1960s girls on London underground

Julie Christie of course, and below: Brigitte Bardot, circa 1955, and a guy - me, in 1966 .... thankfully the tube is more modern now, even if  more overcrowded. 

Summer re-reads: Jane Austen & the california high life ...

This is what I said about Jane Austen's PERSUASION, back in 2011, when writing about some favourite books:

I absolutely love Jane Austen's PERSUASION and have re-read it several times and no doubt will again. PRIDE & PREJUDICE is a witty comedy of manners (and there is that great BBC version of it), SENSE & SENSIBILITY was a nice discovery too as we follow the Dashwood girls in and out of love (and we have Ang Lee's perfect film as scripted by Emma Thompson, and the rather nice recent TV version) - I have not felt the urge though to bother with EMMA or NORTHANGER ABBEY, while MANSFIELD PARK was rather a chore. It is PERSUASION though that I want to read and re-read. For one thing it is perfectly romantic as the thwarted lovers slowly begin to rediscover each other, and Anne Elliott is the most charming and wise Austen heroine, compared to her family and the interfering Aunt, Lady Russell. Anne is only 28 but is practically an old maid as she missed her chance with the dashing Captain 8 years previously when she was persuaded to give him up as he had no fortune. Captain Wentworth too is the perfect hero, back from the navy, his fortune made - no wonder those silly Musgrove girls throw themselves at him, as we travel from Uppercross to Lyme Regis and its famous cobb, and high society in Bath. All the 3 adaptations create their own endings. Austen actually wrote two perfectly romantic endings to her book, but neither is cinematic, so in the films we have Anne chasing all over Bath to catch up with the Captain, and the couple kissing! I prefer the 1995 BBC version which is a real film, but the recent one is fine too. The book though is a lasting pleasure. See Austen label for reviews of the films of her books.

It is now another late summer and I am engrossed in PERSUASION once again. Despite like the three television versions going back to the book is a treat with all that perfect prose and Austen's style to savour, as in describing Sir Walter Elliott fear of ageing: "and the rapid increase of the crow's foot about Lady Russell's temples had long been a distress to him". or:

"Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connections to secure even his further rise in that profession; that would indeed be a throwing away, which she  (Lady Russell) grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependance! It must not be, if by any interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights, it would be prevented. "

How Anne and Captain Wentworth overcome such objections is perfectly worked out. Lets look at the blurb again:

PERSUASION, the last competed novel Jane Austen wrote, was published in 1817, a year after her death in 1816. It features a heroine, Anne Elliot, older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and its tone is more intimate and sober as Austen unfolds a simple love story with depth and subtlety. Anne's goodness is not the cloying kind, but an unsentimental quality that, combined with stoicism and integrity, enables her to find happiness in love after seven years when it seemed she had forever put an end to such a prospect. 

The settings of Lyme Regis and Bath are evoked no less vividly than the characters who frequent them, and Jane Austen's achievement is exemplified by Tennyson's famous remark when visiting Lyme in 1867: "Now take me to The Cobb, and show me the steps from which Louisa Musgrove fell".

A total contrast, and almost as delicious, is a 1999 novel by one Doug Guinan, CALIFORNIA DREAMING, which reads like a gay Jackie Collins on acid trashfest. It is witty and complex though telling several stories, as we follow those West Hollywood gym boys Kevin and Leon and their various entangements. Kevin is the uber-gay, who smoulders a lot and manages to land multi-millionaire media and music mogel (think David Geffin) Brad Sherwood and becomes his boy-toy - until a nicely worked out party causes it all to fall apart. Leon meanwhile meets cute personal trainer Kim and their romance dovetails nicely too, as we follow the high life of Brad and his friend Roy with all their assorted hangers-on. We also get the backstory of Kevin's first romance with Anthony, the prince son of a mafia don in New York, and how he had to flee to California when the father finds out.  Kevin has to return to New York but will he also go back to Brad in California, who comes to track him down. This is a delicious fabulous read (particularly where Kevin goes on a shopping spree with Brad's card), ideal for the beach or a plane or a holiday. We like it a lot. As one review said: I haven't read such a fun and involving book like this since Tales of the City. The characters at first seem shallow but this proves, in the long run, their humanity both with their foibles and at times their surprising depth. When I finished the book I felt as though I had lost some new friends. I read it all in one sitting on a plane to LA. Fabulous and fun - a cross between Gordon Merrick & Armisted Maupin.

