London Blues (16 page)

I took Joe over a cup of coffee and a corned beef
sandwich
and some custard cream biscuits.

‘Here you are, old fellow, on the house.’

French Joe just stared ahead. His eyes were red. He was crying.

‘What’s up?’

He took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his nose and his eyes (in that order) and then turned to me and managed a half-smile. He took a bite from the sandwich and swallowed it without chewing it.

‘You hear the news?’

‘What news?’

‘You hear all those police cars and sirens this morning?’

‘Yeah, you always do here. I don’t notice them any more.’

‘You should have done.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Some tearaways went out with their shotguns … they blasted Mr Messalino out his window.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘Course he’s dead. He never knew what hit him.’

‘Christ Almighty. I don’t believe it! I saw him only last week!’

‘What’s that got to do with it? An audience with you ain’t going to give him immortality, is it?’

‘Who did it? Why?’

‘Everybody knows who did it except the Old Bill. Bernie Narrizano’s the bloke. He’s the boss now. He’ll take over the shops and the clubs. He’s a vicious bastard … not a gentleman like Mr Messalino. A real fucker … strong-arm stuff. Things are changing around here. This is the 1960s now. I’m still living in the 1940s. I don’t recognise it. It’s all different. The game has lost me.’

And I’ve lost Mr Messalino and a nice little earner ….

It was a stiflingly hot August Saturday night about a month later when there was a loud thump on the door of our room. Veronica and I were half undressed on the bed watching that old Dane Clark film,
Moonrise
,
on the TV.
Veronica wasn’t expecting anyone and nor was I. I opened the door and these two blokes who were built like brick shit-houses just walked into the room. They had evening suits on and were either on the way to some function or had just left one. They looked like bouncers, which is sort of what they are. They were marinated in cheap after-shave or cologne.

The slimmer of the two (but still pretty big) said: ‘You Timmy Purdom?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘And who’s this?’ He nodded towards Veronica.

‘My girlfriend.’

‘Right then. Bernie asked us to come round and see you.’

‘Bernie?’

‘Mr Bernie Narrizano.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Now you did some … uh … work for Mr Messalino, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You had a good run for your money with him?’

‘I guess so.’

‘That’s what Bernie heard. Bernie also heard you were a dab hand with the camera. You know how to take pictures that look like they were taken by a bloke with a head on his shoulders.’

‘I can use a light meter.’

‘Well, Bernie says that he don’t need you to take any snapshots as his own lads can do that. But what he does need is someone who can use an 8mm cine camera. He wants some 10-minute films … all the usual ingredients … plenty of humping and that.’

‘I’ve never shot a movie before.’

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult for a man of your
achievements
, should it, son?’

‘I wouldn’t know where to get the footage processed.’

‘That ain’t a problem. We’ve got a lab up on the Seven Sisters Road that can do it at night.’

‘What would the deal be?’

‘Bernie is generous … very generous. But the market and Bernie’s programme of expansion and diversification have put a little bit of a brake on his good heart. But he’ll look after you. Anyway, I’m Ronnie Swindon … and this is my card. I run the day-to-day operations for Bernie … it has been a real treat meeting you and your lovely wife, Timmy, and we shall talk shortly I’m sure. Good-night.’

And they sailed out the door and thumped all the way down the stairs and slammed the front door so hard the whole house rocked.

Veronica was laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Your new friends.’

‘I wouldn’t say they are friends. More business
acquaintances
.’

‘They won’t let you get away with anything, Tim.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t.’

I got back on the bed and tried to watch
Moonrise
but I couldn’t concentrate. Eight-millimetre films, eh? They wouldn’t be very difficult to shoot but they would require a more extrovert performer than the stills, someone who would listen and do exactly as they were told. Still, I couldn’t make worse films than those old pictures I showed at Stephen’s parties if I tried, could I? The punters don’t expect great acting anyway; the fact that it is moving is enough for them. I could do for dirty films what Harrison Marks has done for glamour films. But I need a distinctive name to sign the pictures with … how about lopping off the ‘s’ of Marks and swapping the names around? Mark Harrison presents … that sounds right. Sleazy and yet with a bit of polish. Mark Harrison presents … A Moonrise Film …
Au
Pair
Girls
in
a
Chelsea
Sandwich
!

