Lucille Fay LeSueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, on March 23, 1904. Her father, Thomas E. LeSueur, abandoned her mother, Anna Bell Johnson, and her two eldest children, while she was still pregnant. Anna began a new relationship with Henry J. Cassin, and the family lived with him in Lawton, Oklahoma, where he ran the Ramsey Opera House. After Cassin was accused of embezzling, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1916.

Now penniless, Lucille (nicknamed Billie) received a haphazard education at the various boarding schools where she cooked and cleaned in lieu of tuition fees. She briefly attended college in Columbia, Missouri, before dropping out and returning to Kansas City. She joined a chorus line, travelling to Detroit, Oklahoma City, and Chicago on the revue circuit. In 1924, she caught the eye of producer Jacob J. Shubert, and joined the chorus of Innocent Eyes in New York.

Her screen test for the newly-formed MGM Studios was promising enough to merit a trip to Hollywood. Newly-named Joan Crawford as the result of a magazine contest, she busied herself within MGM’s Culver City walls, and entered and won local dance competitions before playing her first significant role in Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), and being selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1926.

A young Joan Crawford (left) with Dorothy Sebastian in ‘Our Dancing Daughters’ (1928)

She established herself as a romantic foil for matinee idols like John Gilbert and Ramon Navarro, and while appearing in The Unknown (1927), she learned about the craft of acting from co-star Lon Chaney. But it was her role as shop-girl Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) which made Joan Crawford an icon of the flapper generation, and chief rival to Paramount’s ‘It Girl’, Clara Bow. Then in 1929, she married Douglas Fairbanks Jr, elevating her to Hollywood royalty.

Her first talking picture, Untamed (1929), was a hit with the public. In Paid (1930), she played a wrongly accused ex-convict. She would make eight films with Clark Gable, including Possessed (1931) and Dancing Lady (1933.) And in the classic Grand Hotel (1932), she held her own against Greta Garbo and John Barrymore.

As Sadie Thompson in ‘Rain’ (1932)

United Artists hoped to repeat the success of their 1927 adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s provocative short story, “Miss Thompson,” borrowing Crawford from MGM for the lead role. Tongues immediately began wagging. Less than three years had passed since the death of Kansas City native Jeanne Eagels, who had originated the role on Broadway. Crawford’s fellow cast members were plucked from the New York theatre, and remembered Jeanne fondly. “Listen, fishcake,” actor Walter Catlett told Crawford, “When Jeanne Eagels died, Rain died with her.”

Directed by Lewis Milestone, who had won an Oscar for All Quiet On the Western Front (1930), Rain was filmed on Catalina Island, using sets from Gloria Swanson’s silent version. Crawford neglected to build a rapport with her co-stars or the crew, preferring to stay in her bungalow at night and play Bing Crosby records. Her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was also in trouble.

With director Lewis Milestone and Walter Huston (who played Reverend Davidson) on the ‘Rain’ set

When Rain was released in October 1932, Crawford’s previously loyal fan base railed against her playing a prostitute, and for the first time in her career, she began to receive hate mail. Critics were mostly cruel, but some acknowledged her bravery in attempting a fresh take on Sadie Thompson.

“I hope they burn every print of this turkey that’s in existence,” Crawford remarked, seemingly in accord with her detractors. And her opinion did not change over the years. “Every actress is entitled to a few mistakes, and that was one of mine,” she reflected. “I don’t care what anybody says, I was rotten.” However, Crawford’s Rain has aged rather better than might have been predicted. The black-and-white photography creates a dismal, claustrophobic atmosphere, and Joan’s hard-edged performance is unexpectedly moving.

The cast of ‘Rain’

The Fairbanks marriage ended in 1933, and two years later, Joan married stage actor Franchot Tone. In 1937 she was named the first Queen of the Movies by Life magazine, but her victory was short-lived. In 1938, Crawford was one of several stars denounced as ‘box office poison’ by Harry Brandt, President of the Independent Theatre Owners of America.

By 1939 Joan was single again, and making a comeback in George Cukor’s The Women. She adopted a daughter in 1940, naming her Christina. After another acclaimed performance in A Woman’s Face (1941), Joan married actor Philip Terry and they adopted a son.

With Ann Blyth in ‘Mildred Pierce’ (1946)

Crawford’s eighteen years at MGM ended by mutual agreement in 1943. She began a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers, appearing in Hollywood Canteen (1944), and served in the American Women’s Voluntary Services. In 1946, Crawford divorced Terry and starred in the classic film noir, Mildred Pierce, as a self-made businesswoman who sacrifices everything for her treacherous daughter. She followed this with Humoresque (1947) and Flamingo Road (1949), and adopted identical twin girls.

After an Oscar nomination for Sudden Fear (1952), Joan starred in Nick Ray’s subversive Western, Johnny Guitar (1954.) Her final marriage was to Alfred Steele, President of Coca Cola, in 1955. She travelled extensively promoting the brand, even after his death from a heart attack in 1959.

‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ (1962)

In 1962, Robert Aldrich cast Crawford against old rival Bette Davis in the horror classic, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The two actresses played aging child stars, and despite palpable tension on the set, they were reunited in Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964.) By the early 1970s, Joan had retreated from the spotlight. Although she would be ranked tenth in the American Film Institute’s 2004 list of classic Hollywood female stars, her reputation has never fully recovered from daughter Christina’s allegations of abuse.

On May 10, 1977, Joan Crawford died of a heart attack at her New York apartment. Her ashes were placed in a crypt alongside those of her late husband, Alfred Steele.

Gloria May Josephine Swanson was born in Chicago on March 27, 1899. Her father was in the US army, and the family moved frequently during her childhood. After an aunt took her to visit Essanay Studios in Chicago, she left school to work as an extra. She made an uncredited debut in The Song of Soul, and acted alongside Charlie Chaplin in His New Job (1915.)

When her parents separated, Gloria moved to California with her mother, Adelaide. She was teamed with Bobby Vernon in a series of Keystone comedies for producer Mack Sennett, including The Danger Girl (1916) and The Sultan’s Wife (1917.) While working for Sennett, she was briefly married to actor Wallace Beery.

Gloria was glad to escape stunts and slapstick when she signed to Paramount in 1919. That year, she married Herbert K. Somborn, president of Equity Pictures. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born in 1920. Under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, Swanson starred in Don’t Change Your Husband and Male and Female (1919); Why Change Your Wife? and Something to Think About (1920); and The Affairs of Anatol (1921.)

Barely five feet tall, and often bedecked in jewels and feathers, Gloria Swanson was Hollywood’s original fashion plate. In 1921, she began another fruitful partnership with director Sam Wood, starring in The Great Moment, from a story by Elinor Glyn; Beyond the Rocks (1922), with Rudolph Valentino; Zaza (1923), and The Humming Bird (1924.)

Gloria adopted a son, Joseph Patrick Swanson, in 1923. Her divorce from Somborn, finalised in 1925, was embroiled in scandal as he accused her of affairs with thirteen men. As a result, Paramount added a morals clause to her contract. Husbands and lovers came and went, but to her legion of fans she was always ‘Miss Swanson’.

She travelled to France for Madame Sans-Gene (1925.) For the first time, she and director Léonce Perret were allowed to film scenes in historic sites associated with Napoleon. Unfortunately, the film is now considered lost. During production, Gloria began a new romance with her interpreter, Henri, Marquis de la Falaise, becoming the first Hollywood star to marry into minor European nobility.

Later that year, she appeared in a short film with sound, and re-enacted Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils in a technicolour sequence for the hit comedy, Stage Struck. Her last film for Paramount was Fine Manners (1926.) She joined United Artists, founded in 1919 by Chaplin and other stars. But her first independent film, The Love of Sunya (1927), failed to recoup its budget.

Gloria Swanson in ‘Sadie Thompson’ (1928)

“Gloria Swanson is to film ‘Sadie Thompson’ as her next part,” Louella Parsons announced in her syndicated column on May 27, 1927. “I think I should make the distinction that Sadie Thompson and Rain are not one and the same,” she added, “although they are both based on Maugham’s famous character. Rain which Jeanne Eagels made such a hit on the stage is a dramatisation of Sadie Thompson, but it is decidedly censurable. Sadie Thompson in the movies will stick closely to the text of the original story.”

One can imagine the sound of breaking glass and furniture being tossed around the dressing room of the Empire Theatre, where Eagels was starring in Her Cardboard Lover. There had been plans to film Rain since 1923, though as Helen Klumph predicted in the Los Angeles Times, “It looks as though very little could ever really reach the screen. Of course everyone familiar with this great story of S. Maugham’s realized that when the film version came about Sadie Thompson would have been washed white as the driven snow.”

Swanson met with director Raoul Walsh, and the duo came up with the idea of her playing Sadie Thompson. Having seen Eagels in the role at least twice, Swanson thought it perfect for her next project, but there was one problem—the stage play had been added to the list of “immoral” shows banned from screen adaptation by the Hays Office in 1923.

Swanson with co-star and director Raoul Walsh

Swanson and Walsh’s solution was to erase all profanity and change Reverend Davidson to Reformer Atkinson to appease the clergy and censors, but the film was still a risky proposition. The pair worked with United Artists partner, Joseph M. Schenck, who purchased the film rights to John Colton and Clemence Randolph’s play, so that no other studio could produce it. Next, the rights for W. Somerset Maugham’s original story were purchased from his agent. As well as directing, Walsh would play her lover, Sergeant O’Hara, with Lionel Barrymore cast as Atkinson.

Gloria then invited Will Hays to lunch and briefly outlined her project, framing it as a contemporary moral fable. However, a backlash swiftly arose among those who believed the film would irreparably damage American morals. To quell this rising storm, Swanson braved the press, insisting that her motives were honourable. Gossip columns and entertainment sections of newspaper across America were filled with stories from the set of Sadie Thompson. Meanwhile, Jeanne Eagels arrived in Hollywood to star opposite John Gilbert in MGM’s Man, Woman and Sin.

“I know it is an idle dream, but I would be very happy if I could continue playing Sadie Thompson indefinitely,” Swanson told reporters, “for she is a character that will live long in the memories of all who become familiar with her story.” Though this must have infuriated Jeanne, she could take some satisfaction from the fact that Sadie Thompson was now wildly over-budget.

Swanson was forced to sell her Croton-on-Hudson country home and was contemplating the same fate for her Manhattan apartment until Joe Schenck stepped in with the needed funds. Sadie Thompson would become one of Gloria Swanson’s greatest successes, commercially and critically. Unwisely, she had taken advice from her new lover, Joseph P. Kennedy, to sell the rights to Schenck.

