Under-rated directors: Clive Donner

Like Desmond Davis (below) Clive Donner (1926-2010) also seems under-rated but directed a clutch of interesting films and tv movies during the 1960s, starting with THE SECRET PLACE, a 1957 Belinda Lee drama I have just got a copy of, and he also helmed Pinter's THE CARETAKER in 1962 with the powerhouse trio of Robert Shaw, Alan Bates and Donald Pleasance. He also did SOME PEOPLE that year, that pleasing film about pre-Beatles teenagers making music in Bristol, with the young David Hemmings.

Two seminal Sixties movies followed: NOTHING BUT THE BEST in 1964 capturing that new London on the rise, and the delirious WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT in 1965 which the 19-year old me and my friends loved and saw several times, with that terrific line up of O'Toole, Sellers, Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, Ursula Andress and more in a madcap Paris, with a Burt Bacharach score (I had to have the soundtrack album) and script by Woody Allen, who also appears - his first film.

We also loved his 1967 Swinging London (though set in Stevenage) comedy HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH with its cast of engaging youngsters led by Barry Evans, and that great Traffic score, and his 19689 historical mini-epic ALFRED THE GREAT, filmed in Ireland and very much of its time as hippie king Alfred (David Hemmings) fights the Danes led by Michael York, and it also features a young Ian McKellen, Colin Blakely and Vivien Merchant. Its one to see again too. Quality television work included Peter O'Toole in ROGUE MALE, and good versions of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL and A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Donner, below, with Hemmings & Blakely.

Quite a few of these I would like to see again- see Donner label for reviews.

10 other British 1960s flicks

We are familiar here at The Projector with the popular British films of the 1960s we grew up on - titles like A TASTE OF HONEY, VICTIM, TERM OF TRIAL, A KIND OF LOVING, THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, THE SERVANT, BILLY LIAR, DARLING,  THE SYSTEM, THE KNACK, NOTHING BUT THE BEST, THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, I WAS HAPPY HERE, MORGAN, SMASHING TIME …. and the very downbeat FOUR IN THE MORNING; that early-mid '60s heyday of Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Losey, Clive Donner, Desmond Davis, Richard Lester and early Michael Winner, plus Basil Dearden. Here though are 10 more, lesser-known, titles which took me a while to track down but proved well worth-while and which we recommend, if you ever come across them. All are reviewed fully at British label ...

• SATURDAY NIGHT OUT - engrossing little 1964 drama about guys and gals on a Saturday night out, it plays out very nicely, young Francesca Annis and LEATHER BOY Colin Campbell leads.
• THE PLEASURE GIRLS - an earlier TAKE THREE GIRLS as we join Francesca Annis Ian McShane and flatmates in their South Ken pad in 1965, along with that gay boy (Tony Tanner) downstairs (who is not ashamed or tragic).
  
• THE LEATHER BOYS - boy marries brassy Rita Tushingham and regrets it and the gay leather scene comes to the fore - in Sidney J Furie's engrossing 1964 drama, with Dudley Sutton. Furie also did the engrossing court trial of THE BOYS in '62. 
• A PLACE TO GO - a snappy Dearden from 1963 about moving those old communities into the new tower blocks, Mike Sarne (aargh!) and Rita Tush again and stalwart Bernard Lee.
• WEST 11 - an early Michael Winner, also '63, Alfred Lynch and Diana Dors among the Notting Hill bedsit people and drifters ...
• THE L-SHAPED ROOM  - Bryan Forbes' study of pregnant French girl (Leslie Caron) in 1962 Notting Hill bedsit land - sympathetic gay and lesbian characters too ....
• TWO LEFT FEET - Roy Baker's early ('63) coming of age saga with young Michael Crawford and David Hemmings to the fore. 
• THE WILD AND THE WILLING. The 1962 university set with youngsters Ian McShane, John Hurt, Samantha Eggar, plus lots of familiar faces.
• THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER - the seedy world of Soho nightclub 'hostesses', a time capsule from 1963, with those early '60s iconic ladies Sylvia Syms and June Ritchie.
  
• BITTER HARVEST - Janet Munro is the naive Welsh girl who goes to the bad in the wild West End of 1963 and ends up another tragedy, with young John Stride. Its hilariously awful but enjoyable. 
• THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE- Anthony Newley shines in Ken Hughes' 1963   drama, as the compere of a seedy strip club tries to stay one step ahead of the bookies to whom he owes money. 

