Christine Keeler, who died several years ago, was born today in 1942. You’ve seen this image of her before. It shows her in 1963, infamous at the time due to her relationship with the married British Secretary of State for War John Profumo. You know that episode as The Profumo Affair. While we’ve seen this shot many times, today it really struck us how nice it is—as is its variation below. They were made by Lewis Morley to promote The Keeler Affair, a film that was never released. But Morley’s shot was leaked to The Sunday Mirror, and it exploded over the stuffy British public like a bomb and remains one of the most iconic images of the 1960s. Some websites say Keeler is straddling a chair made by famed designer Arne Jacobsen, but it was actually a cheap copy. We’ve written on Keeler before—as has everyone else—but if you want to see what we did, you can check here, here, here, and here. We also have one more link for you. If you follow it, you’ll see that the above shot is the latest in an ongoing series featuring famous women in unusual chairs. Trust us, it’s worth a look.
Above, a cover for K. Beerman’s Baarnse Moord (Murder in Baarn), painted by Dutch artist Martin Oortwijn. We said we’d get back to Oortwijn and here we are, three years later. He remains, in our eyes at least, a unique talent. We were reminded of him because he illustrated the cover of a Christine Keeler biography, and Keeler is back in the spotlight thanks to the new BBC series The Trial of Christine Keeler, which we’ve been watching. So far so good on that, and we’ll try to dig up more from Oortwijn.
MI5 files reveal another compromising John Profumo affair.
An interesting report came out of Great Britain earlier today about John Profumo, the disgraced Secretary of State for War who resigned in 1963 after it emerged that he was having an affair with Christine Keeler, who also had sexual ties to a Russian intelligence officer. When authorities learned of the potential security threat, Profumo was interrogated, at which point he denied involvement with Keeler. When his denial was found to be false, he resigned amid the spiraling scandal. Now MI5 files have revealed that Profumo had a previous affair with a Nazi spy who may have tried to blackmail him. The woman was named Gisela Klein, and she and Profumo met at Oxford University in 1936 when he was an undergrad. During World War II she began working for Nazi intelligence, and after the war was imprisoned as a spy. However the American in charge of her jail got her released and married her. As Gisela Winegard she maintained contact with Profumo after he entered politics, and he allegedly wrote letters to her on House of Commons stationery. There’s no evidence Profumo knew about his old flame’s Nazi connections, but he may have learned of her blackmail schemes by becoming a target. In 1951 Winegard was living in Tangier with her husband when she applied for a visa to visit Britain and listed “Jack Profumo MP” as a reference.
Observers are speculating whether Profumo may have been under pressure to help push her application through. But the visa was eventually refused because of Winegard’s Nazi past, with the head of British intelligence in Tangier also noting: “We have good reason to believe Mr. and Mrs. Winegard have recently engaged in blackmailing activities and now think it is possible their intended visit to the UK may be connected with this affair.”
Since we’ve mentioned the Profumo Affair several times, we found this to be an interesting footnote, especially in light of the ongoing U.S. Justice Department investigation into White House connections to Russian operatives. It’s curious that Profumo’s affairs would twice send him orbiting so close to spies of adversarial countries, but it doesn’t seem as if the Klein/Winegard connection will produce any real smoking gun in terms of improper favors. As for Trump and Russia, time will tell whether there’s anything there. You can read some previous posts on the infamous Profumo Affair here, here, and here.
Joachim Joesten’s Der fall Profumo is a true account of the Profumo sex scandal that rocked Britain’s conservative government in 1963, eventually brigning about the resignation of Secretary of State for War John Profumo. The book was translated from the original German into Dutch by J. P. M. van Elswijk for Dutch publishers De Kennemer and made into what you see above, and newly titled Christine Keeler.
The names of the other players in the story—Profumo, Yevgeni Ivanov, and Stephen Ward—were listed just below, so sometimes you’ll see the title of the book written as Christine Keeler, Profumo, Ward, Ivanov. An unwieldy title perhaps, but the book came out the same year the scandal occurred, which means the names would have been instantly recognizable to bookstore browsers.