Kennedy would also produce her next film, Queen Kelly (1929.) After firing director Eric Von Stroheim, Gloria pieced together the costly footage and hurriedly shot a different ending. Never released in the US, Queen Kelly was shown in Europe and South America. Swanson’s first talking picture, The Trespasser (1929), was more successful.

She divorced Falaise in 1930, marrying an Irish playboy, Michael Farmer, a year later. They had a daughter, Michelle, before divorcing in 1934. Gloria then had a three-year affair with married British actor Herbert Marshall, who had co-starred with Jeanne Eagels in her first talkie, The Letter, shortly before her death in 1929.

Swanson left Hollywood for New York in 1938, and set up an inventions and patents company, enabling Jewish scientists to make a living after fleeing Europe during World War II. She dabbled in fashion design, wrote a syndicated column, performed in summer stock and the occasional movie, and enjoyed painting and sculpting.

Swanson as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950)

Her fifth marriage, to insurance broker William H. Davey in 1945, lasted less than three months. In 1948, she hosted one of the first live television shows, The Gloria Swanson Hour. Then in 1950, she made a spectacular comeback in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. The role of Norma Desmond, a reclusive former silent movie star, was offered to Swanson after being rejected by Mary Pickford, Pola Negri and Mae West. Filmed at Paramount, the studio where Gloria had once reigned supreme, Sunset Boulevard was hailed as a masterpiece.

A lifelong Lutheran and staunch Republican, Swanson petitioned Congress to maintain school prayer in 1964, and was later a prominent advocate of Ronald Reagan during his first presidential campaign. However, Gloria would also support ex-Beatle John Lennon when he applied for US residency, despite his well-known radicalism.

She continued to work in television and theatre, and appeared as herself in the all-star disaster movie, Airport 1975. She married her long-term companion, journalist and ghostwriter William T. Dufty, with whom she collaborated on a bestselling health book, Sugar Blues, in which she extolled the benefits of a macrobiotic diet. An autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, followed in 1980. The couple travelled widely, enjoying the high life and maintaining several lavish homes.

Gloria Swanson died of a heart ailment at New York Hospital on April 4, 1983.

Loretta Helen Cooney was born in Harlem, New York on April 1, 1883, to Irish parents. Her mother, Elizabeth Dorsey, was the owner of a successful millinery, and the family breadwinner. Loretta had two younger siblings. A gifted mimic, she was encouraged by Elizabeth to pursue a life on the stage, though her father, James Cooney, disapproved.

After taking lessons from vaudeville performer Ida Whittington, Loretta started her own act, imitating famous entertainers like Anna Held, and billing herself as ‘La Belle Laurette.’ Then in 1901, Ida introduced her to the playwright and producer, Charles Taylor. Laurette joined his troupe and went on the road in shows like the aptly titled Child Wife – produced just after their marriage. At sixteen, Laurette was twenty years younger than her husband. They had two children, Dwight and Marguerite.

After starring in a series of melodramas penned by Taylor – including From Rags to Riches and Queen of the Highway – Laurette left him in 1907, and returned to New York with her children. She made her Broadway debut in The Great John Ganton (1909.) The play folded after two months, but she would marry its author in 1912.

‘Peg O’ My Heart’ (1912)

John Hartley Manners was a British-born playwright of Irish descent. In December 1912, Laurette began an 18-month run in Peg O’ My Heart, a sentimental comedy-drama written for her by Manners. Her role as Peg O’Connell – an Irish peasant girl left a fortune by her English uncle – was revived in 1921, and her famed performance survives in a silent film directed by King Vidor. Laurette went on to star in Happiness and One Night in Rome, also written by Manners and filmed in the early 1920s. She performed scenes from Shakespeare at the Criterion Theatre in 1918; played the lover of King Charles II in Sweet Nell of Old Drury (1923); and starred in a 1925 revival of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s Trelawny of the Wells.

‘One Night in Rome’ (1924)

Considered one of the finest actresses of her generation, Laurette was also known for erratic behaviour and heavy drinking. After spending a weekend at her home, Noel Coward was inspired to write the hit comedy, Hay Fever, about the madcap antics of an eccentric theatrical family. Laurette never spoke to Coward again.

Her Cardboard Lover was an adaptation of Jacques Deval’s romantic comedy about Simone Lagorce, the mistress of a man who will never divorce his wife. Laurette was cast as Simone, with Englishman Leslie Howard playing Andre, her love interest. Rehearsals began in August 1926 at Laurette’s Easthampton home. In her memoir, Leslie Ruth Howard recalled her father saying he felt Taylor didn’t trust producers Gilbert Miller and A.H. Woods, and that Deval’s hostile attitude hampered her performance. Seemingly miscast, Laurette was ill at ease as the show played in Washington D.C. and Atlantic City. Howard found their intimate scenes “painful to endure.”

The producers decided to close the show in Baltimore, promising a major rewrite and a swift reopening. Assuming that her run-of-the-play contract was guaranteed, Laurette considered a six-week offer on the vaudeville circuit, but when Jane Cowl was rumoured as her replacement, Laurette demanded that Her Cardboard Lover open in New York immediately, with herself in the lead. The producers refused, and she filed charges for breach of contract with Actors Equity. On January 15, 1927, Actors Equity found in her favour. She relinquished the role, and was awarded $4,000. Woods and Miller were freed from their obligations, but without a suitable actress to play Simone. The script was then sent to Jeanne Eagels, who accepted the role.

Jeanne Eagels replaced Taylor in ‘Her Cardboard Lover’ (1927)

Laurette had much in common with Jeanne Eagels, who just finished a triumphant run as Sadie Thompson in Rain – a role with which she would be forever associated. Seven years younger than Laurette, Jeanne also started her career in a road company, and it is believed she was briefly married to her boss, Maurice Dubinsky. She was typecast in ingénue parts – not dissimilar to Peg O’ My Heart – before her breakthrough in Rain, and was known for her mercurial personality. The two actresses had headed the cast of Evening of Happiness, a one-off benefit performance for the Actors Fund, at Brooklyn’s Montauk Theatre back in 1922.

“In the part originally played by Laurette Taylor, Miss Eagels is none too happily cast,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times after Her Cardboard Lover opened at the Empire Theatre on March 21. “As the temperamental Simone, Miss Eagels has rather to create a part from the very lightest substance.” The play closed in July before a nationwide tour in October, enjoying better reviews and a new leading man. In March 1928, however, an exhausted Jeanne was fired after a week’s absence, and slapped with a rather severe eighteen-month ban from the legitimate stage by Actors Equity. She died in October 1929.

‘The Glass Menagerie’ (1946)

Laurette’s later life would also be marred by tragedy after losing her husband in December 1928, as her struggle with alcoholism continued, and her career stalled. In 1932, she starred in a double bill of one-act plays by J.M. Barrie. She also appeared in a 1938 revival of Outward Bound, directed by Otto Preminger. Her final role, as Amanda Wingfield in the original production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (1945), is regarded as one of the defining moments in the history of American acting.

On December 7, 1946, Laurette Taylor died of a coronary thrombosis. She is interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

Leslie Howard Steiner was born in Forest Hill, South London, on April 3, 1893. His mother, Lillian Blumberg, came from an upper middle-class family who initially disapproved of her choice of husband, the Hungarian Ferdinand Steiner. The Steiners briefly moved to Vienna, returning to London when the rift was healed. They had four more children, and changed their name to the less Germanic ‘Stainer’ at the outbreak of World War I.

Leslie was first educated from home, then at Alleyn’s School in Dulwich. An average student, he was encouraged by his mother in his love of writing and theatre. But his father insisted he take a conventional job, and he worked as a bank clerk before enlisting in the British Army. However, his service came to an end when he suffered shellshock in 1916. That year he married Ruth Evelyn Martin, and they later had two children.

He began acting on the London stage, and touring, in popular plays like Peg O’ My Heart, Charley’s Aunt and East is West, before crossing the Atlantic to try his luck on Broadway. In 1920 he founded British Comedy Films, producing and acting in several shorts. His early successes on the New York stage included A.A. Milne’s The Truth About Blayds and The Romantic Age (1922); and Outward Bound (1924.)

With Katherine Cornell in ‘The Green Hat’ (1925)

In 1925, he appeared in A.H. Wood’s production of The Green Hat, adapted from Michael Arlen’s bestselling novel and starring Katherine Cornell. Howard’s next play was also produced by Woods, and would make him a star. Her Cardboard Lover was based on Jacques Deval’s romantic comedy about Simone Lagorce, a Parisian boutique owner unhappily involved with a married man. Desperate to end the affair, Simone hires Andre, an impoverished young gambler, to act as a buffer between herself and her former paramour, and finds herself falling in love with him.

With Jeanne Eagels in ‘Her Cardboard Lover’ (1927)

On March 21, Her Cardboard Lover opened at the Empire Theatre, with Jeanne Eagels as Simone. “After a shaky start, Miss Eagels swept it away magnificently, playing several scenes with an almost fey charm and delicacy and plunging into the romp of the comedy with true comic spirit,” Alexander Woollcott observed in his column for the New York World. “Only to experience, when she responded to the booming calls at the end of the penultimate act, the pang of hearing that unruly audience yell ‘Howard, Howard’ …”

Another critic, Percy Hammond, reported that “the star, with apparent pleasure at her leading man’s popularity, stepped to the footlights and said, ‘I thank you on behalf of my cardboard lover.’”

But in general, the press was no kinder than the audience. While some appreciated Jeanne’s venture into light comedy, most singled out Howard’s performance as the one to watch, and he became the target of her pent-up fury. She ordered the stage manager to move his dressing room across the theatre. When their paths did cross, she ignored him. Even onstage, Leslie wasn’t safe.

On July 18, the producers announced that Her Cardboard Lover would close in twelve days and reopen in Chicago in late September. Rumours had been circulating for a month that Howard wanted to quit the show, but management denied this, saying he would join the supporting cast on tour. Burns Mantle’s August 7 column suggested that Leslie would no longer have to endure the slings and arrows of his former leading lady, as the actor was currently mounting his own play, Murray Hill, and had plans to open in John Galsworthy’s Escape come November.

With Tallulah Bankhead in the London production of ‘Her Cardboard Lover’ (1928)

Howard had said goodbye to Jeanne but not Andre. Her Cardboard Lover moved to London in 1928, where he recreated his ‘smash success’ with Tallulah Bankhead. They were alleged to have become lovers, and despite his long marriage, Leslie was widely regarded as a ladies’ man. Meanwhile, Jeanne Eagels began a nationwide tour of Her Cardboard Lover in October, with another Englishman, Anthony Bushell, replacing Howard.

His next West End play, Berkeley Square – about a young American transported to London to meet his ancestors at the time of the American Revolution – was another hit, later transferring to Broadway. In a 1930 adaptation of Outward Bound, he made the transition from stage to screen, establishing himself as a romantic lead opposite Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931) and Smilin’ Through (1932); and as an adventure hero in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), while the 1935 adaptation of Berkeley Square earned him an Oscar nomination.

With Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis in ‘The Petrified Forest’ (1936)

In 1936, Leslie insisted that Humphrey Bogart, his co-star in The Petrified Forest, be allowed to recreate the role on the screen. Howard’s final Broadway appearance, in Hamlet, was overshadowed by a rival production starring John Gielgud. He acted in some important British films, including the 1934 adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, Of Human Bondage, co-starring Bette Davis; and as Professor Henry Higgins in the 1938 version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. In 1939, Leslie starred opposite Ingrid Bergman in her Hollywood debut, Intermezzo; and also played his most famous role, as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind.

With Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone With the Wind’ (1939)

As World War II broke out, Howard returned to England. He wrote, produced, directed and starred in a number of morale-boosting films, including the 1940 documentary short, Common Heritage; and the war-themed Pimpernel Smith (1941), The First of the Few (1942), and The Gentler Sex (1943.) He also contributed to Powell and Pressburger’s 49^th Parallel (1941) and Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve (1942.)

Leslie Howard died, aged fifty, on June 1, 1943, while flying home from Portugal. The aircraft was shot down by a Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay, killing seventeen people. No bodies were recovered, but a monument to the victims was later built in Spain, close to where the tragedy occurred.

Augustus George Andrews was born in London on April 10, 1868. He was educated at Harrow, one of Britain’s leading public schools. He worked for the publishing house owned by his father, William Joseph Arliss Andrews, before leaving at eighteen to pursue a life on the stage. After a long apprenticeship in provincial theatre, George Arliss established himself as a supporting actor in London’s West End.

In 1899, Arliss married actress Florence ‘Flo’ Montgomery Smith, who became his frequent leading lady. On her advice, he sailed to New York in 1901 with a troupe led by Mrs Patrick Campbell. He went on to join another company led by a female entrepreneur, Mrs Fiske. In 1908, the forty year-old Arliss finally achieved stardom in The Devil. Three years later, he was cast in what would become his most celebrated role – Disraeli – a portrait of the nineteenth century British Prime Minister that had been tailored for Arliss, enjoying an extraordinary five-year run on Broadway and beyond.

‘Disraeli’ (1911)

After two months on tour, actress Margery Maude was leaving to appear in another production. Arliss was excluded from the decision, except in his choice of replacement. He was less concerned with acting ability and beauty than the weight of the actress, because in one scene he would have to carry her across the stage. After stating at her audition that she weighed 117 pounds, Jeanne Eagels was asked to jump into the actor’s arms to prove it.

During rehearsals, Jeanne expressed strong opinions on how her role was to be played. While this infuriated the seasoned thespian, Arliss also saw a spark of genius in the twenty-six year-old actress and took her ideas seriously. For her part, Eagels found Arliss too methodical – even fussy – although she came to respect his devotion to the craft.

‘The Professor’s Love Story’ (1917)

The Professor’s Love Story opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre on February 26. Jeanne would be pulling double duty over the following weeks: filming in New Jersey by day, and treading the boards on Broadway at night. The play closed on April 7. By then, Jeanne had been cast in Arliss’ revival of Disraeli, due to open on April 9. She and Arliss had performed the final act on March 30, during an Anti-Vivisection Benefit held at the Knickerbocker.

Arliss’ signature piece re-enacted Benjamin Disraeli’s attempt to gain control of the Suez Canal through finance. Jeanne was to play Lady Clarissa Pevensey, replacing Elsie Leslie in the original production. Lady Clarissa was one of several fictional characters created to support the leading man, and critics found Jeanne “delightful” in her aristocratic role. Disraeli’s Broadway run ended in the third week of May. This must have been a great relief to Jeanne, who was already working on another film.

‘Hamilton’ (1917)

The final Arliss-Eagels collaboration was co-written by Arliss and inspired by the life of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury during George Washington’s first Administration. Jeanne was cast as Maria Reynolds, Hamilton’s erstwhile mistress, while Florence Arliss played Mrs. Hamilton. Mrs. Reynolds’ husband, a former Commissary officer of the American Revolution, blackmailed Hamilton over the affair. Hamilton opened in Atlantic City’s Apollo Theatre on September 6, transferring to the Knickerbocker Theatre eleven days later. The play closed in New York after eighty performances and proceeded to tour until April 1918.

George Arliss had nothing but praise for his co-star. “Three distinct parts, each played with unerring judgement and artistry!” he said. “She has the vital sense of time. Hers was the talent of making a role a character, epitomizing biography and stepping on to the stage as a person, not a part.” Like Arliss, Eagels would become indelibly associated with one role in particular: that of Sadie Thompson in Rain.

Florence Arliss with Jeanne Eagels in ‘Hamilton’

Arliss made his movie debut with a silent adaptation of The Devil in 1921, followed by Disraeli, with Louise Huff as Clarissa. He scored another Broadway success as the Rajah of Rukh in The Green Goddess, which also transferred to the screen. His final stage roles were in John Galsworthy’s Old English (1924), and as Shylock in a 1928 revival of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

In 1929, Arliss remade Disraeli as a talking picture, with Florence Arliss reprising her role as Lady Beaconsfield, and a young Joan Bennett as Clarissa. Arliss was given unprecedented artistic control for an actor in the studio era. Working closely with Darryl F. Zanuck – first at Warner Brothers, and later at Zanuck’s newly-formed 20th Century Pictures – Arliss was permitted to choose his director and co-stars, and rewrite scripts. In Alexander Hamilton (1931), June Collyer played Maria Reynolds, the role created by Jeanne Eagels. In 1932, Arliss helped launch the career of an actress often compared to Eagels, when he insisted that newcomer Bette Davis be cast in The Man Who Played God.

Arliss with Bette Davis in ‘The Man Who Played God’ (1932)

The Arlisses starred in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1938 radio production of Disraeli before travelling to London in April 1939. The outbreak of World War II prevented the couple from returning to America, and in 1941, Arliss was prosecuted under a new British law for failing to report his bank accounts in the US and Canada. He remained in London throughout the Blitz years, before settling in Pangbourne, Berkshire.

George Arliss died, aged seventy-seven, of a bronchial ailment in Maida Hill, London, on February 5, 1946. He is buried in the All Saints churchyard at Harrow Weald. His wife, Florence, passed away in 1950.

Anthony Arnatt Bushell was born in Westerham, Kent on May 19, 1904. He was educated at Magdalen College School, and later Hertford College in Oxford. He was a champion boxer, rower, and member of the Hypocrites Club, infamous for its wild parties. After graduating, Bushell trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made his theatrical debut in Diplomacy (1924), opposite Gerald Du Maurier.

In October 1927, Bushell crossed the Atlantic to star in Her Cardboard Lover, replacing fellow Englishman Leslie Howard. His leading lady was Jeanne Eagels. After a four-month run on Broadway, Her Cardboard Lover – based on Jacques Deval’s romantic comedy, with additional material by P.G. Wodehouse – was set for a nationwide tour. Bushell’s role as Andre, an impoverished gambler hired by a Parisian divorcee (Eagels) to act as a buffer between herself and her former husband (Barry O’Neill), was considered the best part, and Howard’s exit had been partly been caused by his rivalry with Jeanne.

She would later claim that Bushell was recommended to her by Edward, Prince of Wales during a trip abroad in the summer of 1926. This cannot have been correct, however, because Eagels had spent the previous summer touring America in her great success, Rain. Prince Edward had attended an earlier performance during his trip to New York in 1924.

As Her Cardboard Lover began its tour with stops in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Newark, Jeanne finally won the critical acclaim denied to her during the play’s initial run. Without Leslie Howard to steal her thunder, the show was running smoothly. “Once the audience had decided to take the play as a bit of nonsense – and it was that – it just settled back to have a good time,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, adding, “the star was ably assisted by Anthony Bushell, a good-looking youngster …”

In January 1928, Her Cardboard Lover received a mixed review from the Boston Globe. Once again, Eagels was overshadowed: “When Leslie Howard acted this role in New York he fairly ran away with the honors of the performance. Here the part is very agreeably played by Anthony Bushell, a personable young English actor.” In February, the Chicago Tribune noted, “Anthony Bushell is pleasant, engaging and fairly expert.”

Jeanne Eagels in ‘Her Cardboard Lover’

While this might have bothered Jeanne a few months earlier, she now had more pressing matters on her mind. This was made clear when a press statement announced that she was divorcing her husband. On March 11, the company arrived in Milwaukee for a week’s run at the Davidson Theatre. However, on opening night it was announced that Eagels was unable to perform, due to severe ptomaine poisoning. The Davidson Theatre remained dark all week. Jeanne was confined to her room at the Milwaukee Plaza Hotel, accepting no calls or visitors. It was hoped that she would recover in time for the St. Louis opening on March 19, but when the company left, Jeanne remained at the Plaza.

The main reason behind Jeanne’s self-imposed seclusion, according to press-agent John Montague, was unrequited love. “Miss Eagels fell in love like she did everything else – tempestuously,” he observed, “and when the youth of her choice showed a preference for another woman, she shot up like a sky-rocket and carried the stick – which was her career – up with her.” Montague didn’t name the object of her infatuation, but he was most likely Barry O’Neill, who at twenty-nine was eight years her junior, rather than the twenty-three year-old Bushell.

Not knowing when, or even if their star would be ready to resume Her Cardboard Lover, the producers cancelled the rest of the tour and the cast headed back to New York. Meanwhile, Actors Equity filed charges against Eagels, on April 6, she was suspended from any union production for eighteen months.

Bushell married actress Zelma O’Neal, and in November, made his Broadway debut in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Sacred Flame, starring Conrad Nagel and Lila Lee. It folded in December after just twenty-four performances. Meanwhile, Jeanne Eagels signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, and her first talking picture, The Letter (another Maugham vehicle) opened to acclaim in March 1929.

Bushell with Jeanne Eagels in ‘Jealousy’ (1929)

Paramount announced on February 2 that they had purchased Jealousy, a play by Louis Verneuil, for Jeanne’s next picture. The storyline focused on Yvonne, newly married to Pierre, a poor and temperamental artist. Anthony Bushell was cast as Pierre. With Jeanne among colleagues who knew and respected her, Jealousy should have progressed comfortably, but after executives saw the finished product, they became concerned with Bushell’s performance. Published reports implied that his voice hadn’t adapted well to the sound equipment, and he was subsequently replaced by Fredric March. An editorial in Photoplay may have revealed the truth when posing this cryptic question: “Did you ever hear of a film actress being so tempestuously good that her work dangerously overshadowed that of her leading man?”

