of the William Wyler film in 1968. (We will kindly overlook FUNNY LADY).

So now we have a new FUNNY GIRL heading into town, it is already sold out at the Menier, but is transferring to The Savoy next April - where that current revival of GYPSY is still playing until later this month - Imelda will need a holiday after that! Sheridan Smith is the new Fanny - we like Sheridan a lot, one of our National Treasures in waiting, she played the young Cilla Black to great acclaim on television this year and has been in lots of successful series since she began as Antony's vegetarian girlfriend in THE ROYLE FAMILY and her hilarious Brandy in BENIDORM. She was a knockout on stage in Terence Rattigan's FLARE PATH a few years ago, and I also saw her in LEGALLY BLONDE - and she has also played (a younger than usual) HEDDA GABLER and Shakespeare's Tatiana on stage - but can she be Fanny Brice?

Fanny was an odd-looking Jewish woman, and one could say young Barbra also was though she re-defined beauty with her amazing looks. Sheridan is British, blonde and beautiful. Darius Campbell should be a good foil as her Nicky. It seems though the show is being overhauled for the new generation - it is 50 years later after all. Isobel Lennart's book has been revised by actor and writer Harvey Fierstein who has said "It had stuff in it that wasn't necessary any more for a modern audience". He has cut 40 pages from the script, a couple of songs have been dropped and others used. (I hope they still keep Barbra's final number "The Music That Makes Me Dance" which was electrifying on the stage, but was replaced with "My Man" for the film). It seems, according to The Daily Mail, that the new show will focus on Fanny and Nicky's troubled marriage, at the expense of Fanny's career - so there are no Ziegfield Follies numbers or showgirls. 

Fierstein says he has re-shaped the show so its all seen through Brice's eyes. "Its not Ziegfield Follies with 500ft staircases and 60 girls in white ostrich feathers. Hopefully, we can find the human being in the legend.". 
The Menier and The Savoy in a joint statement says: “It's enormously exciting to be bringing this legendary musical back to the West End for the first time since 1966, in a brand new production starring the incredible Sheridan Smith. We are also thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the hugely gifted, multi-award winning Broadway director Michael Mayer.”
Can a great musical be stripped down and made over for a new generation fifty years later? Well, we will see.

By Royal command ...

I have written about those Royal Film Performances here before, but here's a recap for those who missed them. The British Royal Film Performance was a big event each year during those key 1950s and 1960s years, when an usually important film was chosen for the Royals to see at the Odeon in Leicester Square in London, when a motley round-up of players were lined up to meet the Queen. Everyone it seems turned up ...

I was fascinated by this photo of Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress at some mid-60s event, and sure enough it was at the 1966 Royal Film Perf. , the girls seem engrossed in their fashions and dig those long white gloves - in 1966. It seems the gloves were de rigeur. The film that year was BORN FREE and also present were Warren Beatty with consort Leslie Caron - maybe this was where Warren and Julie first met? - plus Dirk and Deborah, Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, and Raquel Welch and Woody Allen, James Fox and the stars of the film Virgina McKenna and Bill Travers. They also had to do rehearsals that afternoon ....  before the Royal party arrived. These events were covered by the newsreels of the time and the snippets make fascinating viewing now, a glimpse into a long gone movie world.

A decade earlier the 1956 one was the famous one when Marilyn was presented to Her Majesty - but also in the lineup was the young Brigitte Bardot and Anita Ekberg.... while the 1957 Royal film was LES GIRLS but its star Kay Kendall was detained in America, but here we have Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield (along with Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, William Holden etc.) presumably before their famous encounter at Romanoffs in Hollywood in April that year.

The 1954 junket for the London premiere of A STAR IS BORN is fascinating too with Olivier as master of ceremonies, and Kay Kendall makes it to this one, as does Diana Dors and the Attenboroughs who like Kenny More and Jack Hawkins must have been regulars at these events, This is 14 minutes but worth watching - how movies where marketed and shown then ...

Another odd line-up is this 1970s one (FUNNY LADY?) where Barbra Streisand (with James Caan) broke with convention when being presented to the Queen asked why they had to wear the long gloves. Lee Remick and James Stewart (reunited from 1959's ANATOMY OF A MURDER are also in the lineup here). 

Dolly

Interesting to see HELLO DOLLY again .... back in 1969 when in my twenties this seemed an elephantine old-fashioned film in that era of trendy counterculture, but we went along to see it all the same, and even had the soundtrack album. We were still on a Streisand high and she certainly delivers here, though of course is far too young for the middle-aged Dolly  Levi, a role ideally suited to Shirley Booth in the film THE MATCHMAKER (Mary Martin, Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey had successes as Dolly too). But hey it was a hit show, and 20th Century Fox certainly made it high wide and handsome. Gene Kelly directs (but not so that you would notice), it does though have some nice moments.

