Posts Tagged ‘Julia Callan-Thompson’
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
I was asked to answer these questions for an event in Barcelona and having done so figured I might as well post them here too. You couldn’t make it it!
1. When were you happiest? I’ll be at my happiest in about 10 minutes when I’ve answered these questions – coz then I can make another huge pot of espresso and watch yet another Godfrey Ho movie.
2. What is your greatest fear? That the list I have of Godfrey Ho movies is complete and that before long I’ll have watched everything he ever made. Fortunately not even Godfrey Ho can remember all the films he made and there’s a good chance of many more being added to the 150 we know about.
3. What is your earliest memory? Going to the Isle of Wight by ferry when I was 2 years old. It was raining.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? My modesty. I feel I need to be more egotistical.
5. In what historical time would you have liked to live? I like the times I’ve lived in best – and would only want to live in London (or possibly New York) at any time. I wouldn’t mind going back to the 1960s for the music, the 1970s for the feeling the whole political system was going to collapse (but then it feels like that again now), and the 1980s for seeing Godfrey Ho movies as they appeared at the point this director was most prolific.
6. Ever been in a fight? Of course! No idea how many.
7. Where do you stand politically? Ultra-left.
8. What do you owe your parents? I can thank my mother Julia Callan-Thompson for my intelligence and good looks, and great stories to tell people about her life as an original mod and then in the 1960s counterculture. Also my great taste in music, since my mother was listening to cool modern jazz all the time she was pregnant with me. I don’t know who my father is so I probably don’t owe him anything – but I reckon he owes me a big bundle of used notes!
9. Who would you invite to your dream party? Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Lopez and Godfrey Ho, among others.
10. If you could edit your past, what would you change? I wouldn’t have gone to see Joy Davison who are a lousy band and unfortunately I knew what I was doing when I went into the gig. I definitely wouldn’t have seen The Police either, but they were a last minute substitution among the support acts when I went to see The Brian James All Stars in 1978 (and I did go to the bar and turned my back on them when they played). I can’t be blamed for seeing The Police because I didn’t know I was going to see them when I went into The Electric Ballroom – but I wish I hadn’t seen them.
11. When did you last cry, and why? In 1971 when I lost a ten pence piece down a drain. We’d only just had the change in the UK to decimal currency and I thought it was a fifty pence piece, which is why I cried.
12. What is the closest you’ve come to death? Sitting in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood in east London one winter day. I was leaving my body behind and entering this golden tunnel of light and thinking how great it was to be dead, when one of the museum attendants shook me awake and asked me if I was alright. I was very disappointed to still be alive coz death seemed like it was a groove sensation!
13. What do you consider your greatest achievement or quality? My ability to talk endless and without any prompting – even when I’m standing on my head!
14. What song or songs would you like played at your funeral? “Burn, Baby, Burn” by Mel Williams.
15. Why and when did you decide to start talking about yourself? As soon as I could speak – so when I was about a year old. I didn’t have a reason then, it was just intuitive. Now it’s a case of I started doing this in 1963 so why the hell should I stop?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, Brian James All Stars, Burn Baby Burn, egotism, Electric Ballroom, Godfrey Ho, Isle of Wight, Jennifer Lopez, Joy Division, Julia Callan-Thompson, London, Mel Williams, New York, Pamela Anderson, Stewart Home, The Police
Posted in exhibitionism, humour | 20 Comments »
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
In 2001 when Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art was on at the Hayward Gallery, a female visitor to the show walked into a room in which Tadasu Takamine’s Inertia was being shown only to discover a man jerking off to the projection. The woman left and complained to the gallery, but by the time security got there the man had disappeared. The work was recently re-shown at the Icon Gallery in Birmingham, I don’t know if anyone was caught wanking off to the piece there, but the description of it on the Icon website illustrates you’d have to be seriously sad to do so: “Inertia (1998) involves the uneasy combination of a young woman and a bullet train. She is shown close-up and feet first on top of a carriage while the rest of the world flashes past. A powerful electric hum dramatises her fruitless attempts to push her dress down over her legs against the force of the wind; the situation is intensely sexual, unstoppable and exhilarating, clearly drawn from classic fetishism and nightmare scenarios.” You’d have to be really unimaginative to jerk off over something as clichéd as that – and especially in a public place! So in the interests of public education, I bring you 10 art works you must jerk off over before you die!
1. The One & The Many by Stewart Home. 72 copies of Home’s novel Down & Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton factory wrapped in three packets and arranged as a sculpture. The work is for sale at $480 and has an immediate retail value of $720 since the books sell at $10 each. Anyone buying the work needs to choose between breaking up the sculpture and realising an immediate profit by selling the books at their retail price, or keeping it as it is and speculating on it greatly rising in value thanks to its aesthetic merits. On show at White Columns in New York until 19 November. This one would be perfect for a circle jerk. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours – so that the general public can enjoy the work in peace.
2. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. A half length portrait famous thanks to the sitter’s smile. It has been widely rumoured that the model is in fact Leonardo da Vinci in drag, so this one is perfect as a fetish object for all you gender benders out there. Forget about the original, jerk off over a reproduction.
3. Art Strike Bed by Stewart Home. After Home went on art strike between 1990-1993, the first thing he showed in a gallery for his comeback was a bed – which acted as a symbol of his lack of activity during the art strike. He didn’t show the bed he slept on during the art strike, and he’s shown various different beds as ‘the’ Art Strike Bed, since he wants the work to be radically inauthentic. Since you’ve no doubt jerked off on a bed innumerable times, why not wank off over this one! On show right now at White Columns in Manhattan. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.
4. Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian. Mainstream pornography dulls the brain with literal images. Radical pornography is abstract and requires the stimulus of a healthy imagination in order for you to get off on it. This famous abstract by Mondrian is a perfect example of that. Forget about the original, jerk off over a reproduction for that extra ersatz/seminal experience.
5. Becoming (M)other by Stewart Home & Chris Dorley-Brown. In 2004 Home took his mother’s 1966 modelling portfolio and reposed the pictures with photographer Chris Dorley-Brown. The two sets of images – of Home’s mother (Julia Callan-Thompson aged 22 in her photos) and her son (Stewart Home aged 42 in his photos) – were then morphed together to create an inter-generational & cross-gender composite. Like the Mona Lisa, this is another work that will appeal to gender benders of all ages, as well as the bi-curious. Currently on show at White Columns in New York. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.
6. White On White by Kazimir Malevich. White stains could only add to the appeal of this classic work of Suprematist abstraction! Judging by the immediate critical reception, Malevich was already wanking in the wind when he made this painting! Forget about the original, use a reproduction to jerk off over. But if you wanna see a really dirty art work use Black On Black by the same artist, which you’ll totally ruin by adding white!
