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The marriage and death of Judy Garland, Chelsea 1969

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Mickey Deans, Judy Garland and Johnnie Ray at Chelsea Registry Office, March 1969

Mickey Deans, Judy Garland and Johnnie Ray at Chelsea Register Office, March 1969

On March 15th 1969 at Chelsea Register Office on the Kings Road, Judy Garland married a gay discotheque manager and part-time jazz pianist called Mickey Devinko better known as Mickey Deans. After the brief ceremony, which was actually her fifth, Garland said;

“This is it. For the first time in my life, I am really happy. Finally, I am loved.”

Not that loved, because despite the long celebrity guest-list, not one of Judy’s famous friends made it to the reception held at Quaglino’s the large and expensive restaurant situated in Bury Street just south of Piccadilly. Several hundred people were invited and only fifty made it to the function.

Mickey, Judy and Johnnie

The glasses of champagne remained largely undrunk and an ostentatious three-tiered cake remained mostly uneaten. “I can’t understand it,” Judy was reported to have said in next day’s Sunday Express, “they all said they’d come”. Even her daughter Liza Minnelli, who had turned 23 just three days before, had called her mother to say “I can’t make it, Mama, but I promise I’ll come to your next one.” Another journalist apparently wrote that the reception was “the saddest and most pathetic party I have ever attended”.

Judy and Mickey on the empty dancefloor at Quaglinos

Actually there was one celebrity guest at the wedding -- Mickey Deans’ best man, Johnnie Ray. Ray had had hits in the fifties such as Cry and The Little White Cloud That Cried and was famous for the mootable ability to cry on stage earning him the moniker ‘the Nabob of Sob’ or occasionally the ‘Prince of Wails’. In reality, Ray was no close friend of Deans or Garland and the only reason that he was a guest at the wedding was that he was due to open for a brief Scandinavian tour Deans had organised for his new wife four days after the wedding.

Johnnie Ray at the reception

Judy told the Sunday Express:

“I don’t know if London still needs me, but I certainly need it! It’s good and kind to me. I feel at home here. The people understand me, and I’m not aware of the cruelty I’ve so often felt in the States. I’ve reached a point in my life where the most precious thing is compassion -- and I get this here.”

Judy and Mickey

4 Cadogan Lane in Chelsea, November 2009

After the wedding Garland and Deans rented a small mews house in a Chelsea cul-de-sac called Cadogan Lane. On Saturday 22 June, just three months after their wedding, Judy and Mickey had been watching a BBC documentary on the Royal family but, not untypically, had started to furiously row. Garland ran into the street shouting and screaming (also not untypically) followed not long after by Deans who ran after her. He was unable to find his wife and returned to the house and soon after went to bed.

At around 10.40am the next morning the phone rang for Garland. Deans, initially unable to find her, found the bathroom door locked. He climbed out on to the roof and looking through the window saw Garland motionless on the toilet with her head slumped forward and her hands on her knees. Climbing into the bathroom he found her skin was discoloured and dried blood had dribbled from her mouth and nose. She had been dead for about eight hours.

The Chelsea Coroner, Gavin Thurston wrote “This is a clear picture of someone who had been habituated to barbiturates in the form of Seconal for a very long period of time, and who on the night of june 22nd/23rd perhaps in a state of confusion from a previous dose (although this is pure speculation) took more barbiturate than her body could tolerate.”

Garland had been taking drugs since she was in her early teens, initially to keep her weight down -- Louis B Mayer the owner of MGM called her ‘that fat kid’ (not to mention ‘my little hunchback’ -- you can understand why she had trouble with self-esteem all her life) and was constantly troubled by what he saw as her weight problem. Studio doctors prescribed the new wonder drug Benzedrine and subsequently the more sophisticated offshoots Dexedrine and Dexamyl. Drugs like these, at the time, seemed like miracles of science and were as common as aspirin.

Judy at sixteen

Louis B Mayer and his 'little hunchback'

Garland had been prescribed Seconal, the drug that killed her, off and on, since the fifties. It is a barbiturate derivative medicine that was becoming widely misused in the sixties. It had nicknames such as ‘reds’, ‘red-devils’ or seccies, but another nickname was ‘dolls’ and thus responsible for the punning title of Jacqueline Susann’s novel ‘Valley of the Dolls’.