I like the opening number "Just Leave Everything To Me" as Dolly sets off for Yonkers to see her latest client, that well-known unmarried half a millionaire Horace Vandergelder. Streisand is perfect here gowned and hatted by Irene Sharaff (who also did the costumes for that other Fox extravaganza CLEOPATRA). Walter Matthau is ideal as the grouch (of course he and Streisand did not get on at all, putting it mildly), and young Michael Crawford and Danny Lockin (later, murdered by a stalker pickup) are fun as the juveniles Cornelius and Barnaby, Tommy Tune scores too. Barbra is a lot of fun actually as she vamps an guys the material.

"Put On Your Sunday Clothes" is a delicious number too, nicely staged and danced (and with a nod to MEET ME IN ST LOUIS) - then there is the huge parade and that finale at the restaurant with the singing waiters and Louis himself to reprise the title number.   On the downside, it looks too brash, the period detail looks trowelled on, the costumes look too new, the two girls at the hat shop - Irene Malloy and her assistant Minnie Fay - are excruciatingly winsome. It is a fun scene though when Horace comes calling, with the boys in hiding and Dolly on hand to get them dancing ..... 

Not a GREAT musical then, but fun to see now and then.  

Its a wonderful .....

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE, Frank Capra's 1946 life-affirming classic, certainly has a life of its own .... this hardy perennial goes on and on and is now so well known it is regularly spoofed. Last week we had that charity special TEXT SANTA on English television, which included a DOWNTON ABBEY special episode where angel Joanna Lumley shows the earl, Hugh Bonneville, what the estate would be like if he had not existed, as we see his wife Cora now married to George Clooney - who spent an afternoon with the Downton regulars for a highly publicised special. 

Then yesterday a new Michael Buble show had him back in Bedford Falls in black and white with inserts of the Capra film .... its just a guaranteed feel good factor! Barbra Streisand (still plugging her new duets album) and Miss Piggy also graced Buble's latest show with their presence. On another Buble show repeat they even brought back Bing Crosby to sing that song with Michael - chutzpah or what!  Joanna also appeared with Bette Midler on her new tv show as well. On that note, Merry Christmas! 

A classic year: 1975

IMDB 's Classic Film Board has a thread on the best films of 1975. I submitted my 1975 top twenty - I didn't realise it was such a classic year! and of course in that pre-video, pre-internet world we had to see all those films at the cinema (and London still had plentiful arthouse and revival circuit chains) and read the movie magazines to keep up with them ...  I have written about several of these here, as per labels.

THE PASSENGER - Antonioni 

BARRY LYNDON - Kubrick 

LOVE AND DEATH - Woody Allen 

NASHVILLE - Altman

HISTORY OF ADELE H. - Truffaut 

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS - Fassbinder 

SEVEN BEAUTIES - Wertmuller 

DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Lumet 

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR - Pollack 

THE STEPFORD WIVES - Forbes 

THE MAGIC FLUTE - Bergman 

INDIA SONG - Duras 

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES - Akerman 

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - Sharman 

TOMMY - Russell 

ROYAL FLASH - Lester 

SHAMPOO - Ashby 

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Weir 

MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL - Gilliam. 

Dreadful but compulsive (for Lee Remick, Barbra Streisand fans!): HENNESSEY / FUNNY LADY. 

In the IMDB poll on 1975, JAWS topped the list, but THE PASSENGER (PROFESSIONE: REPORTER) made a respectable 7th on the top 20, with BARRY LYNDON in second place, and NASHVILLE third followed by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, and also respectable placings for ADELE H and SEVEN BEAUTIES. 

A fascinating year in the mid-70s then, CHINATOWN was the year before, and the following year 1976 had TAXI DRIVER, OBSESSION and Visconti's L'INNOCENTE to fascinate us, while 1977 and beyond took us into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ANNIE HALL, NEW YORK NEW YORK and the rest ... not a bad decade at all, the 70s are up there with the 50s and 60s - great to have lived through them as cinema changed and developed so much.

1975 was of course also a great year for music - on those vinyl gatefold albums, like this Joni Mitchell favourite: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns".

Other classic years here, as per labels: 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970

Showpeople: miscellaneous photos

Here are some random photos of various people we like ....