7. Heroin Is The Opiate Of The People by Stewart Home. Wall drawing of a man injecting himself with skag. The image ain’t attractive so getting off over this one will prove you’re a hardcore pervert! On show at White Columns in Manhattan until 19 November. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.
8. After Walker Evans by Sherrie Levine. Levine re-shot well known Walker Evans photographs from an exhibition catalogue and presented them as her own artwork with no manipulation of the images. The Evans photographs are considered by some to be a quintessential record of the rural American poor during the great depression. The Walker Evans estate saw these works by Levine as an infringement of their copyrights, and acquired them to forestall their circulation. You don’t need Levine re-makes to jerk off over these pieces, just get a decent Walker Evans catalogue and pretend Sherrie has re-done the work for you!
9. Prostitution II by Stewart Home. In the 1970s Cosey Fanni Tutti worked as a model for pornographic magazines and announced that her sex images were performance art. In 1996 – a few years before the current revival of interest in Tutti – Home re-shot a series of her magazine spreads onto Polaroid not merely as an act of appropriation, but also to counteract the fallacious arguments of various self-styled art critics who claimed that in the 1970s British women artists adhered to ‘feminist propriety’. On show at White Columns in New York right now. Arrangements might be made with the artist for a special viewing and wanking session out of normal gallery hours.
10. Samo Is Dead by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Graffiti announcing the end of the Samo Project was painted on walls in Soho, Manhattan, in 1979. You don’t need to find traces of the original graffiti, a photograph of it will do for a wank!
Needless to say there is far more in my White Columns show Again A Time Machine: A Stewart Home Retrospective than the five works described here – and it’s all worth jerking off over. The show is on until 19 November – make sure you catch it! White Columns, 320 West 13th Street (enter on Horatio Street, between Hudson and 8th Avenue), New York, NY 10014, USA.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: After Walker Evans, Again A Time Machine, Art Strike, Art Strike Bed, Becoming (M)other, Broadway Boogie Woogie, bullet train, Chris Dorley-Brown, circle jerk, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Down & Out In Shorditch and Hoxton, Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art, fetishism, Hayward Gallery, Heroin Is The Opiate Of The People, Horatio Street, Icon Gallery, Inertia, Jean-Michel Basquiat, jerking off, Julia Callan-Thompson, Kazimir Malevich, Leonardo da Vinci, Manhattan, masturbation, Mona Lisa, morph, New York, nightmare, Piet Mondrian, Prostitution II, Samo Is Dead, Sherrie Levine, Stewart Home, Tadasu Takamine, The One & The Many, Walker Evans, wanking, White Columns, White On White
Posted in art criticism, humour | 25 Comments »
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
I’ve already written about my experiences of producing the first season of the Mister Trippy blog at MySpace. It is obviously a little early to write about the second season in any depth since this is its closing post. There is also less need to write about Mister Trippy season two because I’ll be leaving the posts up rather than taking them down as I did with not only with the first season of Mister Trippy, but all my MySpace profiles (to protest about the platform’s support for US imperialism), in Spring 2008.
Having produced posts for the first Mister Trippy season daily, I found it far easier to blog every other day in this second season (except for the first month, which was daily). That said, at exactly a year long, this season was also quite a bit shorter than the first. While the comments remained an integral part of the blog, there were considerably fewer than during the first season. I’d view this as a consequence of hosting season two on my own site rather than a social networking platform, and also because I didn’t concentrate on replying to comments as much as I did during the first season. That said, I appear to have more readers here than when Mister Trippy was hosted at MySpace, but far fewer of them commented and those that did made less comments than on the first season of the blog. From a conventional media point of view, upping both the number and percentage of lurkers is probably a good thing, from a full-on committed to Web 2.0 perspective it probably isn’t so good, although it does make life easier! That said, there have still been loads of great comments containing both solid information and some really way-out humour on the season two blog!
A few facts and figures. Mister Trippy season two ran from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2009, during which time I posted 193 public entries (including this one). As I write this there are 5,007 approved comments split across these posts. Likewise, between myself and the Askimet anti-spam software 10,207 comments were blocked or removed. All the blocked or removed comments were of a commercial nature. Obviously the number of approved and blocked comments will increase as time goes by, although probably not at the same rate as when I was posting on a regular basis.
I’ve found this blog and the main website to which it is attached a good way of alerting people to information I’m seeking. It has enabled me to locate individuals, unearth facts, and in particular extend my knowledge of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson and her bohemian social circle – as well as my first cousin once removed Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (a legend for audacious Robin Hood-style thefts from the rich and famous, as well as a successful 1958 prison escape with a subsequent two years on the run). That said, while – for example – I now know that Francois Raymond who exhibited photographs of my mother in 1967 is dead and I have contact details for his brother, I’ve drawn a complete blank in my attempts to nail down the fate of Malcolm ‘Grainger’ Drake.
One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog, as well as the main site to which it is attached, is put information online that wasn’t previously available via the web. The pieces I’ve posted about my mother’s circle and Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones are good examples of this. When I began researching my mother’s life there wasn’t a single entry about her online. It is because of my efforts that a search engine request now brings in more than 15,000 results for Julia Callan-Thompson, rather than none (which was the result I got from my early web searches for her). There was material about Ray The Cat on the web before I started blogging about him, but by locating a primary source in the form of Ray’s testament about his life and going back to contemporary press coverage of his exploits, I’ve expanded the range of material available online and shown that recent retellings of his escape from Pentonville Prison completely distort the facts (and that the confusion appears to begin with inaccuracies introduced by Mad Frankie Fraser and his ghost-writer James Morton). However, to see this you’d need to read through all my blog entries on Ray The Cat. My research is ongoing and I revise what I have to say on the basis of what I discover. Putting material online is important, there is unfortunately a growing trend (particularly among the young), to look for information on the web and if it can’t be found there then to assume it doesn’t exist.
My research methods appear to confuse some of those I’ve spoken to, since I’ve had the odd email complaining I’ve not written up a story as the person recontacting me originally told it. I always try to find as many sources as possible for what I write. Sometimes these provide me with conflicting information, and some people even provide more than one version of the same story over a period of time. Using archival records where they are available, and all the oral history I am able to collect, I try to reconstruct events as accurately as possible. This can result in a specific person’s recollection of events being discarded; not because I necessarily think the individual in question is lying – memory can play tricks and the person concerned may simply be mistaken about what happened. Someone claiming to have direct knowledge of something does not automatically make them a reliable source for the subject. I work from all the evidence available to me and sometimes this will indicate (or even prove) that a particular individual’s memory of a specific incident is faulty or fraudulent.
Moving on, I trust that the interest of media professionals in blogging is waning, since it has had a deleterious effect on the activity. There are individuals who take up blogging in the belief that it might make them famous. Although this is unlikely, it doesn’t stop people trying and thus producing narrowly focused blogs with very limited subject matter, or else simply going in for egoblogging. One of the elements of this blog that proved particularly popular with a large swathe of readers were my reports of London art world openings. It would not be difficult to construct a blog around nothing but reports of this type, but for me it would become boring and is therefore to be avoided, despite – or rather because of – the fact that it would lead to me being viewed as a greater conventional ‘success’ than is currently the case.