ABC plus Chelsea boys after dark ...

The title of this gay miscellany was going to be: "Where is my ABC book?" .... its a funny story: I was going through some old photos the other day and saw one of some books of mine at a previous address in Brighton (here in England), and it showed a little book from 1997 that amused me and my friends: "The ABC Book, a homoerotic primer" by Marcus Vellekoop. But where was it now? I had not seen it anywhere for ages or when I moved last month and could not find it. They were asking silly prices for it on Amazon (over £40!), then I found a reasonable priced copy on ebay and just as I completed my purchase my partner, who had been re-arranging his books in the spare bedroom, walked in holding my ABC Book in his hand, saying it had got packed in with his books! Luckily, as I had purchased the other copy within the hour, I got back to the seller asking him to cancel my order as I did not need two copies .... so I should hear about that today. If I have to keep the new one, I will send it to whoever asks for it first ....(Its ok, they have refunded.)

Here is the blurb for this delicious treat;

A is for Astronauts floating in space

B is for Bikers having a race

C is for Cowboys under western skies

D is for Dancers at their exercise

E is for Executives reaching their goals

F is for Firemen sliding down poles ...

Written and illustrated by award-winning artist Maurice Vellekoop, this delightfully naughty ABC book for adults is a celebration of gay male archetypes from Jailbirds to Opera Singers, Hairdressers to Truckers. Each letter of the alphabet provides the key to a hot and funny scenario of gay sex,. With erotic drawings reminiscent of a cross between Tintin and Tom of Finland, Vellekoop commemorates and honors these classic homoerotic fantasies with great humour and gaiety. A great gift, and a must for every gay household.

Right: Q is for Quarterbacks getting a spanking. 

My copy also included a few pages I had pulled from a magazine, featuring more Vellekoop wit: "Disco Inferno" imagining what the afterlife would be like for more gay types, based on Dante's Circles of Hell: Drama Queens are shuttled directly to Heaven, where nothing dramatic happens (they all play golf);  disco circuit boys are subjected to an enternal Liberace concert with no ecstasy in sight; closeted celebrities are trapped in a room with limitless supplies of unauthorised tell-alls and TV movies about them (we see Rock and Agnes Moorehead having to endure telemovies about them...) etc, At least my search for the book led me to more Vellekoop items: a book of "Pin-Ups", and "Vellevision". Can't wait to get them. His artwork and style grows on one.    www.google.co.uk/webhp?ie=UTF-8&rct=j#q=maurice+vellekoop

Then there is The Chelsea Boys. We loved the cartoon strips in weekly papers and nice to see them in book form. Again, the blurb puts it perfectly:

Chelsea Boys is the first collection of Glen Hanson and Allan Neuwirth's popular syndicated comic strip that appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The strip follows the often outrageous antics, wild sexcapades, and everyday heartbreaks of three gay roommates who are as different as can be and living together in the heart of New York's trendy Chelsea neighborohood: cuddly Nathan, a short, neurotic, 40-something native New Yorker (who is nuts about Barbra Streisand - and she appears in the strip too); gorgeous, buff Sky, a naive yet deeply spiritual art student raised on a farming commune in Canada; and the fabulous drag diva Soiree, who masks his inner pain with a rapier wit and flamboyant style. Filled with humour, humanity, and wry observations on life in a modern setting, CHELSEA BOYS presents a family like you've never seen before and storytelling that speaks the truth while being outrageously funny. . 
I was a Chelsea Boy myself in 1972/73 - but in London not New York (but at least I got to mix with Joni Mitchell and Elton John, as per previous reports ...). 

We also found some AFTER DARK magazines - these are so '70s and early '80s now, but we liked them at the time, the hip New York slant on theatre and movies, with a very gay slant .... lots of pretty pictures too, but also some interesting interviews and features. I have found a few more on ebay - including one with some great pictures of Julie Harris and Geraldine Page together. Of course all that era is pre-Aids now, so it certainly ramps up the nostalgia factor ...

Top 20 Desert Island Movies

"Desert Island Movies" don't have to be "masterpieces" or classics (though they can be of course), they are not the Best Movies but simply the movies one enjoys watching and can return to many times (you would have to on a desert island) so no Tarkovsky then, Martin Bradley, or even CITIZEN KANE or history of the cinema items (unless of course you enjoy watching Orson's classic over and over, I like it a lot, but ...). No Trash Classics either, much as we like them one would soon tire of them. Movies then with people one likes spending time with and by directors whose visions we like .... (I have written about these extensively already here, as per labels).

