The Beauty Jungle (1964)

The Beauty Jungle (1964) is a welcome release to DVD, having been unavailable for many years – I only managed to see the film several years ago as a BFI viewing copy, despatched to the midlands in a pile of film cans.

The film offers a critique of beauty contests (as the DVD cover says, the film is an ‘inside story of the beauty racket’), and reveals the cynicism at the heart of the modelling industry, which glorifies women whilst simultaneously commodifying them. This can be seen in the montage of crass, regionally sponsored competitions such as ‘Cheltenham’s Miss Banana Yoghurt’, ‘Miss Devonshire Cream’ and ‘Pontypool’s Crumpet Queen’, and also in Monte Carlo’s grotesque circus promoting ‘Le Parfum Miss Trapeze’, in which clowns tickle the bikini-clad women with feather dusters in a nightmarish scene. The film offers a cautionary tale that the life of the international jet-set is not necessarily one to which ‘decent’ British girls like the heroine Shirley Freeman (Janette Scott) should aspire. As Shirley says at the film’s conclusion, “You take someone from nowhere, you give her something, and then, when the party’s over, you say ‘you’ve lost, go home’.”

Christine Geraghty argues that compared to the beginning of the postwar period – when cinema could be considered as the ‘entertainment for all’ – by the end of the 1950s it had largely become a ‘marginal pursuit’, with producers endeavouring to find niche markets such as youth audiences, or by presenting big-budgeted must-see, event films (Geraghty, 2000: 20). One of the ways in which British film attempted to broaden its audience in the latter postwar period was by striving for international appeal, or by working with American companies which could offer film distribution in the US. In 1956, for example, the Rank Organisation announced a policy of only producing films which would appeal to international markets and consequently established Rank Film Distributors of America (RFDA) in order to ‘penetrate the US market’ (Murphy, 2001: 90).

Although (in film terms) ‘international’ often refers to part-funding by an American film company, it could also be used to describe a feeling of internationalism conveyed for the most part by including overseas locations, international cast members, and ‘American’ technological advances such as Technicolor, CinemaScope and VistaVision. These technical innovations – which were largely a response to the encroaching dominance of television – arguably favour location filming, as the emphasised artificiality of studio-bound, widescreen Hollywood musicals such as Brigadoon (1954) and the ‘Barn-Raising Ballet’ in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) reveal. In opposition to this, the location filming in Summer Holiday (1963) and The Beauty Jungle, for example, works to the films’ advantage, in offering a ‘tourist gaze’ of Europe (Urry, 2002).

The Beauty Jungle (Renamed Contest Girl for its American release) bridges a wide gap between the traditional British seaside holiday of the immediate postwar era, and the exotic, foreign holiday seen in Summer Holiday, for instance. Starting in the seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, and taking Shirley Freeman on a journey from the beauty contests of Butlin’s to an international modelling career, this colourful, CinemaScope film represents the spectacle of the Riviera and Mediterranean which the rich and famous flocked to in the late 1950s and early 1960s in order to gain that longed-for tan.

The film follows the postwar trait of fleshing out its cast with numerous ‘guest stars’, including Norman Hartnell (“the man who dresses the greatest beauties in the world”), the Duchess of Bedford, Stirling Moss, Hollywood actress Linda Christian, and musician Joe Brown (representing the teenage market) as contest judges. The British actor Edmund Purdom who had made a name for himself in American and European films also appears as the Hollywood star Rex Garrick (he was the husband of Linda Christian when the film was made).

The Beauty Jungle treats the cinema audience to ‘tourist gaze’ shots of Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo, where Shirley and her manager, Don Mackenzie (Ian Hendry), ostentatiously arrive in a ‘heli-taxi’ for the ‘Miss Globe’ contest. The numerous contestants for this competition bring an international flavour to the film, coming from places as far afield as Peru, France, Germany, America and Japan.

The film clearly follows neither the styles of Social Realism nor Swinging London, which had put the British film industry on the international map in recent years (despite these styles being arguably more indigenous and domestic in feel), and appears too naïve and gauche to really make an impact as an exposé of the glamour industry. In the film’s efforts to appeal to both British and international markets, and to critique the modelling industry whilst at the same time entertain the audience with glamorous spectacle, the end result is something of a curiosity, and invites repeated viewings. It is a pity therefore that the DVD transfer is in a 4:3 pan-and-scan version, and that a lot of the potential spectacle and subsequent viewing pleasure has been lost (a quick look at the customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk will give you a clue). In an age where widescreen television is the norm rather than the exception, the DVD is already dated, not by the film content – which as a mid-60s curio still has the ability to entertain – but by the more recent home viewing technology.

Here are the opening credits (in CinemaScope!):

Beauty Jungle (1964) opening credits

Bibliography:

Geraghty, Christine, 2000, British Cinema in the Fifties, Gender, Genre and the ‘New Look’, London: Routledge

Murphy, Robert (ed.), 2001, British Cinema of the 90s, London: BFI

Murphy, Robert, 1992, Sixties British Cinema, London: BFI

Urry, John, 2002, The Tourist Gaze, (Revised edition), London: Sage Publications

Run For Your Wife (review)

Anyone who has seen the news about Ray Cooney's return to the cinema (his first big screen writing/directing effort since Not Now Comrade in 1976), will know that Run For Wife has hardly broken the box office, and that it has only received a limited screening since its release.

I paid £3 for my 'Silver Screening' ticket & got free coffee and a biscuit included so the cinemas are hardly going to rake it in at this rate!

I'll start by being reasonably fair. The audience I saw the film with enjoyed it, and there were many laughs, gaffaws and an "Oooh" when the late Richard Briers appeared on screen.