In a strange twist of fate, the revered English actor George Arliss, whom Eagels had supported during his theatrical tour of Disraeli twelve years before, insisted Bushell be cast as the romantic juvenile in the screen adaptation, after seeing his performance in The Sacred Flame. Joan Bennett took the role formerly played by Jeanne. Disraeli was released in November 1929: two months after Jealousy’s opening, and only a month after Eagels’ tragic death.

Bushell with George Arliss in ‘Disraeli’ (1929)

With Joan Bennett in ‘Disraeli’

In James Whale’s anti-war film, Journey’s End (1930), Bushell played the first of many military roles. In Five Star Final (1931), a pre-code exposé of newspaper corruption, he supported Edward G. Robinson. Bushell played Captain Dobbin in his last American film, a 1932 adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Back in Britain, he continued making films, including The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), which starred Leslie Howard (the original Andre from Her Cardboard Lover.) His marriage to Zelma O’Neal ended in 1936, and in 1937, he appeared with Vivien Leigh in Dark Journey.

When World War II broke out in 1939, thirty-five year-old Bushell joined the British Army. He was commissioned in the Welsh Guards and served in the Guards Armoured Division as a tank squadron commander. During the war, he married an heiress whom, according to actor David Niven, had been the wife of a fellow officer. After being demobbed in 1945, he was known as Major Bushell.

Bushell on the set of Olivier’s ‘Hamlet’, 1948

He returned to film and began a long association with Sir Laurence Olivier, working as assistant producer on Hamlet (1948), in which Olivier starred and also directed. Bushell played a bomb disposal expert in Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room (1948), and made his directorial debut with The Angel With the Trumpet (1950), followed by The Long Dark Hall in 1951.

In 1956, he played a wily politician in another Powell and Pressburger film, The Battle of the River Plate; and was an associate director on George Cukor’s Bhowani Junction, as well as another Olivier project, The Prince and the Showgirl, overseeing scenes in which the actor-director performed. Bushell may have been reminded of his difficulties with Jeanne Eagels almost thirty years before, as the production was rife with tension between Olivier and his co-star, Marilyn Monroe.

“Tony looks like a bluff military man – bald, red-faced and jovial,” Colin Clark (an assistant director) noted in his diary, later published as The Prince, the Showgirl and Me. “In fact he was in the Guards during the war and almost everyone forgets he is an actor … I don’t think Tony could direct traffic in Cheltenham. Despite his imposing appearance he is really a pussy cat. But [Olivier] needs a chum to guard his rear, as it were, and it is a great joy to have Tony around. He has a heart the size of a house which he loves to hide behind a glare.”

Bushell was cast as the Captain of Carpathia in A Night to Remember, Roy Ward Baker’s 1958 film about the Titanic disaster; and in 1959, he played Colonel Breen in the classic sci-fi television series, Quatermass and the Pit. Later that year, he directed several episodes of The Third Man, a BBC adaptation of Grahame Greene’s novel. He directed Christopher Lee in The Terror of the Tongs (1961), and produced a 1962 series about the explorer, Sir Francis Drake.

By the late 1960s, he had retired from the film industry. He continued to enjoy a busy social life, and became a director of the Monte Carlo Golf Club. Anthony Bushell died aged ninety-two in Oxford on April 2, 1997.

Madonna’s third album, True Blue, was released on June 30, 1986. Recorded during the honeymoon period of her stormy marriage to Sean Penn, and revealing a sleeker, more sophisticated style, True Blue yielded a slew of classic pop singles, affirming Madonna’s status as one of the decade’s musical icons. Thirty years on, you can read my expanded review here.

John Cecil Pringle was born on July 10, 1897, in Logan, Utah. His parents were both stock company actors, and after their divorce his mother married Walter Gilbert. After many years on the road, the family settled in California. Jack, as he was nicknamed, began working at Thomas Ince’s studio in 1915, graduating from bit parts to more substantial roles over the next five years. He married Olivia Burwell in 1918, but they separated a year later.

Credited as Jack Gilbert, he appeared in nearly fifty films during this period, including Heart O’ the Hills (1919), with Mary Pickford. Mentored by filmmaker Maurice Tourneur, Gilbert also turned his hand to writing and directing.

In 1921, Gilbert signed a three-picture contract with the newly-formed Fox Film Corporation. With dark, curly hair and a twinkle in his eye, he was a natural leading man. In Shame (1921) he was billed as John Gilbert. His ‘swashbuckling’ turn as the Count in Monte Cristo (1922), based on Alexander Dumas’ novel, made Gilbert a star. Subsequent roles at Fox included St. Elmo (1923) and The Wolf Man (1924.)

Gilbert’s second marriage, to actress Leatrice Joy, ended amid accusations of his heavy drinking and infidelity. Their daughter, also named Leatrice, was born in 1924. That year, John moved to MGM, which was fast establishing itself as Hollywood’s leading studio. As his career entered its peak, Gilbert was described as ‘The Great Lover’.

‘The Big Parade’ (1925)

His Hour (1924), King Vidor’s adaptation of an Elinor Glyn romance, was followed by He Who Gets Slapped, a Lon Chaney vehicle in which Gilbert and Norma Shearer provided the love interest. In Erich Von Stroheim’s The Merry Widow (1925), Gilbert wooed Mae Murray. A classic of silent cinema, Vidor’s The Big Parade was set during World War I, and became the most successful film ever made (until Gone With the Wind was released in 1939.) Vidor directed Gilbert again in La Bohéme (1926), also starring Lillian Gish; and another swashbuckler, Bardelys the Magnificent.

‘Flesh and the Devil’ (1926)

In Flesh and the Devil (1926), Gilbert was paired with Greta Garbo, a twenty year-old Swede who was taking Hollywood by storm. Their chemistry was palpable, and the love affair continued behind the scenes. It is rumoured that Gilbert proposed to Garbo several times, but she always refused. Gilbert next appeared in Todd Browning’s The Show (1927.)

By early 1927, Garbo was asserting her independence in other ways. Although she was MGM’s hottest property, studio head Louis B. Mayer was determined to have the upper hand. New York’s Daily Star reported that MGM was ‘going ahead with plans to have Jeanne Eagels play the role of Anna Karenina’ in their version of Tolstoy’s classic novel, retitled Love.

As punishment, Garbo was given a minor role in another film. The leading lady dropped out, and Mayer blamed Greta. She stood firm, and by March, her contract had been renegotiated. Love began shooting with Garbo and Ricardo Cortez. Unhappy with the early footage, production chief Irving Thalberg insisted on replacing Cortez with John Gilbert. Although Edmund Goulding was credited as director, it is believed Gilbert did most of his work, as Garbo insisted on his approving every scene.

With Greta Garbo in ‘Love’ (1927)

On August 5, reports circulated that Jeanne Eagels would star opposite Gilbert in her Hollywood debut, MGM’s The Fires of Youth. This would not be a remake of her 1917 Thanhouser film of the same name, but an original story written and directed by Monta Bell, who had directed Gilbert in The Snob (1924.) It was later renamed Man, Woman and Sin. Eagels played the society columnist for a Washington newspaper, where she meets a cub reporter (Gilbert). He falls in love with her, but she is also the mistress of the newspaper’s owner. Eagels left for Washington in the second week of August, joining Gilbert and Bell to film exterior scenes before heading to California, and the Culver City lot for interiors.

Gilbert with director Monta Bell and Jeanne Eagels

Difficulties were reported from the set of Man, Woman and Sin. Eagels had a reputation for erratic behaviour, but the challenges she faced in making the transition from stage to screen were considerable. Rather than flowing continuously, the action was divided into tiny segments, and repeated until the director approved. Scenes were shot out of sequence to save money. This created a start-and-stop mentality which could be frustrating, particularly to a stage actress.

According to Garbo’s biographer, Karen Swenson, Gilbert flirted with Eagels in a futile attempt to make his girlfriend jealous. Shortly after her arrival in Hollywood, Gilbert invited Eagels to a party at his hilltop home. ‘I was awfully frightened driving up the road to his house,’ she told the Los Angeles Times. ‘I told Mr Gilbert he should never be able to get rid of me, because I shall simply never dare to drive down that road again.’ However, Eve Golden writes in John Gilbert: Last of the Silent Stars that ‘Eagels’ timing was off: had it not been for Garbo, Jack would no doubt have taken her up on that.’

‘Man, Woman and Sin’ (1927)

In addition to her problems at MGM, Eagels’ marriage was in trouble. Towards the end of September, husband Ted Coy arrived unexpectedly on the set to escort her back to New York. According to the New York Times, ‘the report on the great White Way was that the star was released from her film contract owing to temperamental differences with the management.’

Man, Woman and Sin was released on November 19, and despite its troubled production, was popular with both critics and audiences. After Eagels’ tragic death in October 1929, Gilbert told the Los Angeles Times that ‘she seemed to hate the movies for the popularity they could not give her. The blind, unreasoning adulation of the movie fans was a type of popularity she spurned. Fundamentally, Jeanne was much superior to us. Movie actors are crazy to be worshipped. She wanted to be understood and appreciated.’

Gilbert’s love scene with Jeanne Eagels

Gilbert starred in another epic adventure, The Cossacks (1928), before reuniting with Garbo in A Woman of Affairs. His last silent film was Desert Nights (1929.) In May he eloped with Ina Claire, a Broadway actress who had befriended Jeanne Eagels during their chorus girl days, and was now also branching out into movies. But Gilbert’s luck was running out. His first talking picture, His Glorious Night, was said to have flopped because his voice was too high. Some believed that Louis B. Mayer, who disliked Gilbert, had tinkered with the sound, but in fact, his voice was perfectly acceptable – it was the risible dialogue that hampered his performance.

Gilbert with his third wife, Ina Claire

While Mayer tried to force Gilbert out of his contract, assigning him to mediocre projects, he had a powerful ally in Thalberg, who cast him in The Phantom of Paris (1931) and Downstairs (1932), which Gilbert co-wrote. Directed by his old cohort, Monta Bell, Downstairs also co-starred Virginia Bruce, who became Gilbert’s fourth wife. Their daughter, Susan Ann, was born a year later.

‘Queen Christina’ (1933)

Gilbert left MGM in 1933, but Greta Garbo persuaded him to return for their last picture together, Queen Christina. Now separated from his wife, Gilbert was a chronic alcoholic. With almost a hundred films to his name, he was down but not out. After filming The Captain Hates the Sea at Columbia, he began dating another European star, Marlene Dietrich, and was set to appear in her next film, Desire.

On January 9, 1936, John Gilbert suffered a heart attack and died aged thirty-eight – just a few months younger than his tempestuous former co-star, Jeanne Eagels, had been when she died six years earlier. Gilbert was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

British journalist Gary Younge has a sharp eye for how political events impact on ordinary lives. While living in Chicago, he investigated the stories behind the blunt statistics of ten children and teenagers shot dead in a single day. Never intrusive, but quietly devastating, Another Day in the Death of America illuminates with rare power.