But what would the deal be? And is Bernie’s idea of generosity my idea of generosity? And who am I and what am I doing here anyway?

First
8mm
:

DOLCE VITA FOR FOUR

125
feet
(
10
minutes
)
,
black
and
white,
mute.

The Ronnie/Bernie Deal, as Veronica called it, was simple. I would submit an expenses budget and ‘story’ outline and if they approved it they would reimburse me the costs once the film was made and pay me £75. I paid the performers, bought the stock and organised the camera and lights. They would pay the development costs at the lab. So while it wasn’t the good money I had been making with Mr Messalino it wasn’t to be balked at: £75 clear for just a couple of evenings’ work – an evening to shoot it and an evening later on to edit it.

My contact man up at Finsbury Park was a bloke called Ernie Trundle who worked nights in a small 8mm lab. He was the night-shift supervisor and could do what he wanted. He was an elderly guy and apparently was an old friend of Ronnie Swindon’s dad, Harry, a once well known bank robber who now, funnily enough, runs a caravan site down on the Isle of Sheppey just across the Medway from Grain. (‘You ever want a caravan for the weekend, Timmy, just give me a shout and I’ll fix it with my old man.’) We were limited to 8mm black-and-white because no
independent
lab yet had colour processing facilities. When you bought a reel of 8mm Kodacolor or Gevacolor the processing costs were included in the purchase price and only those companies have the means to process colour. So, until such time as a safe contact is found in one of these big labs or colour processing becomes easier and simpler the punters are stuck with black-and-white.

I wasn’t too familiar with 8mm cine cameras so I bought some copies of
Amateur
Cine
World
,
studied the ads and spent a day going around the West End shops checking the gear out. The camera I decided on was the new Eumig C5 that was only just out from Johnsons up in Hendon. A beautiful bit of Austrian engineering and just what I needed because, unlike all the other 8mm machines, it has
reflex viewing and a built-in zoom lens, an f/1.8 10-40mm, no less. So there would be no messing about with lens turrets and no framing cock-ups arising from a parallax viewfinder. Further, it runs off five pen-light batteries so you are not constantly rewinding a clockwork motor. The thing costs £117 8s. 3d. new and while I had some savings I didn’t want to blow that amount on something I didn’t need myself. Luckily I found a dodgy photographic dealer down in Streatham who was prepared to hire the camera to me overnight for 25 shillings.

I shot
Dolce
Vita
for
Four
on Friday, 18 August 1961, in a bedsit in Courtfield Gardens that a friend of Veronica’s had. I had two guys from a pub on Westbourne Grove I knew, Audrey who had come via Veronica, and a friend of Stephen’s called Tina who was half English and half Chinese. She said she was an old friend of Stephen’s but didn’t seem to know much at all about him. But she was a real wildcat on camera and was the only performer who didn’t keep looking into the lens.

The storyline of the film was minimal. Audrey and Tina are alone in the bedsit drooling over a Cliff Richard
magazine
. Audrey gets very excited by Cliff and then Tina produces a dildo. In the middle of the lesbian high-jinks the two boyfriends walk in unexpectedly and join in. There was a slight problem with one of the blokes, Terry, who couldn’t keep it up, so I had to be careful how I shot him. The problem with Bill was that he got too excited while I was reloading the camera and came in Tina’s hand when she gave him a playful squeeze. Luckily I had some condensed milk for come shots, but I don’t see how one can fake an ejaculation itself. The zoom lens came in handy for big close-ups. You can zoom right in for close-ups that fill the screen. Give the punters what they want!