That era of course had some amusing British comedies too:  (see Comedy label):

PLEASE TURN OVER, MAKE MINE MINK, TWICE ROUND THE DAFFODILS, LADIES WHO DO.

The British early '60s and '70s had those crime movies we also covered a while back: 

THE VERY EDGE, VILLAIN, ALL COPPERS ARE, THE SQUEEZE.

And there was a lot of Trash around in the early '70s Brit movies too, as per our previous reports - Trash label. 

DORIAN GRAY; GOODBYE GEMINI; MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY & GIRLY; UNMAN WITTERING & ZIGO; SAY HELLO TO YESTERDAY, BABY LOVE; PERCY; PERCY’S PROGRESS; LOOT, and those grotesquely unfunny CONFESSIONS OF and ADVENTURES OF  bottom-of-the-barrel items.

'70s British cinema & the curious case of Barry Evans

Today we look back at Seventies British cinema - which brings to mind that famous quote from THE GO-BETWEEN: "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". 70s British cinema began quite well with those well-regarded films like SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, THE GO-BETWEEN (an award winner at Cannes) and DON'T LOOK NOW, as directors like Schlesinger, Losey and Roeg were at their peaks; and there were cult hits like THE WICKER MAN (originally sent out on release as supporting feature to DON'T LOOK NOW)..  British television was also good then in the early '70s, with series like COUNTRY MATTERS, WESSEX TALES, the BBC's TAKE THREE GIRLS and the hit ITV series UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS (the DOWNTON ABBEY of the era). 
The UK still only had three television channels (BBC1, ITV and BBC2, Channel 4 did not start until late 1982), video had yet to arrive - I got my first recorder in December 1979, so one either saw things at the time or missed them. BBC had a great series of sitcoms, we loved HI-DE-HI, ARE YOU BEING SERVED? and DAD'S ARMY. ITV sitcoms were generally weaker, and seen as a bit dim or low rent. I have to admit I did not bother with series like those spin-offs like DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, DOCTOR AT LARGE or the later MIND YOUR LANGUAGE which ran from 1977 to 1986, all featuring Barry Evans (1943-1997), today's subject, or those series with Richard O'Sullivan, a spin-off from GEORGE AND MILDRED, though that may be my loss.

HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH 

As the Seventies wore on British cinema still turned out some interesting films, usually featuring Glenda Jackson (probably England's busiest actress then)  with either Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, Michael Caine or Peter Finch - titles like TRIPLE ECHO, STEVIE, RETURN OF THE SOLDIER - she is terrific leading that cast in NASTY HABITS, and there's the dreadful THE INCREDIBLE SARAH - Glenda kept churning them out; I saw her on stage too in THE MAIDS with Susannah, which was also filmed (and in THREE SISTERS at the Royal Court in 1968 - Glenda label).
People still went to the cinema a lot, the 70s was a great decade for European cinema and that new American cinema of Altman, Scorsese, Coppola, De Palma etc The CARRY ONs and Hammer Films were still going too even if getting tattier by the day, soft porn was invading them too ..... which brings me to a double bill I recorded the other day, which was on sometime during the night on one of those cable channels: ADVENTURES OF A TAXI DRIVER and ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE EYE, dating from 1976 and 1977, when the tat really hit the fan.

Now lets go back to 1968, when the two Swinging London films we loved (being in our early 20s at the time) were SMASHING TIME (Rita Tush and Lynn Redgrave come down from the North to wreck havoc in George Melly's delightful script as directed by Desmond Davis - see label) and Clive Donner's HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH set in Stevenage New Town with a great cast of new faces (Barry Evans, Judy Geeson, Adrienne Posta, Angela Scoular) and that Traffic score - it caught the scene perfectly, my pal Stan and I loved it. The brief nudity in it was fresh and engaging too - not cheap and tatty as in those later films.