Likewise, most newspapers seem to have given up on investigative journalism, or even research, and at a time when we need much more of it; clearly it is those with particular interests and specialised knowledge who are far better qualified to do this than so called media professionals, and blogging is a cheap and efficient way for the ‘real’ ‘experts’ – in other words, amateurs like you and me - to gather and disseminate information. I’m not seeing as much research based blogging or other web reportage as I’d like, but hopefully there will be more of it in coming months and years – and far fewer blogs being updated via Twitter feeds. I’d also like to see the majority of bloggers trying a little harder with their writing. While splurging something out is a great way of getting it down, you do then need to rewrite and revise. I’ve always tried to compose my blogs the night before I posted them, so that I could give them a final rewrite in the morning. Too many blogs look like their author hasn’t read through what they’ve posted even once! If you’re not prepared to read your own writing, you shouldn’t expect anyone else to do so either!
In conclusion, while I wouldn’t rule out a third season of the Mister Trippy blog, I’m not committed to doing one either. I’ll just see how things go. For now I’d rather concentrate on other pursuits. I will continue to update the main website to which this blog is attached – check the new additions page if you want to see what is being added. Wow, this may also be one of the least humorous blog I’ve written over the past year, so I obviously do need a break from Mister Trippy!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 2009, art world, blogging, egoblogging, email, Frankie Fraser, investigative journalism, jail break, James Morton, Julia Callan-Thompson, London, Mad Frankie Fraser, Mister Trippy, MySpace, prison escape, Ray Jones, Ray The Cat Jones, Raymond Jones, research, Robin Hood, social networking, Stewart Home, Twitter, Web 2.0
Posted in Web 2.0 | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Copies of Terry Taylor’s 1961 novel Baron’s Court, All Change don’t come up for sale at all often but until now when they did they’ve never been particularly expensive. I have a paperback that came from an exchange stall and it cost 20p. I was looking for a hardback for about 4 years until I finally acquired one via eBay – and no one else even bid on that copy of the book. I’ve been checking the obvious online places for further copies since then (eBay, Amazon, Abe Books), and I’ve not come across a single instance of Baron’s Court being offered for sale over the past few years until now. As I write, Repton Readers are offering a copy of Barons Court on Amazon UK Marketplace for a whopping £238 plus postage.
So how does a hard-to-obtain title go from being offered for sale for a few quid to an asking price of hundreds of pounds? Obviously, it is a combination of buzz and a bookseller chancing it with a high price. Baron’s Court is a far-out drugs novel that fell through the cracks and disappeared for forty odd years – the main problem being that it was at least five years ahead of its time. That said, it only needed a handful of relatively ‘young’ hipsters to realise that the book described mod and the counterculture in very early stages of their evolution, that it was the first British novel to mention LSD, and that the author Terry Taylor had a quite incredible life story, for interest in it to rocket. Since my mother (Julia Callan-Thompson) was a friend of the author, when I started researching her life at the turn of the millennium, I came across Baron’s Court and once I’d obtained copies for myself I started talking the book up. I not only wrote about Baron’s Court, I was so knocked-out by this novel, I mailed photocopies of it to key contacts – and after receiving a Xerox from me, Andy Roberts even bigged it up in his recent history of British acid culture Albion Dreaming.
If you want to know why Baron’s Court is so hard to find, you have to understand both publishing and the used book trade. It is the difficulty of obtaining a title like this that leads dealers to asking an exorbitant price for it. I don’t know the print run of the hardback edition of Baron’s Court, but I’d guess it would have been between two and five thousand. It seems to have generated some coverage, but not massive interest – after it was published Terry Taylor was invited to do some reviewing, but the paperback rights didn’t immediately sell. Taylor’s follow-up, which drew more explicitly on the literary experimentalism of figures like William Burroughs, was rejected by his publisher. So Taylor has been to date a one-shot novelist, and was thus unable to draw readers to his earlier book through the publication of further tomes.
The publication of a Baron’s Court paperback four long years after the appearance of the MacGibbon & Kee hardcover edition is probably best explained by the burgeoning drug culture. By 1965 ‘with-it’ publishers were aware of a growing interest in drugs and casting about for books dealing with the subject. The Baron’s Court paperback was published by Four Square (later New English Library) who by the late sixties/early seventies did first printings of their books in runs of 20,000 and they only reprinted if this first run sold quickly (see my interview with NEL editor Laurence James as an example of background research I’ve done in this ares). If we assume the company worked in the same way in the mid-sixties, then 20,000 seems a reasonable guess for the print run of Baron’s Court in paperback. We can conclude that in its two editions to date possibly as many as 25,000 copies of Baron’s Court were printed. Most of them will now be destroyed. I don’t know exactly how the book sold, but since it clearly wasn’t like ‘hot cakes’ (if it had there would have been more reprints), it is possible some copies were pulped by one or both of the publishers. I have yet to properly determine the initial reception of the book, and if anyone can point me in the direction of contemporary reviews I would be grateful.
Mass market paperbacks put out by companies like Four Square are cheaply made – perfect bound rather than sewn and printed on pulp papers that deteriorate quickly – after being read a few times this type of book tends to fall apart and get thrown away. Although the paperback will have been printed in a far bigger run than the hardback, my guess would be that far fewer copies of it survive than of the first edition. That said, I wouldn’t be particularly optimistic about many copies of the first edition surviving either! It is likely the majority of hardbacks sales would have been to libraries, and library books are often roughly handled and suffer damage – before being either sold off or thrown away at the end of their lending life.
But what about those copies of Baron’s Court that were offered to secondhand dealers over the years? Since the book had no buzz about it until recently, few dealers would have wanted to buy copies even if they had recognised the title or author (and very few would have done so); and if they did acquire copies in job lots of books, they may have simply thrown them away or used them for fuel. Owners of copies of Baron’s Court who were unable to sell them to dealers may have treated this once hard-to-sell tome in an equally caviler fashion. Precisely because until recently there has been little to no market for Baron’s Court as a novel, the overwhelming majority of copies will have been destroyed.
Now there is some buzz about Terry Taylor and Baron’s Court, the remaining copies of the book have a greater potential value than many other out-of-print titles precisely because its earlier lack of popularity makes it rare. Baron’s Court is also, without a shadow of a doubt, not only a cracking good read but of considerable historical significance. So fingers-crossed that some clued-up publisher puts it back in print, and rather than having to shell out hundreds of pounds for a used copy, you can buy it new for roughly the same price as any other mass market tome. And if there are any interested publishers out there, I’d be happy to put them in touch with the author who still controls the rights….