However, as anyone would have guessed, the only real pleasure to be gained from Run For Your Wife is the cameo spotting. It's a shame then that too many of these appearances are so fleeting that you will need to watch the film on DVD so that you can pause and rewind it - For example, I saw Katy Manning's name at the end but didn't spot her face in the film.

Christopher Biggins has the best screen presence here, but needs more decent lines.

And there lies the major problem: the actors who really can do comedy don't actually get the opportunity. They're relegated to the role of 'extras' whilst the main parts are given to Danny Dyer and Denise Van Outen who are neither funny nor sympathetic.

Outen delivers the films worst line: "Did you tell that reporter I'd got sexually transmitted spots?! Grrrr you silly sod!!"

As for Dyer, let's say I did not relish the big close-ups of his doughy face with its puffy, unfocused eyes. (At first I thought this was because his character had received a knock to the head - which is the opening gambit of the plot - but, alas this appeared to be his permanent demeanour.

There is one of those credit-sequences at the end that rerun the whole film again in a potted version. It was only here that I noticed Geoffrey Palmer and I think Wanda Ventham (I may be mistaken about the latter).

There was also a post-credit scene, but the projectionist had already turned the house lights up!

When it finally ended some old dear at the back muttered "Has it done now?!"

Pic: Danny Dyer trying to hide the script...

A Fit of the Giggles with Richard III

When I was a kid I got told off for having an uncontrollable fit of the giggles at the Battlefield Visitor Centre, near Bosworth, Leicestershire.

The reason for my mirth was the nightmare scene as enacted by Laurence Olivier in his version of Richard III (1955), which used to be screened in a truncated version in a cinema room at the museum.

In John Ashdown-Hill's book The Last Days of Richard III, he gives an account of the King's last night before battle, and questions the authenticity of reports from the Crowland Chronicle (1486) and Polydore Vergil (early 16th century).

From Vergil:

"yt ys reported that king Rycherd had that night a terrible dreame; for he thowght in his slepe that he saw horrible ymages as yt wer of evell spyrytes haunting evidently abowt him, as yt wer before his eyes, and that they wold not let him rest..." (Quoted in Ashdown-Hill, 2011 , page 71).

Ashdown-Hill argues that this uncomfortable nights sleep could have been the result of a number of things including spending the night in an unfamiliar camp bed, and an attack of the sweating sickness.

Whatever the reason, in his film, Olivier does his utmost to ham his interpretation of the night of 21-22 August 1485 to the nth degree as he tosses and turns in his bed.

Judging by Ashdown-Hill's book, King Dick was not the evil caricature of Shakespeare's play, and as a result, Olivier's smoky bacon-flavoured performance seems even more incongruous.

Looking back 30 years to my giggle-fit at Bosworth I reckon my instincts were right!

Further reading: John Ashdown-Hill, 2011, The Last Days of Richard III, The History Press.

GEW GAWS - SOME THOUGHTS ON SOUVENIR TAT

Stanley Holloway's factory in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

In The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) Stanley Holloway's souvenir factory is simply called 'GEWGAWS ltd'. The title is a knowing nod to mass - produced tat such as the small scale imitations of Anne Hathaways Cottage and Southend Pier that he shows to Alec Guinness' character. His model of the  Eiffel Tower is, of course, the most memorable of these as they play a crucial part in the narrative when the casts are used to disguise the gold bullion that Holloway,  Guinness, Alfie Bass and Sid James steal from Guinness' bank.

As Holloway's character says, "My business occupation is something unspeakably hideous. I'm in the 'presents from' trade. You know, present from Brighton, souvenir from Tunbridge Wells..."

"I propagate British cultural depravity"

This culturally elitist tone echoes that of Richard Hoggart in The Uses of Literacy (first published in 1957), who mentions Gew-Gaws as a typical artefact of working class life. 

Most working class families would commemorate their holiday by purchasing small ornaments and trinkets emblazoned with the name of the resort either as a souvenir for themselves or as a gift for friends or relatives back home, and where's the harm in that? If a small ornament can trigger happy memories for 51 weeks of the year (until the next holiday), so be it.

Take for example Devon Blue Ware, manufactured by Foster's Studio Pottery in the West Country. This has got to be the plainest style of ornament or functional souvenir pottery imaginable. 

I'm unsure of the time period when this pottery was produced, but in its time, the factory had clearly cottoned on to a winner: produce pots of differing shapes, sizes and uses; dip them all in the same distinctive blue glaze, then scratch in the name of a seemingly endless list of seaside resorts, picturesque villages or visitor attractions.

The pots are like a blank page... Even with their legends carved on. Holidaymakers can project their memories of the holiday onto these objects that need no elaborate illustrations or decorations. The blue glaze is 'the blue of Devon' (presumably the sea and sky on a clear, sunny day). But the colour of the glaze is the same no matter the name of the resort on the pot.

Here are a few examples...

A 'Land's End' beaker. The jagged line struck through the text probably mimics the division between land and sea.

A boot with 'Cromer' on it. Why a boot? What does this North Norfolk seaside town have to do with the shoemaking industry?

'Good luck from Flamborough Head' on a miniature tankard. I wonder if 'Good Luck from Beachy Head' would be deemed inappropriate?

A condiment bottle from Gretna Green perhaps hinting at a relationship that will turn to vinegar?

There's something strangely calming and charming about these pots, but to others, these souvenirs are seen as tat. You'll find them going for pennies in charity shops if they've not yet made it to landfill. But what of the seaside souvenir today? In my opinion there's tat and then there's tat! A glance in most souvenir shops now will reveal nasty dust-gathering polyresin ornaments (anything from Highland terriers to fairies) or signs with phrases like 'Gone to the beach' painted on them - possibly by someone on a minuscule wage in the Far East who won't understand the joke - much less what the idea of a holiday is.