Smut though was coming to the fore by the early 70s - kinky as in DORIAN GRAY or GOODBYE GEMINI (see Trash, 70s, British labels for more on these) but generally cheap and unfunny as in those CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER and others featuring the charmless chump Robin Askwith (still going now, as in the BENIDORM series which seems to have lost the plot completely). Then there was PERCY in 1971 and those Hywel Bennett films, like the mess they made of Joe Orton's LOOT .... Then there was that spate of '70s British gangster movies (covered here already, British label), like ALL COPPERS ARE, THE SQUEEZE, VILLAIN, SITTING TARGET, HENESSEY etc. and John Wayne (with toupee) taking on the '70s London underworld in the very enjoyable BRANNIGAN.

After MULBERRY BUSH Barry Evans had a small part in Donner's next, the interesting ALFRED THE GREAT in 1969 (David Hemmings and Michael York leading), and he was busy in television including those series mentioned. However in 1976 he starred in a CONFESSIONS OF ... rip-off titled ADVENTURES OF A TAXI DRIVER, which was an interesting view to flick through quickly (one would hardly want to see them in real time) with its follow-up ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE EYE - Barry bailed out of that one, the lead was a charmless nonentity called Christopher Neil. There was even a CONFESSIONS OF A PLUMBER'S MATE, but we were spared that - all directed by one Stanley Long - dare one mention him.

What was so depressing about these apart from they being desperately unfunny was seeing Barry and the MULBERRY BUSH girls (Geeson, Scoular, Posta) re-united a decade later but now given nothing to do apart from situations where their clothes fall off, and seeing the likes of Diana Dors (cheerfully playing the blowsy, harridan mother in both epics), Suzy Kendall, Liz Fraser, Harry H Corbett, Fred Emney, Irene Handl, Ian Lavender, Julian Orchard, Jon Pertwee, Anna Quayle, William Rushton etc roped in and given nothing to do. It may have been the only work going, but they would hardly have earned much for doing a day or two on poverty row productions like these. It must have been a lean time for comedians and young actors when the British cinema - so prolific in the '50s and '60s - was now on its knees and just producing smutty rubbish. At least the guys had to strip off too, as Barry or Chris had to run naked from various ladies' bedrooms as the husband returned ... presumably that had them rolling in the aisles. 

Barry's MIND YOUR LANGUAGE series ran until 1986 and his last credit was in 1993. By then he was a taxi driver in real life, in Melton Mowbray, where he was found dead in 1997, aged 53, in rather mysterious circumstances. 

The circumstances of his early death remain a mystery; He was found dead in his bungalow in Leicestershire, England with bottles of whiskey and aspirins nearby. A youth was charged with his murder, but acquitted on lack of evidence. A local coroner later recorded an open verdict.

There was also some story about him being involved with a rentboy, and having had a blow to his head - maybe by the youth mentioned above. A sorry end to when he was 18 and won a scholarship to train for the stage at the Central School of Speech and Drama. 

Sad how some actors' careers and lives pan out .... some die too young (Stanley Baker), some careers are over before the actor dies (Stephen Boyd, Laurence Harvey), some simply vanish - like the interesting case of Jeremy Spenser (see label), a 1950s actor who was the young prince in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, and in SUMMERTIME, THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE, FERRY TO HONG KONG etc, which shows that acting with Monroe, Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Orson Welles is no guarantee of a long career. As I have said before, most personable actors though if they are fortunate get ten good years and can usually parlay that into smaller roles as they get older: Michael York, Terence Stamp etc. 

Next: a look at those pals Oliver Reed and David Hemmings and how their careers intertwined and changed over the years, as they did ...  

Snapshots of Britain

Kay and Bonar at the DANCE HALL

HOLIDAY CAMP - 1947
DANCE HALL - 1950
PLAY IT COOL - 1962
SOME PEOPLE - 1962

Ken Annakin's HOLIDAY CAMP in 1947 is post-war England in aspic, with working-class families going on holiday to the new holiday camps as the new age of leisure dawned after the war, its almost a historical document of that era. Flora Robson has a great role here as the lonely spinster yearning for her love lost in the war, only to discover he is the holiday camp announcer but is now blind, and happily married and does not remember her. Esma Cannon (later in the CARRY ONs) as her twittery friend fares less well, as she falls prey to Dennis Price's murdering conman. The Huggett family (from the radio) are enjoying themselves, led by father Jack Warner and mum Kathleen Harrison, with daughter Hazel Court, Jimmy Hanley and Diana Dors as well as Patricia Roc also pop up. Below: Mr and Mrs Huggett get used to being on holiday, Dennis Price with murder in mind, and Dame Flora - noble as ever. 