A lovely shot of Romy Schneider, and a nice shot I had not seen before of the young Lee Remick (thanks, Colin); Lilli Palmer and Romy in 1958; Sophia, Romy and Alain Delon at that 1962 Cannes Film Festival; Sophia and Ingrid, also 1958, Sophia and Barbra at the FUNNY GIRL opening night in London in 1966 (I saw it during its run then), and Sophia and Robert Redford this year. We are looking forward to Sophia's new book out next month, with perhaps her final word on her life and career ... 

Duets with Barbra and Smokey ...

Frank Sinatra started this trend with his DUETS cd in 1993, which even casual Sinatra fans had to have, it turned out to be the kind of novelty record one played once and then filed away, but it sold enough for Frank to do a second one. Later of course we discovered most of these "duets" were recorded with the singers not even together in the same studio  ...... but it was a trend that kept coming back, no doubt being a marketing ploy to cross-over to new markets as hopefully fans of the singer duetting with you would have to buy your album - before they could download the track they wanted. At least we saw Tony Bennett recording with Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga among others, and could see the genuine respect between them.

Couple of new Duets now - I am just playing SMOKEY & FRIENDS, Smokey Robinson's latest, its a mixed batch of course  Gary Barlow turns "Get Ready" into a cheesy fun missing early Take That hit, while Elton John and James Taylor slow down and do different arrangements to "The Tracks Of My Tears" and "Ain't That Peculiar" - Smokey may have wrote that one, but its the funky Marvin Gaye version that we loved back in the'60s. 

Good to see Smokey back in business and still grooving, and his Tamla-Motown hits getting a new lease of life  ..... I did a post on Marvin Gaye recently (music label), soon: Donny Hathaway, Luther Vandross, Al Green ... 

Barbra Streisand's latest "Duets" venture PARTNERS has had a different reaction though, being it seems mainly bland versions of earlier hits of hers - who needs the umpteenth version of "People" or "Evergreen" or "The Way We Were" with a not very fascinating bunch of guest artists (Michael Buble it seems comes off best) with overwrought and syrupy orchestrations, so I think we will be giving this one a miss (Barbra is very airbrushed on the cover as well). It seems crass too to be duetting with 37-year-dead Elvis now, who needs that?  I was suckered into buying her last one BACK TO BROOKLYN cd & dvd - but have not felt the need to play them yet. That also has the same duet with her son Jason ("How Deep Is The Ocean?"), which she is including again now - couldn't they have recorded something else. But then Barbra keeps selling her back catalogue over and over. This new one is already a best-seller.

As per previous posts I have been a big Streisand fan since her first albums (up to her A STAR IS BORN which I loathed), but really all I need of hers now is that SECOND BARBRA STREISAND ALBUM (I loved "Where's That Rainbow", "Gotta Move" and "Down With Love"), her 1965 PEOPLE album (my best friend Stanley, another Barbra fanatic loved that one), the FUNNY GIRL Original Broadway cast (having seen the show on stage in London, in 1966, when I was 20, as mentioned here before  - I can still picture her singing "The Music That Makes Me Dance" but they used "My Man" in the film), the soundtrack of HELLO DOLLY (which has some amusing dialogue snippets), and her late 60s period STONEY END, BARBARA JOAN STREISAND and WHAT ABOUT TODAY?. Then there's WET and LAZY AFTERNOON and THE WAY WE WERE album (not the movie soundtrack), and I suppose the her first BROADWAY album .... the 40-track Best Of .... is good too, with a lot of the early stuff, and I liked her CLASSICAL album as well. In her seventies now, The Voice may not be what it was, but maybe she needs to do another Broadway collection, as there are lots she has not sung yet. 

Summer reads: Carol, Arthur, John, more Mapp & Lucia ...

Some fabulous summer reads, for dipping into, or greedily reading from cover to cover, as per those new MAPP & LUCIA items!

First a couple of perfect show-business memoirs, and a terrific new biograpy on skating legend, John Curry, a story that resonates very strongly now that athletes and sports people can come out without fear, how different it was then....

AMONG THE PORCUPINES: Carol Matthau was one of those originals I had heard about from various sources (and yes, she was the original for Holly Golightly). How marvellous to find she penned an engaging memoir back in 1992. Copies are still available folks! Carol was one of those people like Lauren Bacall, Dirk Bogarde or Rock Hudson who knew just about everybody. Here is the choice dust-jacket blurb:

A celebrated original in both New York and Hollywood, Carol Matthau (nee Grace) epitomizes a kind of glamour not known today: wife of William Saroyan (twice) and Walter Matthau (still), lifelong friend of Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O'Neill Chaplin; muse and confidante to some of the century's most renowned writers (James Agee, Kenneth Tynan and Truman Capote - who divined his Holly Golightly as they breakfasted together in front of Tiffany's windows). But just beneath the look-no-further glitter lie the unique wit, wisdom and charm forged from private tragedy, privilege and a deep, powerful knowledge of love.