• JOHNNY GUITAR - a favourite western and the first movie I ever saw, aged 8, what a vivid introduction to cinema, I never tire of it. The BFI has it on the cover of their new "Sight & Sound" magazine and it features in their upcoming western retrospective. 
• A STAR IS BORN - another early one I saw as a kid in 1954, its even better now its been restored, the best musical drama ever? I love Cukor's staging of those CinemaScope images in rich Warner-color, and of course Judy and James.
• SOME LIKE IT HOT - for me THE Billy Wilder classic and the still funniest film ever made
  
• THE AWFUL TRUTH - a 30s classic thats a fairly recent discovery
• ALL ABOUT EVE - Mank's script and situations and characters we never tire of
• A LETTER TO 3 WIVES - see above
• THE QUIET MAN - back to that mythical Ireland in Ford's enduring favourite
• THE SEARCHERS - Ford's poetic vision of the West is another enduring favourite
• BLACK NARCISSUS - 2 Michael Powell classics - I sometimes think this and I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING are my top favourite films of all time ..... 
• I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING - I love that mythical highlands, those great characters and its a perfect '40s dreamworld movie. 
• BLOW-UP - maybe still my Number One, on my island I want to re-visit that green park and be back in mid-60s London
• L’AVVENTURA - Monica and Antonioni still fascinate me
• THE LEOPARD - I want the opulence of Visconti's classic and revisit that great ball sequence many times, with that Verdi waltz and Delon and Claudia being impossibly beautiful.
• BARRY LYNDON - this or 2001 ? - hard to decide, but I would get more enjoyment re-visiting this Kubrick classic 
• BRINGING UP BABY - the best of screwball, Hawks, Hepburn and Grant? 
  
• THE SCARLET EMPRESS - we also want the opulence of Josef Von Sternberg - this or Marlene emerging from the gorilla skin in BLOND VENUS or the delirious SHANGHAI EXPRESS?
• THE BANDWAGON - maybe my top favourite musical - endlessly rewatchable,
• THE MISFITS - another movie I used to be obsessed by and can live in.
• NIGHT OF THE IGUANA - another Huston favourite, maybe the best Tennessee Williams, great characters and people I like.
• EL CID - probably my favourite epic, again I can revisit it a lot, even though Sophia dismisses it in her latest book. I remember Chuck towering over me back at the BFI in 1971 ...
  
• Oh, let's have one more, it has to be CASABLANCA - a key Golden Age '40s movie that never goes out of fashion - we will always want to go back to Rick's Cafe Americain with Ingrid, and Sam playing "As Time Goes By" ...

Martin has commanded me to stick to 20, so I am gutted to leave out lots more: there's nothing fairly recent here, not even Scorsese; no '40s noirs, no Garbo or James Dean movies, or other musicals (MEET ME IN ST LOUIS, FUNNY FACE) or dramas I love (ANATOMY OF A MURDER, SEPARATE TABLES), and no Hitchcocks - I could do 10 Hitch classics, but which to decide?, then theres all those Hollywood classics and European stuff I like (PLEIN SOLEIL!), or favourites like LES GIRLS or THE WOMEN and its '56 remake THE OPPOSITE SEX or Vincente's DESIGNING WOMAN or THE LION IN WINTER or THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE Then there are Ingmar Bergman's like AUTUMN SONATA or his enchanting recording of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE - ideal for desert island balmy evenings!  It could be a different list some other day ...

Hipster boy is now 70 ...

We amused  ourselves yesterday by going through our photo albums, contrasting the changes as the decades went by from the 1960s to now. One had to be slim and 21 in 1967 to get away with these low hipster jeans, and it was the dawn of the hippie era - yes those are beads and a bell around my neck ! 

I remember this moment vividly, waiting for a bus in Clapham in 1969 with flat-mates Stan and Joe, we were going up to Kings Road in Chelsea on a Saturday afternoon, to mingle with the other beautiful people - that would be the 137 bus then ...  (we photographed each other a lot in the Golden Age, with real cameras, before digital and cellphones - all photo negatives had to be taken to the chemist to be developed ...).
Below: Posing in a caftan in front of an OZ magazine hippie poster .... very 1967! A year later we were dropping acid at The Roundhouse watching The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, as well as seeing Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger ("This Wheel's on Fire") at Middle Earth club and supergroups like The Who, Traffic, The Band (at The Albert Hall), plus Aretha and my first Joni Mitchell concert ...