Sylvia Patterson was a doyenne of the British music press throughout the 80s and 90s, and beyond. This book winningly combines her many interviews with pop’s heroes (and zeroes) with a moving and funny personal memoir.

True stories about some of the eccentrics, crooks, stars and fools who have made waves in London over the last hundred years. Based on Rob Baker’s Nickel in the Machine blog, this is a literary time capsule.

For many people, Julie Christie is an icon of the Sixties: blonde, beautiful and free-spirited. But Melanie Bell’s short biography reveals how successfully Christie has managed her life and career on her own terms.

An engaging study of Natalie Wood, a child star in the classic Hollywood mould who came of age just as the studio system broke down. An eternal ingenue, she was torn between creative ambition and fulfilling her celebrity status.

Lana Del Rey’s meteoric career is measured song by song, from her earliest incarnations to last year’s Honeymoon, in this thoughtful study by F.A. Mannan – the first book to consider her as a creative artist.

Asked to write a short biography for a French film guide, journalist Nathalie Leger went in search of the real Barbara Loden, and found instead a uniquely American fable of dreams fulfilled and lost.

Britain’s most popular wartime actress, Margaret Lockwood was a refined, yet steely siren. In just under 200 pages, Lyndsy Spence shows that ‘less is more’ with her bewitching portrait of a very British star.

Chris Wade, a prolific musician and writer, gives an unabashed fan’s opinionated take on Madonna’s entire discography, from her 1983 debut to last year’s Rebel Heart. He has also published a companion volume on her movie ventures

Among other treasures I’ve enjoyed this year are the letters of Jean Rhys; Elena Ferrante’s Frantumaglia; Kembrew McLeod on Blondie’s Parallel Lines; and Peter Shelley’s biography of Hollywood renegade Frances Farmer. And this Christmas I’ll be reading Amy: A Life Through the Lens, and a critical study of her masterpiece, Back to Black; Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life; and in contrast, British Witch Legends of Sussex.

I discovered Barack Obama in the pages of a Sunday supplement, while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. A year later, he was running for president. His rival for the Democratic nomination was Hillary Clinton, and at first it seemed unlikely that this little-known senator could outrun a former First Lady. But Obama’s message renewed long-buried hopes, and in the early days of social media he ran a people-powered campaign, based on word of mouth and thousands of small donations.

The West was battered by its war on terror and financial collapse, making Obama’s Republican opponent, World War II hero John McCain, the wrong man for the times. While standing in a school playground in Brighton on the morning of Obama’s victory in November 2008, I noticed smiles and cheerful talk from other parents about America’s first black president.

My own enthusiasm for Obama cost me an American friend, who gloated that Labour would lose our next election (and of course, they did.) Obama’s response to the recession was to invest, in contrast to the austerity measures pursued here by David Cameron after 2010. But in the corporate world, business continued as usual.

The mirage of a post-racial society dissolved amid tea-party politics and police shootings. Protest movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter sprang up, while Obama cracked down on whistleblowers, increased surveillance and drone attacks abroad. He expanded public healthcare, and in his second term, put the case for gun control to a mostly hostile Congress.

Today, his controversial successor will be inaugurated after one of the most divisive contests in modern history. I shall miss Barack Obama’s intelligence and charm, and I wonder if he’ll return to writing books as thoughtful and candid as Dreams From My Father. For this generation, the Obama era was our Camelot. He could never have satisfied all our expectations, but we still have the hope he inspired. From now on, it falls upon us to turn the changes we dreamed of into reality.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes, 1951

Ella Fitzgerald in Cannes by Jean-Pierre LeLoir, 1958

Ella Fitzgerald was born a century ago today, on April 25, 1917. Her voice was like sunshine, or a glass of champagne. As a woman, she had great warmth and dignity. She was also a friend to Marilyn Monroe, who had been introduced to her work by jazz pianist and arranger Hal Schaefer in 1953.

“The most important influence on Marilyn’s vocal art was in fact a recording I gave her called Ella Sings Gershwin, for which there was only Ellis Larkin’s piano accompaniment,” Schaefer explained to Donald Spoto. “Marilyn had a problem with singing in tune, but everything else she did was wonderful,” Hal told Michelle Morgan. “I told her to listen to this album because never had there been a singer more in tune than Ella.” (First released in 1950, Ella Sings Gershwin is available to stream on Spotify.)

The story of how Marilyn secured a nightclub engagement for Ella in Los Angeles has been retold many times, and some of the details are vague. But the original version came from Ella herself. The women stayed in touch, and a Christmas card from Ella was found among Marilyn’s possessions after she died. Their unusual bond is the subject of a children’s book by Helen Hancocks, Ella Queen of Jazz.

It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed was published. I feel immensely proud to have been part of bringing her unjustly neglected legacy back to the spotlight, and will be eternally grateful to my writing partner, Eric M. Woodard, for giving me that opportunity. Last night I was thrilled to find an Amazon review from author Stephen Michael Shearer, who has produced acclaimed biographies of Hedy Lamarr and Patricia Neal, as well as silent movie superstar Gloria Swanson, who as readers may recall also played a scene-stealing role in Jeanne’s story (starring as Sadie Thompson in the first big-screen Rain.) Belated thanks to Stephen for a fair and generous assessment of our book – and if you’ve read it, please consider doing likewise and sharing a review on Amazon, Goodreads and the blogosphere.

Why this book is important is because no other biography has been written about this gifted, yet tragically doomed actress, except a quickly pieced together tome, THE RAIN GIRL, in 1930. And it is huge disappointment. In JEANNE EAGELS: A LIFE REVEALED (BearManor Media, 2016) the two authors have sifted through innumerable articles, newspaper and magazine pieces, interviews, etc. to at least logically chronicle Eagels’ life and career. Their research, to this reader, sparkles and shines….the kind of meat one likes with this rich meal of a book.

This book is needed for its rich theatre context. Who wants to read about a long-forgotten, beautiful stage actress, tragically dead before her time (due to booze, drugs, sinus infection, broken heart, or whatever) who was a dramatic sensation in the annals of theatre history known for one truly defining stage role….a remarkable, mesmerizing actress who in her first talking picture earned the highest of cinema recognition? Well, I for one DO want to know more about JEANNE EAGELS. This book gives us the facts.

My first memory of Diana is visual: that blue suit she wore and the sapphire ring, on the day of her engagement. When she married Charles in 1981 I was nine years old; she was twice my age, but still hardly a woman. I stood around the TV that summer in Ireland with my mother, grandma and auntie, who exited en masse as Diana clambered out of the royal carriage in her billowing dress: “It’s creased!”

It was the age of New Romantics, and I recall the outfit I wanted for a birthday party around this time – a white blouse with high-neck frill, and black velvet knickerbockers. I don’t remember the party, or if I wore that outfit again. I also had one of the many Diana picture books rushed into print – I’m not sure who gave it to me, but it might have come from the Marks & Spencer sale.

After learning that British royals don’t marry Catholics, I abandoned my girlish notion of becoming a princess. Behind the doors of Kensington Palace, the fairytale marriage was crumbling. Diana’s style changed, turning sleek and modern as she embraced the next decade. She emerged as a political force, aligning herself with AIDS patients and children of war. And she encouraged others too, as my friend Fraser Penney told me:

I remember when she was first introduced to the media and it was really like a tidal wave of affection and interest. But it wasn’t really until the cracks started to appear that there was a change in the air. It was like she evolved into something else. She gained power without really having any if you know what I mean? Each thing she got involved with seemed to bring awareness to many things that possibly others would shy away from. It’s the reason I got into care work and helping people with special needs. She inspired me in that I knew I had to help and support others. Nobody really demonstrated that before her.

Diana was born into privilege and, seemingly, had no special talent (although in another life, according to Wayne Sleep, she might have been a dancer.) But like Marilyn Monroe, she was warm and sensitive, and her tremulous beauty – ‘the silvery witch of us all’, as Norman Mailer once wrote of MM – was highly photogenic. Of course, they both died at thirty-six.

Mario Testino’s images of Diana in her last spring remind me of Bert Stern and George Barris’ so-called ‘last sittings’ with Monroe. But there’s another, more contemporary parallel: just a few years before, Testino had photographed Madonna, playing at being a princess. Her video for ‘Drowned World (Substitute for Love)‘ evokes the relentless pursuit of women in the spotlight. But for Elton John, Diana was just another ‘candle in the wind.’

In August 1997, I was twenty-five and living with my husband in a studio flat on Grand Parade, just a stone’s throw away from Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, when I heard of her death on the radio. The dusty, silent streets seemed eerie that morning, as I passed the legend ‘DIANA DEAD’ on a newsstand. Two decades on, I’m nine years older than she was then; and like her, I have two lovely sons and a healthy contempt for English elites. In this frightening era of Trump and Putin, the loss of Diana still haunts us. As another anniversary approaches, I’m struck by these prescient words from Hilary Mantel:

Myth does not reject any material. It only asks for a heart of wax. Then it works subtly to shape its subject, mould her to be fit for fate. When people described Diana as a ‘fairytale princess’, were they thinking of the cleaned-up versions? Fairytales are not about gauzy frocks and ego gratification … She was not a saint, or a rebel who needs our posthumous assistance – she was a young woman of scant personal resources who believed she was basking with dolphins when she was foundering among sharks. But as a phenomenon, she was bigger than all of us: self-renewing as the seasons, always desired and never possessed.

I have written two new reviews for the Immortal Marilyn website. The first, Dead Blondes: You Must Remember Marilyn, covers film historian Karina Longworth’s podcast series from earlier this year, while Artists in Love: Marilyn and Arthur Miller looks back at a 2016 TV documentary for the Sky Arts channel.

Jeremy Hutchinson, the pioneering defence lawyer who was a champion of liberty throughout his long career, has died at the grand old age of 102. 

His father, John Hutchinson, was a King’s Counsel, while his mother, Mary Barnes, was close to the Bloomsbury Group. After graduating from Oxford in 1939, Jeremy enlisted in the Navy. A year later he married actress Peggy Ashcroft, and in 1946, he returned to the Bar under the tutelage of James Burge. Both men would become models for Horace Rumpole, hero of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey. In 1955, Hutchinson represented the Belgian government in a fruitless attempt to extradite Emil Savundra for a fraud committed in Antwerp.

In 1960, he successfully defended Penguin Books in a landmark obscenity trial over their publication of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. A year later he ‘took the silk’ and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He then acted for the defence in two spy cases, involving George Blake and John Vassall.