Seconal

Jacqueline Susann and Judy Garland at a press conference for Valley of the Dolls in 1967

The character Neely O’Hara in the book, with her undoubted talent blunted by self-destructive alcoholism and dependency on prescription drugs, was purportedly based on Garland. Judy was actually cast in the film, not as O’Hara but to play the character Helen Lawson but not long into the filming Garland missed several days of rehearsals and was fired in April 1967. She was replaced by Susan Heyward but not before Garland recorded the song ‘I’ll Plant My Own Tree’.

Judy Garland was just 47 years old and $4 million in debt when she died. She was buried in New York and, making an effort this time, guests included Lauren Bacall, James Mason, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Lana Turner and latterly Frank Sinatra who paid all the funeral expenses and presciently said, “Judy will now have a mystic survival. She was the greatest.”

Judy Garland's body as it arrived back in the States

Ironically, considering the effort she put into keeping her weight down, Garland was probably less than 70 lbs when she died. She was so thin that it was said that to keep the waiting photographers non the wiser, when her body was removed from the Cadogan Lane mews house, covered in only a blanket, she was carried out draped over someone’s arm like a folded coat.

Judy Garland applying makeup before her last ever concert in Denmark 1969

Judy Garland (with Mickey Deans) -- When Sunny Gets Blue -- recorded three days before she died. Mickey is heard on the piano prompting her

Judy Garland -- Broadway Rhythm -- by way of contrast this is Judy performing on MGM radio with Wallace Beery aged just 13 and just after she signed with MGM (she’s wrongly announced as 12)

Tags: benzedrine, death, drugs, gay, Kings Road, marriage, seconal
Posted in Chelsea, Kings Road | 17 Comments »

The Disappearance of the Author Adam Diment

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

The author Adam Diment in 1967 with two lovely ladies.

The October 1967 edition of Michael Heseltine’s Town magazine featured an interview with the fashionable twenty-three year old author Adam Diment. In it, he said that he was:

“hoping to move from his Fulham Road flat to trendy King’s Road, where his tight pink trousers and matching floral shirt will be more appreciated.”

In the late sixties moving a few hundred yards from one area of west London to another was like travelling to a different country. Diment knew he had enough money to make the move because after the publication of his first novel The Dolly, Dolly Spy, Diment suddenly became the most talked-about author in town. That year Publishers’ Weekly wrote about the novel:

A kinky, cool mod flare that is outrageously entertaining….If you appreciate clever plotting, plenty of excitement, sex at its most uninhibited, a dollop or two of explicit sadism, Adam Diment is a name to remember.

Except he wasn’t, and Diment is almost totally forgotten about these days. He wrote three more books – The Spying Game and The Dolly, Dolly Birds which were both published in 1968 and a fourth novel Think Inc that was published in 1971. After which, suddenly, he completely disappeared from public view.

His four novels, although relatively entertaining, are hugely dated these days and are peppered with the era’s casual sexism and racism that occasionally make the James Bond novels appear as if they were written by Andrea Dworkin.

“Despite her lovely body it was her face which had me hooked. I do not belong to that philistine philosophy which propounds the ‘put a sack over their heads and they’re all the same’ nonsense. I like to watch something pretty and interesting when collecting my oats, and her face is certainly that. At present she was doing a languorous chameleon change from perplexed to pout.” - The Bang Bang Birds

“She was wearing her latest acquisition, bought in a boutique in King’s Road which is a cross between an Eastern bazaar and a rugger scrum. It was very short and covered with overlapping blue and yellow flowers. Over her heart, which was almost visible because it was as low at the breast as it was short at the thighs, was a bright pink heart…as she was so brown, she had given up wearing stockings. Veronica was about as naked as you can get these days without being nicked for indecency.” - The Dolly, Dolly Spy

The Bang Bang Birds published in 1968

The Dolly, Dolly Spy published in 1967

The books were all thrillers featuring a reluctant spy called Philip McAlpine. The sex-hungry hero was suspiciously similar in appearance to the writer and Diment, it seems, was very happy for this blurred confusion to continue. Especially, the marijuana smoking and the preponderance of girls. Fleet Street seemed genuinely intrigued with the similarity between hero and author and Atticus in the Sunday Times wrote:

Adam Diment is 23; his hero, Philip McAlpine, is based on himself. That is to say he’s tall, good-looking, with a taste for fast cars, planes, girls and pot.

While the Daily Mirror wrote:

McAlpine is the most modern hero in years. He’s hip, he’s hard, he likes birds and, sometimes, marijuana.

Adam Diment smoking a 'hashish cigarette'.