1970s.

1980s

1990s

This Pride event was 1999 - I am wearing the official Total Eclipse tee-shirt (which we were stunned by watching it, with special glasses, from the office rooftop in London's Regent Street). I loved those shorts which I wore a lot (and still have those Caterpillar boots) until I got those Schotts navy blue combats which became my pants of choice for clubbing nights - with a terrific blue Ralph Lauren shirt which I literally wore out. 

2000s

So what a contrast from that 9 year old with his dog in 1955 Ireland, and doing the Beatle look a decade later in 1964,  to late last year, getting over cancer treatment .... and where does 50 year go ?
So, 70 and feeling better - a new chapter starting too, as moving at the end of this month to a brand new apartment complex, 10 floors up - great views, especially at night - and it gives one the opportunity to re-invent oneself and one's surroundings for a couple of years before we move back to the 'wild altantic way' in Ireland.. Here we go again ...
more pix at Me-1 label. 

That penguin ....

Among the doom and gloom of the news and that ongoing migrant crisis in Europe, we simply love the story of Dindim the penguin. It’s the heartwarming story of a South American Magellanic penguin who swims 5,000 miles each year to be reunited with the man who saved his life.

Retired bricklayer and part time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, who lives in an island village just outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, found the tiny penguin, covered in oil and close to death, lying on rocks on his local beach in 2011.

Joao cleaned the oil off the penguin’s feathers and fed him a daily diet of fish to build his strength. He named him Dindim.

After a week, he tried to release the penguin back into the sea. But, the bird wouldn’t leave. ‘He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared,’ Joao recalls.

And, just a few months later, Dindim was back. He spotted the fisherman on the beach one day and followed him home. For the past five years Dindim had spent eight months of the year with Joao and is believed to spend the rest of the time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile. It is thought he swims up to 5,000 mies each year to be reunited with the man who saved his life.
"I love the pengun like its my own child and I believe the penguin loves me" Joao told Globo TV. "No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap, let me give him 

‘Everyone said he wouldn’t return but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years. He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier to see me.’

Biologist Professor Krajewski, who interviewed the fisherman for Globo TV, told The Independent: ‘I have never seen anything like this before. I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well.

‘When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.

And, just like that, the world seems a kinder place again.

Perfect 1980s pop ...

Brighton, 30th August 1985. 

"Sooner or later this happens to everyone - just when you least expect it, waiting around the corner for you" ....

Good news too that the Pets have a new album out in April and are doing some summer dates at The Royal Opera House in London - we saw them during their residency at The Savoy in 1997, and at the Tower of London in 2006 - as well as various festivals and Pride events. Bring them on ...

1966 and all that ...

Its official, 1966 is now 50 years ago - those of us who were young then, and there will have fond memories .... as I shall return to.

After some good reviews I just had to order this new book by music journalist Jon Savage, taking us through the year month by month, mainly focusing on the music - all those fab singles out every week and those groundbreaking albums. I did not realise though it would be such a heavy tome of 650 pages ... too big to carry around for casual reading on the train!  Let's look at the blurb:

2016 will see the 50th anniversary of defining year in global pop cultural history, 1966. Jon Savage's exploration of the key highs, lows and revolutionary moments, will be at the centre of reflection on what made that year so uniquely resonant. extraordinary year in popular culture.

'The 'Sixties', as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak. A unique chemistry of ideas, substances, freedom of expression and dialogue across pop cultural continents created a landscape of immense and eventually shattering creativity. After 1966 nothing in the pop world would ever be the same. The 7 inch single outsold the long-player for the final time.

Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who and The Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart of the decade through unique archival primary sources.