Terry Taylor’s story is one with a relatively happy ending for those who like to believe fairy tales about ‘literary immortality’, but don’t let it blind you to the fact that the vast bulk of books published every year are very quickly forgotten!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Abe Books, Albion Dreaming, Amazon, Andy Roberts, Baron's Court All Change, counterculture, eBay, Four Square, Julia Callan-Thompson, Laurence James, MacGibbon & Kee, mod, NEL, New English Library, Repton Readers, secondhand books, Terry Taylor, used books
Posted in books, counterculture | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Searching for someone called Francois Raymond on the outskirts of Paris is probably a little like looking for a specific John Smith in London. Who is Francois Raymond? The one I’m looking for exhibited a series of six photographs of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson as part of an exhibition entitled Exposition Tamrauc at the Maison de Jeunes et de la Culture (Paris) in October 1967. I have two prints of just one of these photographs, and rubber stamped on the back of one of them is an address: Francois Raymond, 37 Rue Gambetta, Puteaux (Seine). I’d like to acquire copies of all the photographs Raymond took of my mother, which is why I’ve been attempting to track him down…
Virtually every town in France seems to have a street named after the nineteenth-century French politician Leon Gambetta – so the fact that someone with a name as common as Raymond’s should have an address on one such street seemed psychogeographically apt to me. There is another Rue Gambetta in the neighbouring commune of Suresnes, which is a ten minute walk from the street of that name in Puteaux.
On my first visit to Puteaux I approached Run Gambetta via La Defense, the Paris business district. Two thirds of this high-rise office development is situated within the Putueax municipality, although parts also encroach upon Nanterre and Courbevoie. As a consequence, Puteaux is one of the richest municipalities not just in France, but the whole of Europe. Initially I was a little confused by the lay-out of La Defense but I managed to walk out of it and along to Rue Gambetta without wasting too much time. Raymond’s street was a mix of old and new dwellings, with a monstrous vista of La Defense. The view towards Paris must have been very different in 1967 when Raymond took the pictures he exhibited of my mother.
37 Rue Gambetta turned out to be an apartment block. The outside had been refaced and the balconies replaced relatively recently, but close examination of the structure, the garages behind it, and in particular the doors, led me to the conclusion it had probably been built in the 1950s. It seems safe to conclude that Raymond had lived and/or worked in this building around 40 years before my visit to it. I examined the buzzers to the flats but none of these were labeled with the name Raymond. Next I tried stopping people on the street outside the building but no one knew of a Francois Raymond who had lived there.
I went back to Puteax a couple of days later, approaching it on foot via the bridge over the Seine. This time I went first via Boulevard Richard Wallace (presumably the street is named after the illegitimate son of the Marquess of Hertford, a 19th century ‘philantropist’ and art collector), to Rue Gambetta in Suresnes, since I wished to compare it with the Puteaux street of that name. This second Rue Gambetta looked a little less well-heeled than the one in Puteaux, and was considerably less ambient. Both lie in municipalities that are densely populated by European standards. This second trip to Puteaux seemed to take me no further in my quest for Francois Raymond and his lost pictures of my mother than my previous one. However, rather than walking back to La Defense, I decided to take the suburban train there from Puteaux.
Approaching the train station I clocked a couple of pissheads who were weaving so erratically on the pavement that I decided to let them get a little ahead of me as we all approached the escalators up to the platform. The drunks looked like a working class couple in their late-sixties, and they were pretty hefty too. As they reached the escalator, the woman – who’d gone ahead – placed a foot not on the first or second steps which were closest to her and still flat, but the third step that was rising; having done this, she quickly brought her other foot up onto the escalator and placed it beside the right one. The man attempted to do the same thing and lost his balance, grabbing hold of the woman as he did so.
I run forward and caught both the man and the woman. If I hadn’t the man would have certainly bashed his head on the metal stairs and this might have resulted in a nasty injury or even worse. The pair of them were heavy and behaved like a dead weight. I thought the woman would pull herself upright, and then that the man would do the same. When this didn’t happen, another passerby took the woman’s hand to help her, but it seemed she was too drunk to stand up. I held this fat and heavy couple up until we reached the top of the escalator, where the woman rolled awkwardly off the stairs and the man managed to get himself upright.
The first thing the man did was check that none of the multiple bottles of wine in the plastic bag he’d been carrying had been smashed, and amazingly they were all in one piece. I rescued one of the woman’s shoes which had come off, another passerby returned the other. I hoped that once the woman had her shoes on she would get up, but she was too dazed. By this time a small crowd were trying to help the couple, particularly the woman. Since neither of them were able to understand my English and odd words of French, I decided to leave them in the hands of the native speakers who’d come to their assistance after me.
As I made my way towards a train, the man shouted ‘merci’ at me. My impression was that neither he nor the woman were fully aware of what had happened, but he at least knew I’d caught them both as they were falling. Once I was on the train and speeding toward the centre of Paris, I realised I should have asked the man if he was or knew Francois Raymond. Obviously it is unlikely he was Raymond, although I guess he was about the same age as the man I was looking for, and if he’d lived in Puteaux most of his life he may have known him… This chance encounter on an escalator seems as close as I’m going to get to the elusive Monsieur Raymond for the time being. That said, he can’t be any more elusive than my mother, who changed her name by deed poll in the early sixties and then rarely used her full legal name; more than one person has told me they’ve never heard of Julia Callan-Thompson, but upon being told other names she went by and given contextual information to place her, they realise she was indeed somebody they knew way back when!
BTW: several sequences in my short In The Street Today were shot in Puteaux; towards the end of it the actual escalators on which I prevented the drunks from falling are featured, and the decorative night lights earlier in the video are situated right beside them. The soundtrack to the film is a looped recording I made of this particular set of Puteaux escalators (there is another set of identical escalators, not featured in my film, a little nearer Rue Gambetta).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 37 Rue Gambetta, Boulevard Richard Wallace, Courbevoie, Exposition Tamrauc, France, Francois Raymond, John Smith, Julia Callan-Thompson, La Defense, Leon Gambetta, Maison de Jeunes et de la Culture, Marquess of Hertford, Nanterre, Paris, Puteaux, Richard Wallace, Rue Gambetta, Seine, Sir Richard Wallace, Suresnes
Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, Julia Callan-Thompson | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
The author of The Acid (Vision, London 2009) uses the pen name Sam, but is probably better known to most readers of this blog as Chris Gray. For me, and probably for many of you, The Acid reads like a continuation of where Chris left off in the essays he contributed to his English language Situationist anthology Leaving The 20th Century (1974). There he wrote: “What needs understanding is the state of paralysis everyone is in. Certainly all conditioning comes from society but it is anchored in the body and mind of each individual, and this is where it must be dissolved. Ultimately the problem is an emotional, not an intellectual one. All the analyses of reification in the world won’t cause a neurosis to budge an inch…”
In The Acid, Chris says of the counterculture: “Looking back on that time, what seems so incomprehensible is that we never took LSD more seriously. How was it we failed to grasp its importance? For the concept of de-conditioning was at the heart of the New Left of the time. If any single feature set 60s and 70s radicalism apart from previous insurrectionary politics, it was insistence that individual subjectivity had to be transformed. The political was the personal. Politics were psychopolitics. Our own hearts and minds were precisely where the old order was ingrained – and if we couldn’t change ourselves, then what hope was there we could ever change the world?”