More hashish with companion Suzie Mandrake in 1967

Adam with the artist Tim Whidborne, Anne McAuley and Victoria Brooke. 1967

Adam with Tim Whidbourne and a modelling Suzie Mandrake

Adam "I've got my eyes closed I promise" Diment with Tim Whidbourne presumably pretending to paint Suzie Mandrake.

On the inside cover of my copy of The Bang Bang Birds it says that “At present THE DOLLY DOLLY SPY is being filmed with David Hemmings as Philip McAlpine. A Stanley Canter/Desmond Elliott production for release by United Artists”. It’s worth noting that David Hemmings was at the height of his career at this stage – the premier of Blow Up was in October 1967 and both The Charge of the Light Brigade and Barberella were released in 1968.

However the film came to nothing. Whether filming ever took place or was halted half way through nobody seems to know. Although there are pictures of Adam seen with David Hemmings and one of the producers Desmond Elliott.

Adam with David Hemmings in 1967.

Adam with Desmond Elliott and Suzie Mandrake.

Adam Diment published his final novel Think Inc in 1971 and then he completely disappeared from public view. I just can’t seem to find any information about him at all after this date. Except for one thing. Last year a few documents relating to Adam Diment (F.A. Diment) were released by the National Archives and amongst them were two anonymous letters written in March 1969 to the department of Exchange Control of the Bank of England.

Both the letters seemed to accuse Adam Diment of some kind of currency swindle involving the export of 2400 dollars which had been paid by the film producer Stanley Canter and one letter even mentions that there were suspicions that it may have been some kind of drug-deal.

Whether the currency swindle was anything to do with the non-completion of the film of The Dolly Dolly Spy or was the cause of Diment’s disappearance, there seems to be no clue. However one of the letters imparts the important piece of information that Adam Diment, despite telling Town magazine otherwise, never seemed to have made the move to The King’s Road as he was still living in the tight-pink-trousers-fearing Fulham at 28 Tregunter Road.

Adam with Victoria Brooke and a Tiger Moth

Ray Charles – Let’s Go Get Stoned

Muddy Waters – Champagne and Reefer

Tags: Chelsea, drugs, marijuana, sex, sexism, sixties
Posted in Chelsea, Fulham, Kings Road | 41 Comments »

Ossie Clark post updated

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

Ossie Clark in 1971

I updated Ossie Clark, the King Of The Kings Road in Holland Park today with some extra great pictures.

Tags: art, fashion, gay, Kings Road
Posted in Chelsea, Holland Park, Kings Road | No Comments »

The Kings Road, the Gateways Club and The Killing Of Sister George

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

“They had me in bed making love to the girl…close, like baked beans”

Susannah York, Beryl Reid and Coral Brown at The Gateways 1968

In a book originally put together by Hunter Davies in the late sixties called The London Spy -- A Discrete Guide To The City’s Pleasures, there are two chapters written specifically for gay and lesbian visitors to London. The first, entitled ‘Men For Men’, notes around twenty venues where men could meet ’soul or bed-mates and/or escape the attentions of the fat girls with whom you flew over on your chartered 747′,

one of which, under ‘non-dancing clubs’ was called Gigolo at 328 King’s Road (now a carpet shop) and was described by the book as an “Aptly named, hot, incredibly packed coffee bar. A frotteur’s delight. Lots of Spanish waiters and terrified Americans. The Rolls-Royce outside could be the one to whisk you away from it all.” However in the ‘Women for Women’ chapter, written by the novelist Maureen Duffy, there is mention of just one venue -- the famous Gateways Club.

The Gateways had been in existence at 239 Kings Road on the corner of Bramerton Street in Chelsea, since the thirties. It became more or less exclusively lesbian during the war when the anonymity and proximity provided by the khaki or blue uniformed women who came to work in London suddenly meant that a far greater number of women, of a certain persuasion, needed somewhere to go they could call their own.

The once green door that led down to The Gateways club

The once green door in Bramerton Street that led down to The Gateways club

A man called Ted Ware took over the club during the war, purportedly winning it in a poker game (“I raise you my lesbian members-only club…”). Ten years later he married an actress called Gina Cerrato in 1953 and she soon took over the running of the club. She was joined after a few years by a butch American woman called Smithy who originally came to England as a member of the American Airforce, but after an arranged marriage in the early sixties, she stayed in England for the rest of her life.