From Haight Ashbury to pirate radio, via the prosecution of the Rollling Stones and the arrival of the first double-album by a major artist (Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde), 1966 represents both a watershed and a high water mark in post war culture,

This book has music at its heart – whether looking at Joe Meek, Motown, Stax, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, the Kinks, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band or Tom Jones; music both reflected the times and changed them. From songs of protest – to those lampooning the protesters - from folk rock to soul and the emergence of rock, music pours forth from the pages and will make you reach for your own collections to play those songs, which still sound so fresh and relevant today

England was at the forefront of the new changes in the air, a trend picked up by TIME magazine with their Swinging London cover story ..... other British successes included all those trendy films, the new Hovercraft crossing the channel on a cushion of air, the Harrier Jump Jet, and of course England winning the World  Cup. But what did 1966 mean to me? How was I living then? 

Well I was just 20, and finally left my bedsitter/furnished room in North London where I had been since I arrived in London in April 1964, aged 18. My younger brother had arrived in London too and took over my room, as I moved on .... I had found a room in smart Bayswater, sharing a large apartment in Queens Gardens - where I played Bob Dylan and Francoise Hardy 4-track Extended Play disks, and Paul Simon's "I Am A Rock", and The Beatles RUBBER SOUL was still top of the charts - as would their REVOLVER later that year.  . I could walk up to Notting Hill Gate at night, for late night movies at the Classic Cinema, and began exploring the city and going to the theatre. There were some good shows that year: FUNNY GIRL with that new sensation Barbara Streisand - which I saw from the front row! and THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic. THE KING'S MARE was an amusing comedy about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, which I enjoyed and some evening when I was out in theatreland I passed the stage door and there was actress Jane Merrow so we had a great conversation - as she sang a song in the play based on a Bob Dylan tune ... I had liked her in THE SYSTEM - it turned out she was David Hemmings' girlfriend at the time. I did not know then that he was off making BLOW-UP for Antonioni at the time - that would be the sensation of 1967 in the then swinging city. We prowled around the Prince of Wales theatre too hoping (in vain) to see Streisand - but got her co-star Kay Medford instead. There was also Ingrid Bergman's success in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, I got the cast autographs for that - and was taken backstage by a showbiz acquintance to meet the cast of the hilarious THE ANNIVERSARY and they all signed the programme: Michael Crawford, Sheila Hancock, Mona Washbourne, June Ritchie, Jack Hedley, James Cossins - most of them were in the 1968 film.

The movies just kept coming: I joined the crowd at the premiere of MODESTY BLAISE hoping Monica Vitti would be there, she was not but I saw Dirk Bogarde with Rosella Falk (Mrs Fothergill) on his arm, Monica, Dirk and Terry were my pin-ups of the year.. Other hits of the year were Bergman's PERSONA, Lelouch's UNE HOMME ET UNE FEMME (where Anouk Aimee was perfection, when not endlessly fiddling with her hair), and Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck wonderful together in ARABESQUE - a very 60s confection. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? was a stunner Malle's VIVA MARIA has the 'house full' sign up when a friend and I turned up to see it at The Curzon in Mayfair. (still here, for now, as the developers move in). "Films and Filming" and "Sight & Sound" kept us up to date with all the new movies.  

I used to go to the big Classic cinema in Baker Street for revivals (not having a television then), and that new vegetarian store Cranks had opened next to it, I was in there one day and there was a small Japanese woman shopping next to me - I knew she was Yoko Ono, then (before John Lennon) a performance artist and avant garde film-maker (her film with all those naked bottoms!)  who featured in those new Sunday supplements. Another Sunday supplement regular was artist David Hockney - I went too to one of those new gay bars in Pembridge Road, Notting Hill - and recognised him there - looking at me, with the peroxide hair and the round glasses - perhaps he was over from California? I did not linger though and left after finishing my drink .... perhaps if I had stayed I might have been one of those boys in a blue pool ...

It was time though to move again - we moved a lot in those days, sharing apartments for maybe 6 monhs or so. Now it was on to West Kensington sharing a pad with 2 friends of a friend - it was just a temporary thing - Julie Christie it seemed lived in an apartment block there which we passed a lot, but never saw her., I saw that famous World Cup win there on a small black and white set (it was still the era of just two TV channels - imagine! - which closed down early and no colour) - no wonder young people were out making music and being creative and creating their own events. 