Many of those around Gray, including my mother Julia Callan-Thompson, took acid far more seriously than he did – but this was precisely because in the 1960s they were heads (whose attempts at personal transformation were doomed to failure because there was no accompanying social revolution) and he was a radical.
The Acid begins with a lucid overview of psychedelic literature and an account of Gray’s previous experiences with mind expanding substances. Chris also provides a potted autobiography, so that his readers can understand the material that comes up in the trips he describes. These vary from being joyous to total bummers. He was tripping every two to three weeks for three years as a self-prescribed acid therapy; an attempt to break down personal blockages. He tried different approaches to tripping: initially putting on a blindfold and listening to music in his flat, before moving on to outdoor excursions on Hampstead Heath. These accounts are very informative about ways of understanding and structuring trips, and will provide most readers with new approaches to the subject.
The back cover of the The Acid stresses that the breakthrough insight from these sessions is that the visions are serial. Drawing heavily on Stanislav Grof”s Realms of the Human Unconscious, Chris underlines the need to work through bad trips in order to transform oneself and achieve a sense of wholeness. The thrust of this argument I can run with, although I’m not sympathetic to all the psychoanalytic and religious elements drawn into the narrative. This is partly a generational difference, with the materials Gray used to structure his understanding of his ‘inner experiences’ very much mirroring those adopted by my mother and many of her friends in the 60s and 70s (that said, the psychedelic hermeticism my mother was involved in with Terry Taylor was quite different – and as far as I can tell, superior – to such deployments of Hinduism).
My view is that the varieties of Hinduism drawn upon by both my mother and Chris, and much of their ‘turned on’ generation, are too hierarchical to enable us to rediscover the forms of consciousness that characterised primitive communist societies. By way of contrast, shamanism (particularly in its voodoo and candomblé manifestations) does provide us with pathways to disalienation. LSD is, of course, a fantastic tool for inducing shamanistic experiences.
Mirroring Gray’s activities with King Mob in the 1960s, he draws on Keats and the English romantics as sources for understanding his experiences, whereas when it comes to LSD I would opt more for figures such as William Hope Hodgson (and others whose books currently exist outside the literary canon). This is not a matter of huge importance, and obviously reflects personal tastes and reading experiences. I went through Keats as a teenager and concluded I disliked his poetry.
The Acid is an engaging and thought provoking book, and while it is one man’s trip, it is also intended as a map that will assist any interested party in their own exploration of ‘inner space’. The text works on many levels, most obviously as a piece of writing that is a joy to read. If you have any interest in acid at all, then get your hands on this book!
But let’s give more or less the last word to Chris. He writes the following about his attendance at a San Francisco psychedelic conference in the early part of this millennium: “A well established, even well-heeled, cult I had been expecting; but not one thriving like this. The hall was so packed you could barely move. Of all the revolutionary groups of my youth – the Hippies, the New Left, the students, the blacks, the feminists – it was, however improbably, the druggies and the druggies alone who had made it through in one piece. And not just survived, but boomed.”
Well, throw in some voodoo or candomblé and I think we have a revolutionary situation!
This book has been republished by Park Street Press as The Acid Diaries by Christopher Gray and is currently fairly easy to obtain. (Note added 15 December 2010).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: candomblé, Chistopher Gray, Chris Gray, Hampstead Heath, Julia Callan-Thompson, Leaving The 20th Century: The incomplete works of the Situationist International, London, LSD, north London, Realms of the Human Unconscious, Sam, shamanism, Stanislav Grof, Terry Taylor, The Acid, The Acid Diaries, The Acid: On Sustained Experiment with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide or LSD, voodoo
Posted in books, counterculture, psychedelia | 24 Comments »
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
Yesterday I posted an essay on the main part of this website entitled The Real Dharma Bums: on the beatnik frenzies of Julia Callan-Thompson & Bruno de Galzain. The text documents one of my mother’s relationships and the endless scamming that accompanied the hardcore drug use that was a part and parcel of said romance. Running to 10,000 words, this piece was too long to use as a blog. I prefer to place shorter and more fragmentary materials here. But as a supplement to that and other writings about my mother, I’m running below a couple of letters she wrote to my grandmother Elsie in the early 1960s.
The first letter was written from 101 Barnsbury Street, London N1. It is undated but would have been composed in either August or September 1961; most likely mid-to-late August. My Uncle Terry had recently been caught in possession of stolen goods and was banged up, while my Uncle Johnny was on the run from the army and the cops. Shortly before this, my grandfather Dai was one of several Newport dockers to lose his job after he was discovered incapacitated at work as a result of liberating and downing a large amount of booze that he’d been handling. The early 1960s were tough times for my family and my mother resolved to hide from them fact that she was pregnant (they would, of course, have been very happy to hear this had she been married). My mother was always a little cagey in her letters home, and I’ve heard enough stories about her teenage years to know that while she was only 17 years-old when she penned the first missive I reproduce here, she was already extremely streetwise and adept at pulling scams and cons.
I don’t really know what to make of the employment my mother refers to below, she was a nightclub hostess at the time she wrote the letter. Likewise, the story about going to Germany appears to be no more than a way of covering her tracks: she did not want to see family members when she was heavily pregnant with me. My view is my mother had no intention of leaving London – where I was born just before Easter 1962. That said, while disentangling truth from falsehood may be difficult here, the expressions of love towards my grandmother and our wider family are nonetheless one hundred percent genuine. So here’s the first letter:
“I’m writing because I’m wondering why you haven’t written. I sent you a card and a small something on your birthday which included my present address. Have you received this? If it has been mislaid in the post tell me in your next letter and I’ll get in touch with the post office as I’ve a receipt.
“How are things at home, did Terry get off lightly and have they caught up with Johnny yet? Hell! Here I am writing you what is supposed to be a cheerful letter and I haven’t said one cheerful thing yet.
“I’m living near to the hospital where I used to work. Its quite a nice area except when the Cypriots that live next door start arguing. Honestly I’d thought our family could argue but you should see this lot once they start going. Bank Holiday they started at about 11 am and no word of a lie mum they were still at it when I came home about midnight. The trouble is they start off with two people arguing and then their family join in then all the people that occupy the flats where they live join in, then the bloke who owns the cafe down the road joins in until you’ve got every Cypriot that lives within the radius of 4 miles joining in . It wouldn’t be so bad if you knew what they were arguing about but the trouble is that you don’t because they’re either babbling in Greek or Turkish and it does make old nosey want to know what’s going on.