In her inimitable voice - salty, sly, incisive, hilarious - Carol tells the tales of her extraordinary roller-coaster life: from a lonely childhood in Depression-era foster homes to a fairy tale adolescence as a Park Avenue debutante, from terrifying bouts with Saroyan to sweet trysts with Matthau; from the high-society fetes of the Forties to glitzy Hollywood dinner parties to the ultimate social spectacle - the Oscars.

Filled with delicious meditations, anecdotes, and portraits of friends (Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, Maureen Stapleton, Carson McCullers, Richard Avedon, Isak Dinesen and others), this is a tour of the high life on the arm of the original blithe spirit. 

Well yes, today's celebrities have a lot to learn before they are as effortlessly stylish as Carol Matthau. She died in 2003, aged 78 (Walter had died in 2000), but leaves a marvellous story. Her affectionate portraits of Kay and Rex are perfect too and nicely compement the memoirs of Rex and Lilli Palmer. Its the kind of book one does not want to end (like Lilli Palmer's CHANGE LOBSTERS AND DANCE) or Simone Signoret's NOSTALGIA ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE). 

Arthur Laurents (THE WAY WE WERE for which he wrote the screenplay aired on tv here over the weekend) was of course cut from a different cloth. Waspish and difficult he seems to have been disliked by quite a lot. He too wrote a fascinating memoir - I quoted from it in my review of SUMMERTIME (see below). - covering Broadway and Hollywood in the Golden Age, when he was one of the high fliers. Laurents (1918-2011) lived to be 92, his writing credits include Hitch's ROPE (below, right - Hitchcock was intrigued by Laurents' relationship with Farley Granger), ANASTASIA, THE TIME OF THE CUCKOO (the play which SUMMERTIME was based on), a favourite of ours: BONJOUR TRISTESSE, THE WAY WE WERE and THE TURNING POINT and the books for WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY, among others. 

He too was very well connected so I am looking forward to a good read;  he also won numerous awards and directed productions of LE CAGE AUX FOLLES. He knew Barbra Streisand from the start of her career, when she was in I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, before FUNNY GIRL. She rang him shortly before he died, just as he was sitting down to Sunday breakfast, so he told her to call back later - she did, as she was trying to get a new production of GYPSY up and runnng, despite now being too old to play Mama Rose ...

Like Gore Vidal, he was also a prominent gay, having a relationship with Farley Granger in the '40s and '50s, and then a long lasting relationship with an actor, Tom Hatcher. 

Now, ALONE - The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry, by Bill Jones, a handsome new hardback, which just arrived today, I will be starting it right away. Curry seems a forgotten figure now, but in 1976 he skated to Olympic glory and overnight became world famous. He was awarded the OBE and showered with honours. Yet he remained a mystery to the world that had been dazzled by his gifts. 

Curry had changed his sport from marginal curiosity to high art. Men's skating was supposed to be muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this. But with Olympic gold came the revelation of his secret as he informed the world that he was gay. In the extraordinary years which followed, Curry battled to transform skating into a theatrical sensation worthy of Nureyev. At his magnificent peak he brought The Royal Albert Hall and the New York Met to their feet (I saw one of his spectaculars about then with my pal Sally who was besotted about him). But behind his epic struggles lay a tortured, lonely man of labyrinthine complexity (wasn't it ever so?).

It is a story of childhood nightmares, sporting rivalries, homophobia, cold war politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. Here is revealed the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating moved audiences to tears, and who - like many of his closest friends - died of AIDS, aged just 44, in 1994.

This chimes in with my reviews of THE NORMAL HEART and MY NIGHT WITH REG recently (gay interest label) and the fact that more Americans died of AIDS than in Vietnam. Also we realise now that today's actors and sporting stars have it easy when they come out with all the support they get on social media and from the press (Ben Whishaw had a big spread and cover story in last weekend's "Sunday Times", while Tom Daley and Ian Thorpe are the latest sports stars to come out to universal approval). How different it all was in the '70s ... Curry too had a secret relationship with actor Alan Bates (who visited him before he died), which shows how one could keep things under wraps in that pre-internet, pre-cellphone world. 