Finally, that autumn it was down to Clapham South, where I became a South London boy, sharing another flat with Stanley - who turned out to be my best friend, until he died in 1992 - we sharing flats on and off up to the early '70s and again later in the mid-80s before romance took me off to the South Coast for a decade or more .... We finally got television then, and that new trendy station BBC2 opened - LATE NIGHT LINE UP, MAN ALIVE documentaries - including one on those still illegal gays dancing in their clubs and wearing white polo neck sweaters; the popular soap THE NEWCOMERS, and crime series Z-CARS and even DIXON OF DOCK GREEN; DR WHO (Patrick Troughton) at Saturday teatime followed by THE SIMON DEE SHOW - all in shades of gray, and Sunday afternoon drama serials like a great THREE MUSKETEERS with Jeremy Brett, and KENILWORTH.on BBC2. It was also the year of that hard-ditting drama CATHY COME HOME and saw the start of Alf Garnett in TILL DEATH DO US PART. Later in the decade we loved those comedy shows like ME MAMMY (Anna Manahan and Milo O'Shea) and BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR where June Whitfield (still going now) had a knowing twinkle in her eye whenever mentioning a neighbour who "lived down by the maisonettes and was good to his mother". 

We began frequenting the West End coffee bars and early gay discos when the teens danced to Tamla Motown - The LE DEUCE in D'Arblay Street was a particular favourite.. So, 1966 ended on a high - but 1967 would be even better: as psychedelia hit London (we already liked that West Coast sound of The Mamas and Papas, and the New York combo The Lovin' Spoonful), BLOW-UP hit town in March and it was like seeing oneself up there on the screen, and then The Beatles released SERGEANT PEPPER .... Stan and I and Linda, the girl upstairs, went stark raving mad. We went to see The Stax Tour, just before Otis Redding took that fatal flight. 1968 brought Aretha Franklin to town and I joined the hippie set seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane at the Roundhouse at Camden, where everyone was on acid - ditto at 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY in Cinerama and so much more, like going to the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden and getting the hippie magazine "International Times" and that new weekly listings mag "Time Out" ...  Above right, me sporting the tousled Rolling Stone look on Clapham Common in '66.

Astor matinees and Plaza nights

The cinemas of our youth ! Yes, some of them are still there. Growing up in a small town in Ireland we had 2 cinemas - and they were certainly kept busy in the 1950s and early 60s - television did not become widely available in Ireland until early 60s. 

The Astor was a big barn of a place, near the town's council estate (it has since been carved into a three-screen multiplex and still going) with just a raised area for the expensive seats - whereas The Plaza, at the more select end of town, was a much cosier place with a perfect upstairs balcony with its own sweet kiosk. It was somehow 'posher' going to The Plaza. Of course us kids began in the cheap seats and as we got older graduated the middle area, and finally to the Balcony ! Both cinemas ran movies for 2 nights, changing programmes 3 times a week, a mix of new, old, double features or a 'full supporting programme' of cartoons, newsreels, shorts and trailers - so one certainly got one's value. They certainly served the town's 3,000 inhabitants then. 

They followed the UK release system, with the Astor showing MGM and Warner Bros, and Columbia, while the Plaza was the home of 20th Century Fox, Paramount and United Artists. Both houses shared Universal-International and British Rank Organisation movies while the Astor also fitted in other British releases from British Lion and Anglo-Amalgamated - like those CARRY ON's. We also got  a smattering of European releases - I first saw Alain Delon in FAIBLES FEMMES at the Plaza, and PLEIN SOLEIL at the Astor, plus Sophia Loren in WOMAN OF THE RIVER, those SISSI films with Romy Schneider, Romy and Lilli Palmer in FIREWORKS and MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, and I remember THE 400 BLOWS at the Astor. 

I should mention (again) my movie-going began in 1954, aged 8, when I was taken by my parents, and graduated to being allowed to go on my own in 1957 - there were no worries about child safety in that more innocent time! Before that my father would take me to all those westerns and John Wayne or Bing Crosby (he liked Bing) movies, or dramas like TRAPEZE, while my mother and aunts took me to musicals and comedies - My mother liked Judy Garland so it must have been her who took me to A STAR IS BORN and a revival of MEET ME IN ST LOUIS - and we went to I COULD GO ON SINGING in 1963. It was a treat to sit at The Astor watching THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME with Gina and Quinn - or Sunday matinees there seeing revivals of BRIGADOON, ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER or costume movies/actioners like MOONFLEET, HELEN OF TROY, ALEXANDER THE GREAT or QUENTIN DURWARD. We were also stunned by EAST OF EDEN, (I could just remember James Dean's death and all the fuss and magazines about him) - loving Dean and Julie Harris (little knowing that one day I would see her on the stage, write to her and she would reply to me). And then the rise of Elvis - particularly liking LOVING YOU, a Plaza favourite - as we got into all that 50s music;. and later those 50s dramas like SEPARATE TABLES or our favourite Susan Hayward in I WANT TO LIVE!  We loved SOUTH PACIFIC and FUNNY FACE at the Plaza, while the Astor had those Warner dramas and musicals like CALAMITY JANE and all those MGM favourites ...