“I must tell you mum I’ve actually acquired a sewing machine, a typewriter and a camera all within the last week. No I haven’t won the pools!!! The typewriter I had given me. You see mum up until this week I was working for a solicitor in Baker Street and the girl who I was supposed to be successor to was leaving to go to South Africa with her husband so naturally she wanted to get rid of all the things that she couldn’t take with her. The only problem was that I had to carry it all the way from East London. God I nearly killed myself doing it. It’s not a nice modern portable, but one of those big black heavy pre-war things and so you can imagine what a job it was lugging it all the way to the underground. When I got there the tube was full so I had to carry it. Then off the underground to get the bus then I had to walk about 200 yards from the bus stop to the house. Honestly mum I’m sure that if anything I lost about 2 stone that night and put muscles that were never there in my arms. Still I mustn’t grumble must I. At least I’ve got a typewriter for nothing. Also I bought the camera off her for only £1. Is a simply super one too.
“Now for the sewing machine. Last Sunday I was in the market. I don’t know if you know mum but the markets in London are all in the streets not closed in like the ones at home. You know you can bid a price down and I got the machine that was advertised for £6.10 for £3.10. I was so pleased with myself for getting it at £3 less that I just had to buy it.
“I’ve also paid my overdraft at the bank and got my tape machine out of the pawn shop. Honestly mum with all these things I’m beginning to feel that I ought to open up a shop.
“By the way is the radio working? I’m enclosing a spare valve because one of them is practically burnt out and it would cost you about fifteen bob to replace so as I’ve one here which I can’t use for anything else you might as well have it.
“Also mum when I collected my cases at Paddington there were only two. Did you send the other one or not? In case you haven’t I’m enclosing ten shillings which I hope will pay it, if not I’ll send on the difference You might as well have it sent straight to the house mum.
“I don’t think I’ll be home before next Easter at the earliest mum, as a German girlfriend who I have known since I’ve been in London stayed with me last week as she was going back to Cologne this week and she invited me to stay with her family for Christmas. If the finances will enable me I intend staying until almost up to Easter in which case I’ll come home straight from Germany and stay for a few weeks before I move on to somewhere else but after next Easter I don’t somehow think I’ll come back to London. I’m thinking of going to Leeds or Manchester or some other city as I’m becoming a bit fed up with London. Or maybe I’ll do a season job in Germany or someplace. I just can’t get over how much I’ve written, honestly mum, I’m bound to have paralysed my hand or something.
“I hope that you had some days out mum. I really do wish that I could share my luck with all the family. I had a really wonderful holiday in the Isle of Wight. I visited Ventnor and tried to see if I could find the hotel Johnny stayed at, but I’d forgotten the name. I hope you all received my cards and that Pat and Gerald received their rock all in one piece. Also when I was down there after about two weeks I went on to Lee-On-Solent which is just a small seaside place – but I was able to go to Southampton – which wasn’t very thrilling as I’d been there too many times before, and also you only had to take the ferry over the water and you came to Portsmouth where I’d never been before. Also, Margaret will probably know its only a 5d bus fare from Portsmouth to Southsea which is a lovely place, really mum you ought to spend a holiday there. The beaches are just as nice if not better than Brighton and the lights in the nights are really and truly beautiful from the water.
“I really must close now mum although I do miss you all. I must say thank you mum for giving me such a nice welcome at home and look forward to my next visit whenever that is. My regards and best wishes to the family. All my fondest love, Julia.”
Here’s the second letter, written by my mother on 2 March 1963 from 24 Bassett Road, London W10:
“Dear Mum
“I’m glad to hear that you’re up and about again, I was quite worried but it was good to know that the family hadn’t neglected you.
“In your letter, as in nearly all the letters you’ve written me, you have once more asked me to come back home. Well mum although I haven’t been very much use to you as a daughter, I would be of even less use to you in Newport. At least in London I’m being of some use to myself and I hope my friends.
“I was very young when I left home and most probably it caused you considerable worry, but myself I have never regretted the decision. This is no reflection on you but rather on other circumstances.
“You always seem to think that I’m unhappy. I sincerely want to stress the point mum that I am far happier here than I would be down there, it isn’t because of the higher wages that I stay here, although obviously it is much more pleasant not to have to worry about every penny. I had a very different life than I would have had had I stayed at home, and have therefore become a different type of person. I just wouldn’t fit into a Newportonian way of life any more, so please don’t fret about it.
“It’s very sweet of you to save up for my 21st. I’m not being ungrateful, but I’d much rather you had a holiday or some extra luxury with the money.
“Fondest love to dad, also my love to the rest of the family. Bye for now. Affectionately, Julia.
“PS. Look after your legs and don’t over use them, you won’t be supplied with a new pair if those should wear out.”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1960s, 60s, Barnsbury Street, Bassett Road, Bruno de Galzain, central London, Cologne, David Callaghan, Elsie Callaghan, Germany, Isle of Wight, Islington, Johnny Callan, Julia Callan-Thompson, Ladbroke Grove, Lee-On-Solent, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newport, Paddington, Portsmouth, sixties, Southampton, Southsea, Stewart Home, Terry Callan, Ventnor, west London
Posted in Julia Callan-Thompson | 17 Comments »
Monday, July 20th, 2009
Recently a friend suggested I try to acquire some Russ Henderson vinyl I wanted via Discogs. I’d landed on this site a few times but had never really investigated it. When I checked it out, I was disappointed to find only two Russ Henderson titles were listed there, the 1966 vinyl album Caribbean Carnaval! (sic) and the CD compilation London Is The Place For Me 2, which features a Henderson track taken from Caribbean Carnival; only the latter was available in the Discogs marketplace, but needless to say I already had both it and the release it is taken from. I double-checked my copy of the 1966 vinyl and ‘Carnival’ is spelt correctly on the sleeve and labels, the spelling error had been generated in the Discogs listing, although I’ve now amended it.