Its an enjoyable time capsule now, as is:

DANCE HALL - Charles Crichton's 1950 portrait of 4 working class girls who work in the local factory and let off steam at the Saturday night dance (the Chiswick Palais). This is a roll-call of ‘50s British showbiz with a very varied cast here: the girls are young Petula Clark, Natasha Perry, Jane Hylton and the rising Diana Dors. Its a fairly grim look at working class life, but lots of fun too. Donald Houston and Bonar Colleano are among the men they attract, Kay Kendall pops in for a minute, as do Eunice Gayson and Dandy Nichols, Sydney Tafler is the dance hall manager and dear old Gladys Henson is Petula's mum who gives her an awfully old-fashioned dress to wear at the dance contest! Dors is great fun as the good-natured blonde with an eye for a hunky fella! Parry is torn between stolid Houston and wide boy Colleano, while Hylton remains a spinster. 
10 years later SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING would be a new male-dominated update on working class life, as the '60s dawned, but this 1950 version is just as pleasing and relevant now. This and HOLIDAY CAMP are as essentially '40s and early '50s British as IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, POOL OF LONDON, THE BLUE LAMP, HUNTED etc. - those movies where the likes of Jack Warner and Jimmy Hanley were bobbies on the beat or dependable guys next door, and Canadian Bonar Colleano (of the circus family, he died in a car crash in 1958, aged 34) was the not to be trusted wide boy or American G.I. in England, and young Bogarde was a spiv with a gun before graduating to war hero roles.

Factory girls

Diana lets rip on the dance floor

PLAY IT COOL. A hopelessly square 1962 British musical showing the pop scene at the time, showcasing pop idol of the time Billy Fury in his movie debut. We liked Billy then, an authentic rocker with a great look and voice (“Halfway to Paradise”) who died too young, aged 43 in 1983. 
He and his jolly gang (Michael Anderson Jr, Keith Hamshere, Jeremy Bulloch, and a very young David Hemmings) are en route to Gatwick Airport when they decide to help out a runaway heiress (don’t laugh, this isn’t the 1930s) – Dennis Price plays her oily father and others roped in include Mr Showbiz: Lionel Blair and his dancers. 

Statue of Billy in Liverpool

There is a twist number, the twist was big at the time – and American Bobby Vee gets to sing, as does Helen Shapiro, the school girl singer of the time (I was an early teen then, and loved her songs). Michael Winner directs and keeps it all moving. This pop scene though, along with the Cliff Richard films (THE YOUNG ONES, SUMMER HOLIDAY) and those earlier Tommy Steele, Frankie Vaughan, Adam Faith ones,  was swept away the next year, when The Beatles exploded in 1963, and 1964’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT showed how to make a pop movie which also captured the moment perfectly.

SOME PEOPLE – more pop from 1962. I remember this one vividly, being 16 at the time. This is a lively look at teenagers in a suburban city – Bristol – with a lead role for Kenneth More as the well-meaning choirmaster with that church hall where the kids can play their instruments. It features the then up and coming Ray Brooks (THE KNACK) and a gormless David Hemmings (4 years before Antonioni made him an icon of the 60s in BLOW-UP), Anneke Wills who wears her jeans in the bath to shrink them, Angela Douglas (who married More). 

David Hemmings, centre

The bored teenagers are only interested in motorbikes and music and are convinced society has no use for them, but are hardly rebels without a cause. Kenny More soon gets them playing – this was all part of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, which features here. The music is catchy though and it all looks nice in colour. Clive Donner – another under-rated 60s director – helms it, he also directed the Hemmings starrer ALFRED THE GREAT in 1969, after his like WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? and THE CARETAKER, and that other look at teenagers in a suburban city HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH in swinging '67. What is interesting here is the contrast between the options for teenagers in 1962 (in pre-Beatles England) and 5 years later, at the start of the hippie and psychedelic era in 1967 in HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH ... it was a different world for them then!