In July 1963, Jeremy’s former mentor, James Burge, defended Dr Stephen Ward in court, at the height of the Profumo Affair. Mervyn Griffith-Jones, an ultra-conservative who had opposed Jeremy in the Chatterley trial, once again acted for the prosecution. Despite their very different views on society, Hutchinson would send his old adversary a letter of congratulations when he was made a judge in 1964. Griffith-Jones replied, “Bless you for your letter – I cried.”

Jeremy would also be involved in the Profumo Affair’s final act, defending Christine Keeler in her perjury trial after her former lover, Lucky Gordon, successfully appealed against a serious assault conviction. (Gordon also died earlier this year, aged eighty-five.)

Keeler had been involved in a violent, obsessive relationship with Gordon for several months when the news broke of her earlier affair with War Minister John Profumo. While staying with her friend Paula in April 1963, she had a fight with Paula’s brother, John Hamilton-Marshall, leaving her with a black eye and several bruises. Later that night, two other men, Rudolph ‘Truello’ Fenton and Clarence Commachio, were with her in the flat when Lucky Gordon arrived. He allegedly lunged at a terrified Christine, who fell to the ground, and the two men held him back until he agreed to go. Keeler called the police, reportedly pinning her prior injuries onto Gordon in a desperate bid to get him off her back.

Some historians have speculated that the entire incident was orchestrated by the police, but Jeremy dismissed this theory. In June, Profumo admitted his affair with Christine and resigned, while Lucky Gordon – after a rambling self-defence in which he accused her of giving him venereal disease – was convicted of grievous bodily harm. In July, as Stephen Ward’s trial for living of immoral earnings drew to an end, Ward committed suicide. Jeremy’s old pupil master James Burge was haunted by the case, which is now widely considered a miscarriage of justice. Jeremy would later describe it as a “revenge match” for the Chatterley trial, and “the last fling of the establishment.”

One of the many prominent men named during the trial was Emil Savundra, who was said to have visited Mandy Rice-Davies at Ward’s flat on several occasions. The so-called ‘Indian doctor’ (Savundra was actually Sri Lankan, and not a doctor) would finally be jailed for fraud in 1968.

Gordon’s appeal was heard while Ward’s trial was still ongoing, which drew widespread criticism. Lord Justice Parker received statements from Clarence Commachio and John Hamilton-Marshall, as well as a taped confession from Keeler. But, perhaps mindful of her being a prosecution witness in Ward’s trial, Parker insisted that her evidence had not been untruthful.

Christine’s perjury trial, which took place in December 1963, is the subject of a full chapter in Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories, the 2015 book by Thomas Grant, written with Jeremy’s co-operation. All heads turned as Keeler – “the most recognisable face in England at the time” – arrived for her first meeting at Jeremy’s chambers. “What sticks most forcefully in my mind is the disparity between her porcelain, mask-like looks, still undeniably beautiful, and her voice,” he recalled. “It was the voice of a person who had lived many years longer than her twenty-one years and who seemed to have grown entirely weary of life. It was a voice which had lost any joy in life.”

“The Profumo Affair has been painted as one of the first eruptions of the swinging sixties. I saw it as anything but,” Hutchinson remarked. “The history of the previous two years was one of sleaziness not sexiness.”

Keeler admitted to lying by omission in not mentioning the presence of Fenton and Commachio that evening, but the prosecution accepted her not-guilty plea to the charge that she had lied about Gordon assaulting her, as he may have been partially responsible for her injuries. But the real challenge lay in convincing the jury that she was far from the ‘vampiric harpy’ of tabloid lore.

“There are people, and wicked people, who want to see this young woman – let me say it quite simply – sent away,” Jeremy told Judge Anthony Hawke. He depicted Ward, her former mentor, as “a sort of perverted Professor Higgins,” and Keeler as “straightforward and curiously naive.” In his 1964 book, The Trial of Stephen Ward, Ludovic Kennedy noted that Hutchinson’s moralistic tone was not dissimilar to that of Mervyn Griffith-Jones.

“And now, I know, Your Lordship will resist the temptation for what I might call society’s pound of flesh,” he concluded. Judge Hawke sentenced Christine to nine months’ imprisonment. She had been expecting two years. Hutchinson’s speech has been hailed as one of the most brilliant (and longest) ever heard at the Bailey. For her part, Keeler was one of his only clients not to keep in touch. Understandably embittered by the whole affair, she may have perceived his sympathy as condescension.   

After twenty-five years and two children, Jeremy’s marriage to Peggy Ashcroft ended in divorce. He married June Osborn in 1966, and they stayed together for forty years. He also remained on good terms with his first wife, arranging a memorial service after her death in 1991.  

Hutchinson was much in demand with authors and playwrights who challenged social taboos during the next decade, from the unexpurgated paperback reissue of John Cleland’s 18th Century erotic novel, Fanny Hill, to Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial film, Last Tango in Paris. He defended Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson, faced off Mary Whitehouse in another censorship trial, and won an acquittal for Howard Marks in a sensational case relating to the largest importation of cannabis in British history.

He was made a life peer in 1978, becoming Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, the Sussex village where he kept a home. He sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party, which he had joined in 1936 after seeing the Jarrow strikers march on Piccadilly. In 1945, he had stood for Labour in the Westminster by-election. By 1981, however, he had followed his friend Roy Jenkins in defecting to the SDP (and later, the Liberals.)

After retiring from the Bar in 1984, he focused on the arts (he was a Chairman of the Tate Gallery); and also on probation work, including campaigns for lighter sentencing. In his final speech to the House of Lords in 2001, he criticised the ban on fox-hunting; then in 2013, he warned about cuts to legal aid. These divergent positions show him as a man who respected tradition, but was also a great moderniser. Jeremy Hutchinson was a progressive force in twentieth century Britain, and in an uncertain new era, we can only hope that his beneficence will not be forgotten.

In 1991, Madonna’s fame was at its height. Truth or Dare, her behind-the-scenes documentary filmed during the Blond Ambition tour a year earlier, caused a sensation with its revealing take on the star. After reaching her pop apotheosis with Like a Prayer, she had struck out in new directions with ‘Vogue’ and ‘Justify My Love’ (a sultry, experimental track produced by Andre Betts, with a video banned by MTV.)

While filming A League Of Her Own in Indiana, Madonna began swapping demo tapes with Shep Pettibone, the DJ and remixer with whom she produced ‘Vogue’. They worked together on ‘This Used to Be My Playground’, a wistful ballad for her new film, and later in New York while she was shooting her infamous book, Sex, with photographer Steven Meisel. By then, Betts had joined the team. Madonna wanted to move away from the high-gloss sound of her recent albums, going back to her roots in the city’s underground club scene, while lyrically exploring her sexuality and troubled emotional life.

At 34, she was still recovering from a painful divorce and had been through a string of short-lived relationships. By the time Erotica wrapped up, she was already filming Body of Evidence, a steamy thriller which would be critically mauled. Released in October 1992, in tandem with the publication of Sex, her fifth studio album – and the first to be released on her Maverick label – was overshadowed by a vicious media backlash. The cover depicts her face in close-up, washed in blue; and the booklet includes various images from Sex, with Madonna bound and gagged in one shot, a far cry from the playful allure of her True Blue days.

The title track begins with the sound of a needle hitting a record, followed by a declaration: “My name is Dita/I’ll be your mistress tonight.” The eponymous heroine of Sex will guide us through Madonna’s only concept album. In ‘Erotica’, she adopts a low growl for the spoken-word verse, in which she tells us her dark fantasies (“I only hurt the ones I love”); and for the chorus, an ethereal trill. Shep Pettibone supplants her dual vocal with inventive samples, from the ubiquitous Melvin Bliss drumbeat, and horns from Kool & the Gang’s ‘Jungle Boogie’, to an Arabic hymn by the Lebanese singer, Fairuz, who would later sue Madonna for credit.

Fabien Baron’s ‘Erotica’ video shows a masked, cavorting Dita, interspersed with footage shot during production of Sex. The song would open the Girlie Show tour in 1993, and Madonna would rework it as ‘Erotica/You Thrill Me’ with another DJ-producer, Stuart Price, for her Confessions tour in 2006. In a more romantic mood, she sings, “I wouldn’t want to change a thing/In spite of all the pain that love can bring.”

The blues standard, ‘Fever’, has been recorded by everyone from Elvis to Beyonce, but most notably by jazz singer Peggy Lee in 1958. Madonna decided to cover it after going to a Lee concert, adding her dreamy vocal to the instrumental for an unfinished demo, ‘Goodbye to Innocence.’ She later performed it on the Arsenio Hall Show. ‘Fever’ was released a single in most markets except the USA. Her cool, distant take on this popular classic received mixed reviews, although Lee herself praised it. A remixed version is featured in Stephane Sednaoui’s video, where Madonna dances in body paint against a psychedelic backdrop.

‘Bye Bye Baby’ takes its name – and nothing else – from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the Marilyn Monroe film that influenced Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ video. It’s a snippy, teasing number, with Madonna’s high-pitched vocal – once described as ‘Minnie Mouse on helium’ – tripping lightly over a sample from LL Cool J’s ‘Jingling Baby’. The melody is repetitive as a playground rhyme, but the lyrics are a hard-hitting rebuke to a spurned lover.

The opening line, “This is not a love song,” recalls her earlier duet with Prince, and Public Image Limited’s anti-smooch track of the same name. Madonna’s voice is filtered, like a message left on a telephone answering machine. “I keep on waiting, anticipating,” she complains – impatience is a recurring theme in her work. “Does it make you feel good to see me cry?” she asks, before her words are cut off by a bleep – “You fucked it up,” she concludes, in the first of Erotica’s pithy codas. It would be the sixth and final single, released a full year after the album’s debut. The video was filmed on tour with The Girlie Show, where Madonna plays Dietrich in a tuxedo, choreographed in a brothel-like setting.

‘Deeper and Deeper’ is next in this quartet of hits. Although the single’s cover plays on titular innuendo – with a gold-toothed Madonna chomping on a cigar – musically, it heralds a more joyful mood. An homage to disco meets early 90s house, its melody is rhapsodic, bridged by Paul Pesco’s flamenco guitar. Lyrically, Madonna transcends cynicism and embraces romance (“Daddy couldn’t be all wrong/And my mama made me learn this song.”) In the liner notes to her 2001 compilation, GHV2, it’s framed as a ‘coming-out’ track. Whether or not that was her first intention, it’s a triumphant example of how her quest for sexual liberation resonated with gay fans (“This feeling inside, I can’t explain/But my love is alive, and I’m never gonna hide it again.”) In the closing lines, she repeats an ecstatic mantra from ‘Vogue’ – “Let your body go with the flow…”

The video is directed by David Fincher, a regular collaborator since ‘Express Yourself’, and by then on the verge of a Hollywood breakthrough. In an introduction worthy of a German expressionist movie, a mysterious older man (Udo Kier) quotes from Goethe’s Faust: “Beware! Our idols and demons will pursue us until we learn to let them go.” Madonna plays an Edie Sedgwick-style It Girl, immersing herself in nightlife alongside friends Debi Mazar and Ingrid Casares, celebrity pal Sophia Coppola, gay porn actor Joey Stefano, and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn. With ‘Deeper and Deeper’, Erotica’s gritty, monochrome aesthetic bursts into glorious technicolor. Madonna would later rework it as a cabaret number for her 2004 Reinvention Tour.