My interest in Russ Henderson stemmed originally from the fact that he lived in a flat beneath my mother at 24 Bassett Road way back when in the sixties. He is also a supremely groovy, if sometimes overlooked, musician. A few years ago I went into a used record shop in Bexhill-On-Sea, and was flipping through some sixties vinyl when the owner asked me what I was looking for. I told him I wanted anything by Russ Henderson other than Caribbean Carnival. He told me he was an expert on rare records but he’d never heard of this act. I explained that Henderson was a highly regarded jazz musician but that he’d also led the first steel band on the streets of London. The shop owner asked me if I was looking for anything else. I told him I wanted some releases by The Global Village Trucking Co. He proceeded to scream at me to get out of his shop, wailing as I left that he was a vinyl expert and I must be making up names because he’d never heard of this band either. In reality, the vinyl nerd simply didn’t know the depths of his own ignorance. My mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, had been acquainted with The Global Village Trucking Co. The Globs, as they were fondly referred to on the seventies free festival circuit, don’t particularly groove me; but I was still interested in getting my mits on their releases for research purposes primarily…
The Globs aren’t too well served on Discogs either, they don’t even have their own page, just entries for their appearance on the double compilation album Greasy Truckers Live At Dingwalls Dance Hall. When I looked there was no sign of The Globs sole long player at Discogs. This served to remind me that I’d missed the documentary BBC4 broadcast on The Globs then (1972) and now (2008) last year… and it ain’t available on BBC ‘Watch Again’ either! Having investigated a few records that had some connection to my mother’s life at Discogs, I figured I might as well go the whole hog by moving on to looking at myself. When I searched for myself on Discogs, I turned up an artist profile, but again the discography was very partial. I have four albums to my own name, three fiercely independent productions and one that came out on Paul Smith’s King Mob label which was also indie, but distributed by Sony. Strangely this latter title, my best distributed and promoted record, was missing from Discogs. Likewise, the list of releases I either appear on or contribute tracks to was very patchy.
So I figured I’d join Discogs and add my missing releases. That said, I found completing and submitting the form for my King Mob album Pure Mania such a pain in the ass, that I’m not sure I can be bothered to add my missing compilation and guest appearances. What do you think? Should I go for it or is this wasted effort? I certainly can’t be arsed to add other omitted King Mob releases; such as Ken Kesey in the form of recordings made of the Acid Tests, and Charles Bukowski. At first I was surprised by what I couldn’t find on Discogs, but gradually the limitations of the site began to make sense to me. It suffers from all the faults that disfigure huge swathes of the web, since it is both a market place and a popularity contest (other people vote on the accuracy of your submissions). The only reason I can see to add items to Discogs is either because you have a copy you want to sell, or because it is a release on which you feature. The idea that someone would upload all the items from their record collection not already on Discogs is mind-numbingly depressing; the term anorak isn’t insulting enough to cover a saddo of this calibre! A series of searches showed I have several dozen releases not currently on the site – ranging from Eddie Bo (whose discography is incomplete) to Ward 34 (whose only single isn’t listed, yet anyway) – and if I was to do a thorough investigation, I suspect I’d find what I have that isn’t there runs well into three figures…
Just in case you’re interested, my still rather partial profile on Discogs can be found here. Likewise, I mentioned Technorati earlier this month, and following on from that I joined BlogCatalog. If the aesthetics of boredom really grove you, then you could do worse than check out the latter site, starting with my page, of course, which is here.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Bassett Road, BBC4, Bexhill-On-Sea, BlogCatalog, Caribbean Carnival, Charles Bukowski, Discogs, Eddie Bo, Global Village Trucking Co., Greasy Truckers Live At Dingwalls Dance Hall, Julia Callan-Thompson, Ken Kesey, King Mob, London Is The Place For Me, Nick Hornby, Paul Smith, Pure Mania, Russ Henderson, Sony, Stewart Home, Technorati, Ward 34
Posted in music, Web 2.0 | 26 Comments »
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
Back in the late 1960s my mother Julia Callan-Thompson was in the countercultural jargon of the time an ‘India freak’; a drop-out obsessed with the ‘mystic east’. Among my mother’s extant papers are a number of letters she sent while out on the hippie trail, and one she received from a woman called Georgian Shaw as she was making her way back to Europe. My favourite among the various surviving missives my mother sent my grandparents over the years is the following, mailed from Kathmandu on 13 June 1969:
“Everest although cold was the most beautiful sight you could see. Yes! we’re the luckiest people alive!!! Just returning from the mountains. Kathmandu seems such a big city now, although in comparison to London it’s just a village. Bruno has fractured his spine, nothing too serious, just that he must not carry anything or exert himself much for six months. We both would like to have a European summer, here the rainy season has started, rains at least 4-5 hours a day and July and August nearly all the day, enough of hot tropical weather. In India 150 degrees Fahrenheit, so we start back to drizzle and lukewarm weather, how we long for those cool English evenings. A friend is driving in about a week to Kabul in Afghanistan, that’s 3,000 miles of the 12,000 miles over to Europe, we should arrive in Kabul about the beginning of July or at the earliest last week in June. Its strange before I used to think that Wales was such a long way from London, now that 150 miles seems like a before breakfast walk.
“We hope to find a place to settle for a while, maybe, God willing, start a family, and live a normal family life. Travelling is one of the most stimulating things I know, but it’s a full time occupation, leaving no time for anything else. Bruno is dreaming of a big studio somewhere (maybe, South of France), where he can paint in peace and not have to leave things behind all the time because there’s too much to carry. It’s also time for us to become responsible citizens not wandering bums. Should see you sometime in August. Bruno wants so much to meet you all and me so proud of being a real countess although most of the time we don’t have two half pennies to rub together. Yes I’m married to the best man in the world. Love compensates for everything. We love you and will see you all soon…”
I guess that by 1969 my grandparents were used to receiving messages like this. It would have been quite something for a docker’s daughter like my mother to have become a countess; but she hadn’t actually married her boyfriend Bruno de Galzain, and he wasn’t a really count (although he delighted in telling people that he was).
As my mother returned west, she stopped off at the British Embassy in Kabul to pick up mail. When she went there she was handed the following missive from Georgina Shaw (which while addressed to her, seems to have been written more with Bruno in mind):
“Rishikesh 6th July 1969. Darlings God bless. Kabul Summer 1969, so glad we are together. I returned to Rishikesh full of thoughts of you which will continue to speed us all on our way and bring more meetings, more love. I wrote Layfayette that everything is fine. It is…
“Rarely can a trip to Delhi have been so miraculously rewarding.
“The spiritual circus continues to amuse in Rishikesh and the Ganges keeps us cool; perhaps we shall meet in a country garden in England.
“Stay wonderful.
“I shall not forget how beautiful Julie looked in the Nepalese gown – playing the one-stringed instrument. Happy days anyway you look at it. I love you. Delhi was peaceful compared with this seething metropolis where there is never a moments peace; Happy days.
“Pray that you are passing lightly through the trip and all is as it should be; as it must be.
“It is a great happiness to have seen you before you left, let me have news soon; I should love to know how Europe seems to be. We can at least be certain that Lucky will remain for a while yet.
“I AM AS HOLY AS POSSIBLE HERE.
“Swimming a good deal.
“How everybody scatters and regroups intricate karmas. Tokyo for Cherry Blossom twice – this year next year sometime…
“Your gift widened horizons in the foothills; I do not completely believe that the encounter between us actually took place, but exhibit A is pretty convincing.
“I think of you as though you were already in England; please write me news as soon as you can.
“Meanwhile Om Shanti. Peace and love and even flowers and incense. Hari Om and mostly Love, Georgina.”