More early '60s British movies:

TWICE ROUND THE DAFFODILS. This 1962 comedy, adapted from a play, is a CARRY ON in all but name, produced by the regular team Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas. Of interest now mainly for that supporting cast of familiar faces. We join 4 patients who arrive at a hospital for tuberculosis patients (they are still allowed to smoke though!) – RAF type Donald Sinden with an eye for the ladies, funny man Lance Percival, boorish Wesh Donald Houston who is in denial and refuses to accept he is ill – one wants to reach for the mute button every time he starts ranting, and young Andrew Ray. Already on the ward are Ronald Lewis and snobby Kenneth Williams whose only visitor is his dowdy sister Joan Sims. Head nurse is Juliet Mills, and others include nurse Jill Ireland, Sheila Hancock as a loyal girlfriend,. Nanette Newman as the glamorous one who has found someone else with a sports car. The patients are getting better when they can walk twice around the daffodil patch … a slight amusement, matinee fodder perhaps, which shows that the 1960s had yet to begin at Pinewood. 

THE VERY EDGE. This long forgotten 1963 thriller has suddenly been re-discovered – the BFI are screening it in April, but thanks to a fellow correspondent here I have got a ‘screener’. It’s a taut thriller (filmed in Ireland), a Raymond Stross production starring his wife Anne Heywood again as the happy housewife, looking after her husband Richard Todd and her ideal early ‘60s home, who is stalked by a deranged stranger – young Jeremy Brett, terrific here. He follows her around the supermarket and attacks her in her home causing her to miscarry her child. Worried policeman Jack Hedley notes the stranger will be back. Our worried couple move home, but its no use. 

Brett soon has her in his power again as she tries to fight back. We end up on the roof as our brave heroine has to outwit him before help arrives. Add in Nicole Maurey as Todd’s super-efficient secretary with a yen for him, as his and his wife’s marriage falls apart and tension is maintained to the very end. A routine thriller perhaps, but certainly watchable now. With Pauline Delaney, Gwen Watford, Maurice Denham, Barbara Mullen and Patrick Magee, and ably directed by journeyman Cyril Frankel.We liked Heywood recently in that revived I WANT WHAT I WANT from 1972 - Heywood label - where she is a transexual ...

Pussycat ! - a summer re-run.

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? from 1965, is a key '60s movie for me,which I just found myself defending over at IMDB, where someone considered it one of the worst movies ever made. As I said: I can quite well accept its one of the worst films ever made but thats part of the attraction, if you were 19 in 1965 (as I was) and saw it at the cinema with your friends and we all laughed ourselves silly and liked the cast, it remains a cherished memory, and the height of mid-60s chic. glamour  and zaniness. 

My pals Stan and Michael and I adored it back in the '60s and returned to it several times in that pre-video world. Stan and I used to quote lines from it to each other ("Miss Lefebvre [Capucine's real name...] your face is like the pale autumn moon" "What did you say?" etc; of course Sellers and Cap were also hilarious in the original PINK PANTHER). O'Toole, Sellers and Woody + the delirious quartet of Romy, Capucine, Paula and Ursula AND Fellini's Edra Gale ! (Ursula dropping in by parachute and saying "Whats that thing?" when she sees Edra in the Viking get-up, and as she says to Peter O'Toole "Come back to bed immediately...". Whats not to like ? - even my French favourite chanteuse Francoise Hardy pops up at the end after that madness at the country hotel and they all going off on go-karts! 

Left: lovely shot of Romy & Peter - he certainly worked with them all: the 2 Hepburns, Loren, the PUSSYCAT gals ...

I just can't believe its 47 years ago ... I had the funky Burt Bacharach soundtrack album as well...and I just love the look of it, as helmed by Clive Donner. For me it and MODESTY BLAISE are the mid-60s stylish comic peaks. 

Even now the memory of Woody chasing Romy around, O'Toole and Capucine trapped in the elevator, Cap pretending to be the cleaner when Romy walks in, the language class repeating everything O'Toole and Romy say, Paula's suicide attempts, those fantastic costumes they wear .... and then they all running around the hotel etc.

Nothing but the best in 1964

"Let's face it. It's a rotten, stinking world. But there are some smashing things in it - and I want them!" so says our anti-hero we end up rooting for in NOTHING BUT THE BEST, a splendid satirical comedy that is seldom seen now, from 1964 just as London started to Swing. This is a delicious black comedy that is a treat to see again now, as directed by Clive Donner, photographed by Nicolas Roeg and scripted by Frederic Raphael - he went on to script DARLING and TWO FOR THE ROAD next. This is another key British '60s movie then, and should be as well known as ALFIE. Our amoral hero here is Jimmy Brewster who is another Joe Lampton from ROOM AT THE TOP.