‘Where Life Begins’, a paean to oral sex (“a different way to kiss”) was definitely not single material – although in the pantheon of songs celebrating female sexuality, it stands alongside Divinyls’ 1990 hit, ‘I Touch Myself’, but its light-hearted tone (and rather laboured ‘dining out’ puns) veers closer to Madonna’s own ‘Hanky Panky’, albeit with a certain tenderness. Producer Andre Betts adds a layer of sophistication to what could have been merely a risque joke, and Danny Wilensky accompanies Madonna’s vocal on saxophone.

‘Bad Girl’, another single, is a mid-tempo ballad with melancholy strings. “Something’s missing and I don’t know why,” she laments. “Can’t bring myself to let you go.” Mourning a lost love, she is drawn towards self-destruction: “Bad girl, drunk by six/Kissing some kind stranger’s lips/Smoke too many cigarettes a day…”  

In David Fincher’s video, Madonna confronts her fear of death. As ‘Louise Oriole’, a business executive (using an amalgam of her own middle name and a street where she once lived), she drowns her sorrows in sleazy bars and one-night stands, watched over by a guardian angel (Christopher Walken) and the man who will ultimately murder her. Filmed in New York, ‘Bad Girl’ is one of the highlights of Madonna’s extensive videography, and she brings to it a raw intensity rarely matched in her movie roles. She also gave a stripped down, pitch-perfect performance of the song on Saturday Night Live.

Side One closes with ‘Waiting’, one of her finest album tracks, sampling ‘Sneakin’ in the Back’ by 1970s jazz-pop outfit L.A. Express, and ‘Justify My Love.’ A further meditation on broken relationships, ‘Waiting’ alternates between spoken word and song, mirroring the structure of Erotica’s eponymous opener. Lyrically it’s a rejection letter, blending disillusion with simmering anger. “What happened? What do I remind you of?” she asks her ex. “Your past, your dreams/Or some part of yourself that you just can’t love?” She signs off with wicked wit: “And the next time you want pussy/Just look in the mirror, baby…”

In an echo of Like a Prayer’s ‘Til Death Do Us Part’, Side Two opens with the sound of breaking glass. ‘Thief of Hearts’ is a catty diatribe against a false friend who “thinks she’ll get respect if she screws it.” Its sing-song rhymes and rattling pace are reminiscent of ‘Bye Bye Baby’. Madonna, who has stolen a few hearts in her time, warns of an amoral trickster who “spins her web, then she’s stealing your boyfriend.” Capturing her rival, she asks coolly, “Which leg do you want me to break?” In Erotica’s final spoken climax, she sneers, “Stop, bitch/Now sit your ass down…”

‘Words’ is another hidden gem, combining high-energy pop with Eastern overtones. “You think you’re so shrewd/You try to bring me low/You try to gain control with your words,” Madonna sings to a manipulative lover. His eloquence once seduced her, but now she questions his motives. In a spoken meditation, she reflects on how words can be used to deceive (“Conversation, expression, a promise, a sigh/In short, a lie.”) As a typewriter clicks in the background, she pleads for honesty (“Don’t mince words, don’t be evasive/Speak your mind, be persuasive.”)

‘Rain’ rounds off Erotica’s array of hit singles with a blissed-out take on love, evoking the New Age philosophies of the early Nineties while alluding to hippie anthems like George Harrison’s ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ Mark Romanek’s video shows a gamine Madonna with dark, cropped hair, in a studio setting drenched in Erotica’s signature blue. Her vocals blend seamlessly with backing singers Niki Harris and Donna De Lory.  Their perfect harmonies were highlighted during live performances of ‘Rain’ in 1993, followed by an orchestral homage to Singing in the Rain.

‘Why’s It So Hard’ is a protest song backed with dub reggae beats. Madonna channels her personal frustration (“What do I have to do to be accepted/What do I have to say”), and taps into wider battles with sexism, racism and homophobia (“Why can’t we learn to/Challenge the system/Without living in pain?”) ‘Why’s It So Hard’ was performed in The Girlie Show with Madonna’s troupe of dancers, its pulsating rhythms set against a mood of world-weary despair.

‘In This Life’ sustains the sombre mood. Based on George Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2 for piano, it is a tribute to two of Madonna’s friends who died from AIDS: Martin Burgoyne, the artist and dancer whom she befriended during her early years in New York (“Gone before he had his time”); and Christopher Flynn, her first dancing teacher and mentor (“He was like a father to me.”) “In this life I loved you most of all,” she sings, exuding loneliness (“Have you ever watched your best friend die?”) She also speaks out against bigotry (“Shouldn’t matter who you choose to love.”) Madonna introduced the song with a short speech during The Girlie Show, describing AIDS as “the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.”

‘Did You Do It?’ is a remix of ‘Waiting’, produced by Andre Betts and featuring two rappers boasting of their sexual exploits with ‘Mo.’ Lacking the soulfulness of ‘Where Life Begins’, it’s a childish exercise in braggadocio. Its inclusion made Erotica her first album to earn a Parental Advisory warning, and is omitted from ‘clean’ editions.

With the final track, ‘Secret Garden’, she returns to more intimate terrain. It employs a kind of reverse innuendo in which the ‘garden’, her sexuality, is also a metaphor for creative and personal growth. “I wonder if I’ll ever know/Where my place is,” she muses, over jazz piano by Andre Betts, and a drumbeat sampled from James Brown’s ‘Soul Pride’. Like Erotica’s title track, ‘Secret Garden’ is surreal and dreamlike, hinting at further exploration to come.

A number of unreleased demos, produced with Shep Pettibone and Anthony Shimkin, have surfaced over the years and are known by fans as the Rain Tapes. As well as early versions of ‘Erotica’, ‘Bye Bye Baby’, ‘Thief of Hearts’, ‘Words’, and ‘Secret Garden’, these sessions included original songs such as ‘Dear Father’, ‘Shame’, and ‘You Are the One.’ ‘Goodbye to Innocence’, the outtake which inspired Madonna’s ‘Fever’, was renamed ‘Up Down Suite’ as a B-Side to ‘Rain’, and in 1994 a further remix appeared on Just Say Roe, a pro-choice compilation album, alongside tracks by David Byrne and others.

With world sales of $7 million, Erotica performed less than half as well as its predecessor, Like a Prayer, and is ranked ninth overall among Madonna’s thirteen studio albums. Artistically, however, it is now considered one of her crowning achievements. Earlier this year, Slant placed it second only to R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People as the best album of 1992. At that time, dance music – which Madonna had helped to bring into the mainstream with her first two albums – was entering its most experimental phase. Erotica merges contemporary trends from techno to hip-hop with older disco sounds and classic pop hooks. Lyrically, she explores adult themes with a subtlety and depth of emotion which makes Erotica an ideal counterpart to the radical aesthetic of Sex.

Upon hearing the sad news of Christine Keeler’s passing, here is the epilogue to my novel, Wicked Baby, in which I reimagined the years following the Profumo Affair, in her voice. The photo above, shared by her son on social media, shows Christine enjoying freedom after leaving prison in 1964. 

It was a warm, cloudy morning in July. On a folding bed in Mr Lyons’ rented office, part of an old warehouse in Bow, I lay awake as hours ticked by. Newspaper clippings surrounded me, gathering dust. At ten to seven he let himself in.

‘Brace yourself for some terrible news, my dear.’ He placed a mug of coffee by the bed. I turned on my side and tied back my hair with a stray rubber band. ‘It’s Stephen … he’s dying.’

‘What happened?’ Our eyes met over the Telegraph.

‘He took an overdose last night. He’s in hospital now, but nothing can be done for him.’

I felt as if I’d been punched; my stomach churned, and I was suddenly out of breath.

‘Can you please open the window?’ I gasped. Mr Lyons did so and went into the kitchenette, cut bread and put it under the grill. I lifted the mug to my lips and threw the coffee down.

I stood up and tied my dressing gown. I went to the window and picked up the jar of Nembutal that I’d left on the sill. I looked out of the window; cars and people crawled like ants, thirty feet below.

I brushed my teeth at the sink, and spread marmalade on two wedges of toast. Later that day, Stephen was found guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Mandy and I. It took him three more days to die.

~

The walls of my new house in Linhope Street, Marylebone, were bare. Paula and I sat on the mattress, the only piece of furniture I had, drinking white wine out of paper cups. I bought the house with the £13,000 I had finally earned from the Express.

I sold my story again to the Sunday Herald, hoping that this version would be closer to the truth. I earned a further £7,000, and bought a bungalow for mum and my stepdad in Wokingham, near Wraysbury.

Within days of moving in, I was arrested. The police had found the tapes I’d made with Robin Drury for the book I wanted to write. They heard me talking about Lucky Gordon and how I’d agreed to keep Fenton and Commachio, the two witnesses to his attack on me, out of the court case. And Paula’s brother, John, had confessed as well. So I was charged with committing perjury at Lucky’s trial, and had to take out a loan to cover my legal fees.

‘The prosecution want to make a deal,’ Mr Lyons told me. ‘If you admit perjury, the other charge —wrongfully accusing Lucky of assault — will be dropped, and you’ll get a shorter sentence.’

I pleaded guilty, and was jailed for nine months, while Lucky walked free.

~

I waited for my father in the visitors’ room at Holloway Prison. I’d said goodbye to him when I was four years old, waving from our air raid shelter. I knew very little about him, though I often wondered what kind of man he might be.

He contacted Mr Lyons during my perjury trial, and we hit it off instantly; he sat in the police box, close to me, smiling and making me brave.

A few husbands and boyfriends came in; children and grandparents followed, and dad was at the back. ‘Christine!’ he said, grasping my hands tightly. His fingers were long and slim.

‘How are you bearing up, girl?’

‘I’m coping, dad — keeping my head down.’ Prison life was hard, but I found the routine almost reassuring. My cellmate, Libby, was a good sort.

‘How’s your mum?’ he asked.

‘Missing me, I think.’ I hadn’t told her about dad yet. I knew she hated him for leaving us when he did.

‘Be good to her, Christine. I’m sorry things didn’t work out for us three.’ His eyes brimmed with tears whenever he talked about the life he’d led without mum and me; his long nose, his full mouth were the double of mine.