After returning to London, Shaw would share a flat in Islington’s Thornhill Square with Carnaby Street fashion phenomenon Michael Fish, where she’d entertain figures both comic and influential, including seventies pot broker Howard Marks.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1969, Afghanistan, Bruno de Galzain, Carnaby Street, Delhi, England, Ganges, Georgina Shaw, Howard Marks, India, India feak, Islington, Julia Callan-Thompson, Kabul, Kathmandu, London, Michael Fish, Mount Everest, Nepal, Rishikesh, South of France, Thornhill Square, Tokyo, Wales
Posted in counterculture, Julia Callan-Thompson, psychedelia | 16 Comments »
Friday, July 10th, 2009
I imagine there must be many autobiographical accounts of working as a film extra in London in the sixties, although I can’t recall reading any. Looking at the film industry from the bottom up strikes me as considerably more interesting than the recent obsession with celebrity focused accounts of the movie world. My mother, Julia Callan -Thompson, briefly took up extra chores in the mid-sixties and she ran them in tandem with attempts to establish a modelling career. She found her way onto the fringes of the London film world through a friend called Annette Monaghan. Annette had grown up two streets away from my mother in Newport and relocated from south Wales to London to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In London, Monaghan adopted the stage name Annette Foley. My mother had arrived in London in 1960 to pursue a beatnik lifestyle and accompanied Annette to a film audition circa 1964 just to keep her company. The producer auditioning Annette said he’d employ my mother too if she got an Equity card, which she did.
One of my mother’s first film jobs was working as an extra on the historical movie Becket. It starred Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. The film was adapted by Edward Anhalt from a Jean Anouilh play and directed by Peter Glenville. Despite being nominated for a bunch of film awards, the movie is actually a camp romp in which sado-masochism and homo-eroticism are delightfully evoked through lush visuals and barbed dialogue. In the film, Thomas a Becket comes across as a Saxon version of St Sebastian, and the blatantly sexualised whipping of Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral is used as a framing device for the entire story. The first shot of Henry shows him arriving at Canterbury with a tolling bell swinging in the frame. After detailing his friendship and estrangement from Thomas in a series of flashbacks that last for over two hours, Henry is finally shown taking pleasure in his punishment and afterwards he gaily thanks the church officials who’ve lashed him. Archbishop Becket’s murder is just as stylised and heavily eroticised. The dialogue in Becket mixes Machiavelli and Clausewitz with high camp. For example, Becket telling Henry II that he should have no illusions about his popularity because the crowd cheering him have been paid to do so.
My mother, who mainly worked as a Soho nightclub showgirl and hostess, was used to staying up until the small hours and sleeping late. Film work, even when she was only employed as an extra, required her to get up at the crack of dawn. While my mother had long harboured a taste for amphetamines, the car already loaded with extras that would arrive at 6.AM to take her from Ladbroke Grove to Elstree increased their immediate usefulness. In an undated note she told our family back in Wales: “Apologies for the long silence – but I’ve been working every day – yesterday was my first day off working on the film Casino Royale, a send up James Bond – lots of people working on it. Peter Sellers, David Niven, Ursula Andress, George Raft etc. – not grumbling because the money is so good but will be glad when it’s finished so I can have a rest.”
The original Casino Royale was so star filled that my mother doesn’t bother to list all the celebrities appearing in the movie. Among those omitted from her roll call are Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Daliah Lavi, Joanna Pettet, Deborah Kerr, William Holden, Charles Boyer and one of the most famous faces of French cinema at that time, Jean Paul Belmondo. The film had five credited directors: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Robert Parrish and Joe McGrath. It was very loosely based on the James Bond book Casino Royale, with comic innuendo largely replacing novelist Ian Fleming’s extreme sado-masochistic fixations. While elements of the trouser dropping humour on display are patently English, overall the film has a pan-European feel with the sparse plotting and international cast bringing to mind Roger Vadim’s similarly camp late-sixties confection Barbarella. In both films scantily clad female ‘eye candy’ (hence the hiring of my mother as an extra) brighten up a series of exotic and often high tech locations. Casino Royale’s arch-villain Woody Allen is creating doubles of world leaders and various spies in an attempt to take over the planet. The soundtrack is by Burt Bacharach. There are many bedroom and bathroom sequences, including slinky shots of Ursula Andress exotically costumed and filmed through a fish tank. Casino Royale is a thoroughly enjoyable period piece, replete with speculation about bad guy Woody Allen being a junkie and various other heavily sign-posted drug references.
In another undated note my mother wrote to our family: “…have finished working on Casino Royale, did three days this week on a Dirk Bogarde film called Accident and will be working on a Laurence Harvey film Spy With A Cold Nose tomorrow, so I’ve been pretty lucky with work this summer – unless something really great happens I’m planning to winter in Paris – anyway if I do decide not to stay in London – will come and see you all before leaving…”
In Joseph Losey’s Accident, love triangles among the Oxford University set provide a vehicle for a lingering exploration of guilt, repression, thwarted desire and emotionally restrained but nevertheless excessive drinking. In striking contrast, Spy With A Cold Nose was a spoof espionage movie about a dog that had been bugged and presented as a gift to the head of the Soviet state. Directed by Daniel Petrie, the film starred Laurence Harvey, Daliah Lavi and Lionel Jeffries. Harvey plays a sex obsessed society vet blackmailed by the security services into assisting them; his character appears to be modelled on Profumo Scandal fall guy Stephen Ward who was a sex obsessed society osteopath. To underline the Profumo Scandal parallels, one scene in Spy With A Cold Nose is set in a hostess club.
To the best of my knowledge, after 1966 my mother stopped working as an extra on London film productions, although she does turn up on documentary footage of countercultural events including The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream and Alex Trocchi’s State of Revolt. I know she worked as an extra on some Bollywood movies in 1968, but to date I’ve not managed to unearth the titles of these epics.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Accident, Alex Trocchi's State of Revolt, Annette Foley, Annette Monaghan, Barbarella, Becket, Bollywood, Burt Bacharach, Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral, Carl von Clausewitz, Casion Royale, Charles Boyer, Daliah Lavi, Daniel Petrie, David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Dirk Bogarde, Edward Anhalt, Elstree, George Raft, Henry II, Ian Fleming, India, James Bond, Jean Anouilh, Jean Paul Belmondo, Joanna Pettet, Joe McGrath, John Gielgud, John Huston, Joseph Losey, Julia Callan-Thompson, Ken Hughes, Ladbrook Grove, Laurence Harvey, Lionel Jeffries, London, Newport, Niccolo Machiavelli, Orson Welles, Peter Glenville, Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers, Profumo Scandal, Richard Burton, Robert Parrish, Roger Vadim, south Wales, Stephen Ward, The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, The Spy With A Cold Nose, Thomas Becket, Ursula Andress, Val Guest, west London, William Holden, Woody Allen
Posted in film, Julia Callan-Thompson | 14 Comments »