28 Saturday Mar 2020
Mark Blum was born in Newark and raised in Maplewood, New Jersey. As a teenager, trips to Broadway shows taught him to love the theatre, though he never considered acting as a career. “I was raised in one of those basic middle-class Jewish families in the suburbs,” he told the New York Times, “and that just wasn’t something somebody thought about.” Continue reading
26 Thursday Mar 2020
Posted in Books, Fashion and Beauty, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction
≈ Comments Off on The Little Book of Marilyn
“I first truly discovered Marilyn Monroe on a postcard stand in Devon, England, during a seaside holiday in 1985 … the postcard of Marilyn in a gold lamé dress, blowing a kiss to the camera, triggered something inside of me. At a time when I felt like the most unglamorous person in the world, Marilyn’s beauty, style and sophistication spoke to my teenage heart.”
Michelle Morgan, author of The Little Book of Marilyn, has written several other books about Monroe, including Marilyn’s Addresses, Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, Before Marilyn: The Blue Book Modelling Years, and The Girl: Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist. A compact softback, The Little Book of Marilyn is part of a series from U.S. publisher Running Press. Previous subjects include Bettie Page and Audrey Hepburn, whose fame has endured like Marilyn’s, and whose appeal surpasses that of other pin-models and actresses, including some still living. Continue reading
05 Thursday Mar 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on ‘Dear Christine’ Symposium Rescheduled
The Dear Christine symposium has been rescheduled for Saturday, March 28, at Deptford Town Hall, London from 12-6 pm – more details here. (Shown above is ‘Casting the First Stone’ by Marguerite Horner, oil on linen, 2017.)
UPDATE: Due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19, this symposium has been postponed until further notice.
23 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in History, Politics, Profumo Affair, Television
≈ Comments Off on ‘Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Me’
Tags
Andrew Lloyd-Webber, BBC, Caroline Kennedy, Christine Keeler, Cliveden, Ernest Marples, Eugene Ivanov, Geoffrey Robertson, George Wigg, Harold Macmillan, John Profumo, Keeler Profumo Ward and Me, Lord Astor, Lord Denning, Lord Hailsham, Mandy Rice-Davies, Natalie Livingstone, Profumo Affair, Stephen Pound, Stephen Ward, Thomas Critchley, Tom Mangold
“The story that defined a decade of great change in Great Britain was my big break in Fleet Street, and I covered and loved every moment of it, from the ridiculous to the tragic …”
Tom Mangold, described in The Times as ‘the doyen of broadcast reporters’, began his career as an investigative journalist on Fleet Street before moving into television as a foreign correspondent, and has since made over 100 documentaries, including many for the BBC’s Panorama. But like many others drawn into the Profumo Affair, Mangold has never quite moved on from the 1963 scandal which still leaves more questions than answers.
Keeler, Profumo, Ward & Me is the third documentary on the subject in which Mangold has played a prominent role within the last decade: BBC Radio Four’s Profumo Confidential, which he presented, and ITV’s Sex, Lies and a Very British Scapegoat both aired in 2013, fifty years after the event. And as BBC1’s six-part drama, The Trial of Christine Keeler, sets the rumour mill in motion again, its final episode was followed immediately by Mangold’s latest account on BBC2. Continue reading
18 Tuesday Feb 2020
Posted in Art and Photography, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on Goodbye (For Now) to ‘Dear Christine’
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I regret to tell you that ARTHOUSE1 is currently closed and the Dear Christine exhibition – plus a symposium scheduled for this Saturday – has been postponed until further notice. My sincere regards go out to everyone affected, and I hope to write more about this wonderful show in the near future. I currently have several related articles in the pipeline – including a review of the recent BBC documentary about the Profumo Affair, which I hope to post here later this week. (The above photo shows a print from a series by Lewis Morley, 1963, on loan from Camilla Shivarg; commissioned embroidery by Fine Cell Work, ‘Christine in Gold’; and ‘Portrait of a Lady’ by Sarah Shaw. And in the photo below is Fionn Wilson’s ‘Christine Mesmerises’, opposite the iconic Morley print.)