Gina at the Gateways

Gina at her usual place by the door (screen grab from the film)

Smithy behind the bar

The membership fee during the sixties was just ten shillings (50p) and no guests were admitted after ten o’clock to discourage people who had spent their money elsewhere. Maureen Duffy explained that ‘rowdies or troublemakers’ were often banned immediately. This, at the time, was more than just embarrassing, it was unbelievably inconvenient -- the nearest alternative lesbian club would have been in Brighton, travelling to which would have made a social life far too expensive to afford.

Dining out with a girlfriend, even in the sixties, would have also cost too much for most women (who would have usually been earning far less than men for even comparable jobs in those days). It’s easy to forget that women wearing trousers were often still banned from most restaurants at the time, while pubs were still risky places for women unaccompanied by men. For a lot of women, the Gateways Club was the only relaxing and affordable place they had to go.

The Kings Road in 1968

Boutique shopping on the Kings Road 1968

After entering a dull green door on Bramerton Street, there was a steep set of steps leading down to the cloakroom (looked after usually by Gina) and the entrance to the club. The smokey windowless cellar-like room was but 35ft long and featured a bar at one end which was usually ‘manned’ by Smithy. Entertainment was a fruit-machine by a pillar in the centre and a jukebox opposite the bar. It was never known whether Gina and Smithy were a couple (Ted eventually died in 1979) but many suspected they were.

Regulars of the Gateways at the bar (screen grab from film)

During the eighties the club became quieter probably because other lesbian and gay venues were opening in London, and eventually Gateways only opened at weekends. The local neighbourhood in Chelsea was also becoming more and more upmarket and the club lost its late-licence in 1985 due to complaints about loud music. Not long afterwards the famous green door was subsequently closed for ever.

Between the 9th and 16th of June in 1968 The Gateways club became internationally famous when it appeared as a backdrop to many scenes filmed for The Killing Of Sister George, a movie starring Beryl Reid, Coral Browne and Susannah York. In 1960, York, a starlet at the beginning of her acting career and newly married, lived in a house at World’s End in Chelsea just a few hundred yards from the club but it’s reasonably safe to say that, even if she knew it existed, York wasn’t a regular at the Gateways.

Susannah York at her Kings Road flat in 1960

The Kings Road flat with a rather avant-garde painting 1961

York in 1965

York in 1967

A publicity still from Donald Cammell's film Duffy 1968

Robert Aldrich, the director, whose previous film was the slightly more macho The Dirty Dozen, decided to include actual customers rather than extras when they filmed scenes in the club. Gina, Smithy and the regulars performed stiffly and uncomfortably in front of the camera but when the film was released, for a lot of people, this was the first glimpse of a hidden lesbian sub-culture they had ever seen.

Robert Aldrich celebrating Beryl Reid's birthday during filming

York and Reid dressed for the Gateways fancy dress scene

Beryl Reid in the back of a taxi with nuns scene

When Beryl Reid was first introduced to The Gateways she said;

“If I had been here before I did the play I’d never have done it. I didn’t realise they held each other and went to the gent’s loo.”

Reid, when shown the script for the film, also baulked at the sex scenes (the original play had none, in fact when Robert Aldrich first went to see the play he didn’t realise it was about lesbians at all) and said;

“They had me in bed making love to the girl…close like baked beans…I said ‘No, not on your nelly -- or maybe her nelly’. I just could not do it. The thought made me sick. It may be silly, but that sort of physical contact, starkers, with another woman frightened me to death.”

The younger actress Susannah York, who was used to playing free-spirited roles in some of her earlier films, was extremely uncomfortable with the ground-breaking sex scene in the film. Aldrich later wrote;

“Susannah was a bitch to her [Coral Browne] because she [York] simply didn’t want to do the scene.”

Coral Browne, Beryl Reid and Susannah York

The Killing of Sister George can’t be said to be exactly a ‘positive’ view of lesbianism and indeed a critic at the time it was released, suggested that the film ‘dealt with lesbians entirely through the eyes of heterosexual males’. However it was a groundbreaking film in many ways and I think, despite the somewhat cliched dialogue and the stereotypical butch/femme relationships it portrayed, the movie really only condemned or criticised various characters’ foibles and hypocrisies and not really their sexuality. Aldrich said of Beryl Reid’s character;

“Sister George’s loud behavior and individuality . . . are encompassed in her personality, they’re not a product of her lesbianism. . . . She didn’t give a shit about the BBC or the public’s acceptance of her relationships.”

The scenes Aldrich filmed at The Gateways were actually notable for their lack of sensationalism (unlike other films at the time trying to cover similar subject matters) and showed the regulars dancing, drinking and flirting just like any other londoners in any other London club.