One could in fact go to the movies there almost every night to a different show - and lots did - or as I did go both nights to movies like Loren's IT STARTED IN NAPLES and THE MILLIONAIRESS. A roadhouse epic like BEN HUR or EL CID would run for a week - with intermission and programme, and we would return to them more than once. We loved THE VIKINGS and THE BIG COUNTRY at the Plaza, plus THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and I vividly remember being stunned by seeing PSYCHO and SOME LIKE IT HOT there for the first time (Ireland did not follow the Certificate system - kids were able to see everything - but anything too risque was pruned to remove anything too salacious - that was Catholic Ireland for you! 

Plaza nights were marvellous watching all those 20th Century Fox items in Cinemascope - and I made some friends there too ... By the time I was 16 it was marvellous watching Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES at the Astor ..... little did I know that within a decade or so I would be meeting and talking to lot of my favourites like Lee and Dirk, or seeing Bette and others (NFT label) discussing their careers on stage - as it was nearly time to leave small town Ireland and move to the  Big City, which I did in April 1964, when 18, and just in time for the Swinging Sixties - but that will be a different story ...
Going back to the cinema there when on holiday in the late 60s was different - everyone now had televisions, the Plaza had closed (apart from special events and yes they did Bingo on Sunday nights) but the Astor solidered on and still does now. 

Hot town, summer in the city ...

Yes, its that time again - as London swelters. How do they play tennis or travel underground in this (to us) unnatural heat ? So, it is too darn hot, and hot and humid nights to be expected ! 

Who's who in Town

When I did that recent post of my holy grail of missing vintage magazines, that 1962 issue of English  magazine TOWN, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover of their November 1962 issue, which I saw on-line for the ridiculous price of £299 - I did not realise I would soon have a copy of it again myself, plus their '62 issues with Monica Vitti (then the sensation of L'ECLISSE) and new girl in town Sarah Miles (then in TERM OF TRIAL) - so it pays to check out vintage magazine sites, and whats new on eBay - as new stuff comes on every day. TOWN issues are surprisingly large, bigger than the usual A4 magazine size and heavy too, with all those fascinating early 60s advertisements - TOWN was styled for the smart man about town, with men's fashion, cars, the emerging Sixties high life, drinks, food, and ladies. The sort of magazine the young master in THE SERVANT would be reading, in 1963. I had those issues with Monroe and Vitti on the covers when I was 16 in Ireland, and was dying to see them again. Young Sarah gives good interview and photos too ...

Luckily I checked a vintage magazine site I had bought from, Tilleys Vintage Magazines, and saw that they had just received a selection of TOWN magazines, which they were selling for £30 or £40 each, and yes they had the Monroe and Vitti and Miles ones, so I made sure I jumped in and got them before anyone else did. Still expensive of course, but as my pal Martin said, "if you want it badly enough then it is worth the price you pay". 

I also got a delicious pile of the American WHO'S WHO IN HOLLYWOOD annual magazines (on eBay), I have had the 1966 one since, well, 1966 - and its a collector's item. Fantastic to get issues covering 1957 to 1967! lots to peruse there .... these feature thumbnail portraits and information on all the current players - making up a fascinating record of who was who then: the leading stars, featured players, older stars, newcomers, musical stars, comedy stars, etc, and who had just passed away .... so the 1957 one features that interesting new actor Anthony Perkins who was playing in LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL on Broadway (I remember reading about that at the time in the Hollywood fan mags), Jean Seberg ("from Marshalltown, Iowa") who had done SAINT JOAN and was about to discover France in BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Kay Kendall is featured each year - until 1960, as she had died in 1959, along with Henri Vidal and Gerard Philipe; Italian import Sophia Loren grows in stature in each issue, until she is on the cover of the 1967 issue, along with Julie Andrews. Liz and Debbie of course feature on each year's covers too. Fascinating stuff then, and at a bargain price!