I also wondered how different my life might have been if he’d stayed. I might never have run away to London.

‘You haven’t changed a bit, you know. You’ve still got that gap between your two front teeth — ’

I shook my head and he stopped mid-sentence.

‘Please don’t say that, dad. Everything’s changed, you know that.’

He touched my forehead. ‘You’re a good, honest kid, Chrissie.’

I smiled weakly. The warden called time and we said our goodbyes. I went back to my cell and smoked the cigarettes he’d brought along.

A postcard came from Mandy. She was in Holland, singing and dancing in a club. She never did have much of a voice, but maybe all those music lessons Peter paid for had been worth it after all.

I had dozens of letters from men I’d never met, some threatening or obscene. One was a marriage proposal. While reading, I began to wonder what life would be like for me when I got out.

~

London was changing, quicker than I could keep up with it, when I was released from Holloway Prison after serving six months. Harold Macmillan had resigned, and a new Labour government was in power under Harold Wilson. I returned to my empty house, inviting dad, who was out of work, to stay.

All-night clubs were opening all over London, now owned by the Kray Twins whom I’d known since I was with Peter. They were now more famous than me; we met at one of their clubs in Mayfair, and were photographed together.

At the time of Jack’s resignation I believed my modelling career was over. But there was work to be had, if I was prepared to trade on my name.

Mr Lyons sold the rights to my story all over Europe. The profits went directly to Millwarren, his company. He gave me money to buy things but kept the larger share. I had no control over what was written about me, so I agreed to whatever he suggested, and tried not to care.

Dad got a job at one of Billy Butlin’s holiday camps in Clacton, Essex. I told mum about him and invited her down. She wouldn’t set foot in my house until I asked him to go. I never saw him again.

As I furnished my new house, I remembered how exciting it had been to come to live in London when I was just a teenager, and how my life had changed after I met Stephen.                                       

The house on Linhope Street was big and lonely; I found it hard to settle there. I sold it after two years and went to stay with my mother in Wokingham. It was quiet and after being talked about for so long, I wanted a bit of peace.

I often drove out to Wraysbury, to see my old schoolfriend Jackie White. She had broken up with a man and persuaded me to meet him.

He was Jim Levermore, a civil engineer, six feet tall with green eyes and curly brown hair. Unlike the men I’d known in London, he didn’t talk much.

‘It doesn’t matter to you — who I am?’ I asked him over a glass of sherry one night, at the Golden Fleece. ‘All the stories in the papers?’

He just laughed, and kissed me. Eventually he said, ‘Will you marry me?’

I thought he’d never ask. It was a long shot but of course I said yes.

It happened very quickly. I bought a bungalow a few streets away from my mother. I had my hair cut into a jaw-length bob with a long fringe. We were married at the district registrar’s in Reading, by special license and without publicity.

Shortly after the wedding, Jim went to work in Germany. I stayed at home. I was pregnant; our son was born in 1966. His name was James, like the one I lost, but mum called him Jimmy.

~

At night, after I’d put the baby to bed, I’d soak for an hour in a deep, hot bath, reading paperbacks and listening to the radio. I got out after the Nine O’Clock News and wandered into my bedroom, wrapped in a towel. The window was open and the curtains blew, revealing a man outside, staring at me.

I walked back to the hall and dialled the police. They came with tracker dogs but the man had gone. Days later I came back from the grocer’s with Jimmy to find the bathroom window smashed and the back door hanging open. Nothing was taken but my wardrobe had been ransacked, and underwear was scattered across the bedroom floor.

Mr Lyons came as soon as he heard, bringing a dog for me. ‘You’re going to need some protection, my dear. Now, I must show you this before you hear it from someone else.’

He took a well-thumbed magazine from his briefcase and turned to the middle page. The blurb was in German, but I recognised the man in the picture; it was my husband, Jim, in the arms of another woman, beside a smaller photograph of me.

‘You’ve got yourself in a mess again,’ said Mr Lyons, passing me a handkerchief to sob on. ‘There’s still the sum of your debts to repay: you can’t hide from the world forever, not when there are so many exciting opportunities for a girl like you.’

I went back to London, renting a flat in Weymouth Street. Jimmy stayed in Wokingham with mum at first, until I got myself settled. I was divorcing Jim on the grounds of desertion, and the legal fees were more than I could afford — so I quickly accepted an offer to pose topless for a new fashion magazine.

Driving up to London, with Jimmy in the back of my Austin Martin and the dog with me in front, I watched the countryside flash by. The hill where I grew up and the forest behind it were just specks in the distance, the caravan I’d lived in probably a heap of wrecked metal by then. I didn’t slow down until we reached London.

How trapped I’d felt in Wraysbury, and how easily I’d escaped; but there was no turning back this time, however much I wanted to. I’d lost the only place I ever called a home, and there was nowhere left to run to but the city.

As the curtain falls on 2017, this blog also approaches its tenth anniversary. I’d like to thank everyone who has read (and hopefully enjoyed) my posts. This month I’ve been thinking a lot about Christine Keeler, who inspired my first novel and so much more. Wishing everyone a beautiful 2018 – and whatever this new year may bring, keep a dream in your hearts.

The World and the Woman, the 1916 silent film starring Jeanne Eagels, will be screened today – preceded by a fragment from an early Louise Brooks comedy – at 4:30 pm in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as part of their ‘To Save and Project‘ series, curated by Dave Kehr and now in its fifteenth season, as Daniel Eagan reports for Film Journal. (And thanks to the Thanhouser Studio restoration project, you can also watch it here.)

Finally, author David Stenn introduces a fragment of Now We’re in the Air (Jan. 19), a 1927 service comedy starring future superstar Wallace Beery … Some 20 minutes of footage were recovered from a deteriorated nitrate print found in a Czech archive. It’s mostly excruciatingly broad comedy of the Dumb and Dumber school, but it does offer a few minutes of young circus performer Louise Brooks in a black tutu.

The fragment will be screened before The World and the Woman, the debut feature for Jeanne Eagels, one of the most significant stage performers of her time. A late feature from the Thanhouser studio, it was adapted in part from a play called Outcast. Eagels plays a New York City prostitute who by chance finds a position as maid on an estate in the Adirondacks. Rural life and the friendliness of the locals give her hope for a new life. Then the wealthy owner arrives for the summer, forcing her out once more.

The World and the Woman takes a turn into faith-healing, a trend at the time, but what’s distinctive about the film is the startlingly modern performance by Eagels. She grasped before many of her peers the power of silence, of reacting with just her eyes, of limiting movement to focus emotion. She understood how the camera worked, what it picked up and what it lost, and she used that knowledge to advance the craft of acting for everyone who followed. Eagels would later star in Rain … and in a sound version of The Letter before her sudden death. The World and the Woman ranks with her best filmed performances.

One of the finest movies ever made, Casablanca, celebrated its 75th anniversary last year. As I joined a nearly full house at the Duke of York’s in Brighton last Sunday, I wondered whom in the audience were watching it for the first time, and how many had seen it numerous times on television. Most chuckled in recognition of its oft-quoted dialogue, whether familiar from past viewings or references in popular culture.

“With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But, not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up…”

The dispossessed of Europe flocked to Casablanca, their last chance to broker an Atlantic crossing. Sadly, many of them would never make that journey. There is a frantic desperation in Casablanca’s opening scenes, as several minor characters and their personal tragedies are introduced. But there is also a stink of corruption in this place where human lives are currency. The patter runs hard and fast, and gallows humour prevails.

As the cynical owner of Rick’s Café Américain, Humphrey Bogart heads a trio of heroes and villains, while a host of character actors, from Peter Lorre to Sydney Greenstreet, lend support. Rick Blaine stands uncertainly between the resistance idealism of Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), and the charmingly amoral French police chief, Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains, effortlessly stealing every scene he’s in.) Born into an upper-class New York family in 1899, Bogart learned his craft on Broadway before moving to Hollywood in the 1930s. Short and rather plain-looking, his lip permanently scarred during the previous world war, Bogart got his break as runaway convict Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, but few could have predicted his transition to romantic lead. A consummate film icon, Bogart starred in several of my favourite movies (also including High Sierra, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen.)

And what of the women? Ingrid Bergman, another legend of cinema, was already a star in her native Sweden when Hollywood came calling in 1939. In an industry built on artifice, she epitomised natural beauty. As Rick’s lost love, Ilsa Laszlo, she exudes the purity that film fans loved, but also suggests a hidden sensuality. Her story is echoed in that of Annina (Joy Page), the virtuous young Bulgarian willing to sell herself to save her husband. “Oh, but if Jan should find out,” she tells Rick. “He is such a boy. In many ways, I am so much older than he is.” Her words move Rick to pay for their transit papers, in an act of compassion that foreshadows his own sacrifice. Finally there is Yvonne (Madeleine LeBeau), the nightclub cutie who consorts with a Nazi officer after Rick callously discards her, but later redeems herself with an impassioned cry: “Vive la France!” Like many of the cast, LeBeau was an immigrant, who fled occupied France in 1940. The last surviving star of Casablanca, she passed away in 2016.

Of course, music plays a significant role in Casablanca. Singer Dooley Wilson – the only cast member who had actually visited Casablanca – plays Rick’s buddy Sam, and introduces the bittersweet love theme, ‘As Time Goes By’, along with several jauntier tunes. Perhaps the film’s most powerful sequence occurs while a group of Nazi officers are singing ‘Watch on the Rhine’, and Victor Laszlo directs cabaret singer Corinna Mura to lead the nightclub denizens in a rousing chorus of the French national anthem, creating a moment of shining humanity. In the closing frames of Casablanca, the studio orchestra reprises not ‘As Time Goes By’, but ‘La Marseillaise.’

Hurriedly released after the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942, Casablanca was not, as some have claimed, a B-movie – the presence of Bogart and Bergman is proof of that – but the scale of its popularity and critical acclaim was unexpected. Produced by Hal B. Wallis for Warner Brothers, with its warm and witty script adapted by Julius and Phillip G. Epstein, and later Howard E. Koch from an original play, and brought to life with masterful direction by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca represents the studio system at its zenith (although novelist Jean Rhys said it did not reflect her own recollections of wartime Casablanca.) The love story of Rick and Ilsa ultimately leads them towards the greater good, with even the cunning Renault forgoing his advantage for the sake of a ‘beautiful friendship’.

Seventy-six years later, the world is facing a refugee crisis on a scale unseen since World War II. With borders closing and walls being built, it remains to be seen whether kindness will yet overcome fear. The making of Casablanca has been retold in a new book by Noah Isenberg; a biography of Michael Curtiz; and a LIFE magazine special. But for all its rich charm, Casablanca is more than a period piece: it is a warning of what may still come to pass.