And now a return to Tilling, and the delightful books about MAPP & LUCIA, by E.F. Benson, and the television series (now on dvd) made in 1982 where Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne are perfection, as indeed are all the cast, as it captures that 1930s dreamworld where well to do people had domestic staff. It was filmed too at Rye, where Benson lived, as per my previous post on them, as the Mapp & Lucia label.  There were six book intially, but there are now four more, written in the style of Benson taking the characters forward through the war years and after. Indeed the latest one, AU RESERVOIR, kills them all off interestingly in old age, so I don't imagine there will be any more. 

LUCIA IN WARTIME and LUCIA TRIUMPHANT by Tim Holt are great reads, but LUCIA ON HOLIDAY and AU RESERVOIR by Guy Fraser-Sampson are simply too much. LUCIA ON HOLIDAY takes us to Italy, Lake Como to be precise, where the Mapp-Flints (thanks to a generous Majarajah) follow Lucia and Georgie to their luxury hotel, and Georgie - now with his opera singer muse Olga Braceley - becomes entranced with his superb, handsome new valet Francesco (who is not what he seems) with his addictive 'turksh' cigarettes. 
Real people are also written in, we get the famous writer and poet Gabriele D'Annunzio here, while AU RESERVOIR writes Noel Coward and John Gielgud into the story as they appear in several chapters, as Mapp tries (in vain of course) to prove that Lucia does not know them. How it is all worked out is simply too delicious for words. Perfect summer reading.

Dusty time again ...

How we listened to music then - a nice shot of Dusty in 1965, used to promote a new biography on her, recycling all the gossip and myths. 

Britain's greatest pop diva, Dusty Springfield was also the finest white soul singer of her era, a performer of remarkable emotional resonance whose body of work spans the decades and their attendant musical transformations with a consistency and purity unmatched by any of her contemporaries (Lulu, Sandie Shaw, even Mariane Faithfull, or dear old Cilla); while remaining a camp icon of glamorous excess in her towering beehive hairdo and panda-eye black mascara.

I have done several items on  Dusty already, as per label - including seeing her record one of her 1969 tv shows for the BBC, when I was 20, at the old Golders Green Hippodrome. She was in a bad mood that day and was having a diva moment, as she had to re-record her first song. I can still picture her stomping around the stage. 

For when you have a spare hour, this compilation  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCcYTv6Evoc&list=RDoCcYTv6Evoc#t=3074

 of her BBC appearances is worth watching, particularly the later ones, and that last sad final one on the Jools Holland Show. I also like her doing "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" with The Pet Shop Boys at the Royal Albert Hall Brits Awards in 1987 see below - the only time they did it apart from the pop video. In their later shows the Boys used a back projection of Dusty for the number. She remains though for me up there with Joni, Barbra and Aretha, and her "Dusty In Memphis" remains an essential album. 

Song writer Gerry Goffin who died recently, is featured on the album too, as four Goffin-King songs are included:  the wonderful "No Easy Way Down" plus "Don't Forget About Me", "So Much Love" and "I Can't Make It Alone". There will always be so much love for Dusty - if only her last years had been better. 

On the road with Barbra ...

THE GUILT TRIP, 2012. My first Seth Rogen movie! Anne Fletcher directs a predictable comedy where Seth sets out on a cross-country trip and takes his mother along. The whole interest here is that mom is Barbra Streisand. I find these kind of comedies dispiriting, particularly when the likes of De Niro or Streisand are involved, its lazy take-the-money-and-run work for veterans who surely don’t need to end up in stuff like this. Seth is apparently funnier in his other roles – but hey, what do I know, he has about 6 movies in pre- and post-production according to IMDb! 

 

Streisand really comes across like Seth’s grand-mother, being about 40 years older than him (rather like Streep being too old for her mom role in MAMMA MIA!). The early dinner scene is amusing with Miriam Margolyes and Kathy Najimy, how could it not be with those two? - but they seem to have no interaction with Streisand .... 

This is a high-concept one-joke "comedy" as we observe mother and son bickering across America as she also traces the man she might have married and realises what might have been was not meant to be. Mom seems oblivious to her son’s needs and that he is now an adult capable of managing without her incessant interfering. The joke wears rather thin but thankfully the film is not too long. 

As a great Streisand admirer back in the 60s and 70s (with all those early albums and who saw FUNNY GIRL on the stage in London in 1966 when I was 20) it seems odd seeing her old lady routine now in material like this. 
Streisand though was so controlling about every aspect of her movies, how come now she does films like this and those Fokker movies surrendering control to others. These sit-com movies are not even worth her while but presumably earn her lots more money as she tries to connect to a younger dumbed-down audience ?

See Streisand label for lots more Barbra ...