I stole the title from the Fellini film that I had seen the week before at the Berkeley Cinema. As a title it seemed apt and contemporary. The phrase appears all over the place now, even in the
News
of
the
World
,
and it is important to
reflect the times. I didn’t actually think a lot of Fellini’s film, it had some nice moments but it went on too long. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood to see it, having just had an enormous row with Veronica who had originally agreed to come but at the last moment stormed off to see
Exodus
at the Astoria instead. (‘I don’t want to see a bunch of Italians – I want to see Sal Mineo. He’s really dreamy!’) The night after Ernie processed it I went up to the lab and ‘edited’ the film together. Joining would be a better term. There was nothing much really to edit, aside from cutting in the opening titles I had shot in my room:

Card One:

 Card Two:

This was really
film
d
’
art
as they used to call it, filmed theatre. Next time I’ll think in terms of cutaways and editing and see if I can’t come up with something a little more cinematic. But Ronnie liked it and gave me £75 in fivers. Good on you, guv. It ain’t the old Messalino money but it supplements the few bob a week I make at Modern Snax.

Second
8mm
:

HOT STUFF

125
feet
(
10
minutes
)
,
black
and
white,
mute.

This was shot in my room on the afternoon of Sunday 19 November 1961. It featured a young guy named Brian Westgate who is a projectionist in a Soho cinema, Shirley the black girl, and a girl Veronica found named Janet Hutchins, a small dark-haired beauty with the finest set of big firm breasts I’ve ever seen. I shot it in less than an hour
and it came out pretty good. Brian was a good performer and could get it up at a flick of a wrist (providing the wrist was someone else’s). He came twice in the hour, once in Shirley’s mouth and once between Janet’s tits. I eschewed a storyline in this. It is just a straight fuck-and-suck film.

I got some good three-way screwing shots and the girls had some fun with each other and with the brand new green nylon umbrella I had bought on Friday at Hector Powe’s. I introduced some forced humour at the end. Janet turns to Brian and says by way of a title card:

… and he replies:

That’s an old schoolboy joke. One we all heard years ago.

After the session we all went down to Au Père de Nico in Lincoln Street, just off the King’s Road near Sloane Square. Very Chelsea-ish. We sat in the courtyard out the back and had some really good crêpes and wine. The whole bill only came to £4 12s. 6d., which wasn’t bad at all. I spent a bit of time editing this film together. I had shot cutaway
close-ups
of the faces of each of the performers as they rolled their eyes, licked their lips and sighed. I could inter-cut these as reaction shots away from the main action. I had also realised after shooting the first film that one shot of a girl sucking a guy, or whatever of some sexual activity, is much the same as another and that it was not necessary to shoot it from another angle again. Just dupe your original shot, which is what I did. Dupe it or flip it. I shot 100 feet of film and ended up with 125 feet. The cuts and inter-cuts certainly gave it a more cinematic feel. After Ernie had done his neg cutting and produced a new print I took it along to Ronnie, who pronounced it a ‘gem’.

I was walking down Charing Cross Road one evening on
the way to meet Stephen in a pub over in Covent Garden when I saw French Joe on the other side of the road leaning against a lamp-post and smoking a cigarette. I walked across. He was shaking and tears were running down his face.

‘How you doing, Joe?’

‘I’m doing all right … but poor Jimmy ain’t.’

‘Who?’

‘They hanged him this morning … at the prison. He’s dead. He was a really good mate … he was. Really good.’

‘Who hanged him?’

‘The fucking prison hanged him … the rozzers. Who do you fucking think hanged him? The taxman?’

I then connected what Joe was saying with the news I had heard on the radio earlier. James Hanratty had been hanged for murdering some bloke called Michael Gregsten who was married but having an affair. Hanratty had discovered them together in the car, surprised them, and then with a gun got them to drive for miles up to Bedfordshire somewhere and there he had shot Gregsten, raped the girl and then shot her, believing she was dead. She wasn’t. She recovered and eventually identified him. Why was French Joe upset by this?