Instead of North of England black and white angst, here we are among the movers and shakers in London as humble clerk Jimmy (Alan Bates in as key role for him as his lead in A KIND OF LOVING) works at the offices of property tycoon Harry Andrews, whose high class daughter Millicent Martin (then the star of the weekly satire show THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS) visits regularly. Millie and Alan appraise each other .... Jimmy though soon meets down and out toff Charles Pierce (Denholm Elliot in the role that re-established him) and soon realises how (in return for room and board) he can use Pierce to teach him how to improve his social standing: how to dress, talk and act like a proper upper-class chap able to socialize with the ruling classes and thus climb the ladder of success to become one of them. Jimmy is a willing pupil as he covers up his working class tracks, ultimately sending his unsuspecting parents off on an assisted-passage trip to Australia, leaving him free to pursue the boss's daughter and improve his standing at the company, as he gets rival James Villiers out of the picture.
There is also that very obliging landlady (Pauline Delaney - that marvellous Irish actress who had a similar role in YOUNG CASSIDY) who also sees how she can improve her lot.  Denholm comes into money and begins to realise how Jimmy is using him, even wearing his good clothes and ties which he wants back. So we have a shocking sudden murder leaving Jimmy free to move ahead, the landlady too plays her part in disposing of the body, as long as she gets a regular visit from our rising young man about town. 

This is deliciously played out with many amusing scenes and the large cast including Andrews and Allison Legatt as Jimmy's deluded mother are all just right. Can Jimmy though get away with it? There is a nice twist and Jimmy realises his new wife is on to him but she does not mind, as she knows what a go-getter he is. Like Joe Lampton he too has arrived at the top of the heap but unlike Joe he is determined to enjoy it - and so will audencies for this nice slice of London as the '60s were taking off. 

Clive Donner, who died in 2010 aged 84, seems one of the under-rated '60s directors now, he went on to the success of WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT? next, a favourite that defines the '60s for me, as does his HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH, his hippie take on ALFRED THE GREAT is an interesting late '60s costumer with both David Hemmings and Michael York at their best.

The English '60s explode into colour ....

How we lived then: I love this image from Schlesinger's A KIND OF LOVING, 1962 - 50 years ago!

One more '60s post, on how that decade began: watching just two channels on a small black and white television with one's family in the lounge, no high definition then! - as in A KIND OF LOVING above, which captures that tedium perfectly. No wonder there was an explosion in music, art, movies, as young people went out a lot to express themselves and make their own entertainment ... cue those new black and white movies for the new generation like BILLY LIAR, THE SERVANT, THE KNACK, GEORGY GIRL, MORGAN ...

Julie Christie's Liz in BILLY LIAR comes down to London where she would soon be a DARLING (left, with the boys), leaving Billy behind up north - while Rita Tushingham's journey from A TASTE OF HONEY to SMASHING TIME via A PLACE TO GO, THE LEATHER BOYS, THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES and THE KNACK showed the '60s girl moving from grim reality to fantasy and slapstick in day-glo colours, as well as getting involved in jewellery capers with Marcello Mastroianni (DIAMONDS FOR BREAKFAST) and going to India with Michael York in THE GURU.

Michael and Rita in THE GURU.

By the mid-60s there was that explosion into colour with The Beatles in HELP!, popular movies like Clive Donner's NOTHING BUT THE BEST and WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? which we liked so much: Romy! Capucine! Paula! Peter! I had the soundtrack album by Burt Bacharach; the cult classic MODESTY BLAISE and then Antonioni gave us a different view of London in BLOW-UP - as we joined the new generation having fun in HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH and SMASHING TIME.... then we were ready for psychedelia and MIDNIGHT COWBOY and the rest as 1970 began... Donen's ARABESQUE (Sophia, Peck labels) was also a perfect mid-'60s caper with a plot that makes no sense now - a message in a microdot which would be delivered electronically now, but Loren dressed by Balmain has a lot of fun and Alan Badel is the best suave Arab villain with a shoe fetish ever.  I remember friends and I going off to the Odeon, Kensington for the first day of Visconti's THE DAMNED, one of the movies one had to see that year 1969.

The Beatles in colour - the HELP! songs are like the first pop videos

The zany climax of WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT?, so very mid-'60s