You’ve doubtless heard about Keeler and company as well, but if not check here for a quick overview. Even back then it was Keeler who was the central figure, and today she’s the one that’s remembered, while the others have become bit players in her story. That’s why the beautiful cover painted by Dutch artist Martin Oortwijn is so appropriate. Obviously he was an illustrator with special talent. We managed to find a couple of other pieces by him, so we’ll get to him a bit later.
This Inside Story from November 1963 features cover star Christine Keeler and the people in her life, while the left of the page has insets with Mamie Van Doren and Anthony Quinn. We’ve covered Keeler. Hers was one of the most flogged scandals of the 1960s, and Inside Story editors are well aware of that, which is why they claim to have new information. But it’s nothing new—just rehash on Keeler, a background on Czech call girl Maria Stella Novotny, who was well known by this time as one of Keeler’s colleagues, and standard red scare stuff about motel rooms set up with microphones and two-way mirrors. We will get back to Novotny, however—her tale offers some interesting twists and turns.
Inside Story shares stories about Mamie Van Doren, Jackie Gleason, Peter O’Toole, Ava Gardner and a nervous tailor who measured her for a suit, and how perfume makes men go wild. Editors also decry the injustice of a Harlem restaurant refusing to serve a white woman—this, mind you, during an era when literally hundreds of thousands of U.S. enclaves, from restaurants to schools to country clubs to sectors of the military, were whites-only. False equivalence, thy name is Inside Story. But interestingly, a subsequent piece about the world’s sexiest nightclubs tells readers chic Harlem bars are frequented by white Hollywood stars. And so it goes…
Tabloid tells curious readers everything they always wanted to know about things that are none of their business.
The last time we checked in on Top Secret was with their October 1962 issue. Today we’re visiting January 1964 and plenty has changed in the intervening months. Foremost—the paper and printing quality have degraded to what surely must have been the lowest standard available at the time, which is why our scans are grainy. But we can still recognize June Wilkinson on the cover, who we’re told is retiring from modeling, and inside readers hear from Ursula Andress, Jack Lemmon, Brigitte Bardot, Shirley MacLaine, Mandy Rice-Davies and more.
Editors also tout “one of the most earth-shaking advances in the exploration of outer space!” Wow. Was it warp drive? A transporter beam? A stargate? No. It was that America’s newest astronaut, Edward Dwight, Jr., was a different skin color than the other astronauts. We might deign to call that an advance in the attitudes of NASA during an age of state apartheid. Space travel, on the other hand, remained space travel, unchanged. Top Secret implies Dwight was the first black American qualified to be an astronaut, and by so doing avoids admitting that the door was simply closed before his arrival. You know this game—all backslapping, zero introspection. But we get it. “Our First Negro Astronaut!” is a bit more celebratory than, “We should have done this from the beginning.”
But we must move on, because the real gem in this issue comes later, in the story you see announced in the cover’s blazing red banner: Hidden Homos—How To Spot Them! Goodness, where to begin with this? First, we’ll say we would dearly love to reproduce this entire article as an artifact of an intellectual dark age, but it’s Saturday, and time is fleeting. Just know that the language is baroque in its viciousness. Thestory begins with the tale of a company president who unknowingly hired a gay man and had no idea until several years later when the hiree—now a manager—got drunk at a company party and began slapping and scratching another man. Soon four employees were involved in this spat. The company president exclaimed: “My God! Those men are all queers!”
Top Secret explains: “Once the camouflaged homosexual has gotten himself a snug berth, he starts easing others of his ilk into the office. Before long, most of the straight male employees are out on their ears and the camouflaged fags have taken over.” Editors then list the eight most common types of gay men against whom normal, red-blooded Americans must be vigilant (by refusing to hire for any sort of job, potentially harassing out of the neighborhood, and possibly reporting to the authorities). Ready? Here we go with a few highlights:
1: The Overly Fastidious Dresser—obsessive interest in clothes is a feminine trait, and in men it may well be a danger signal.
2: The Overly Hygenic Type—their faces are invariably too-closely shaven. They make a fetish of washing their hands.
3: The Uriah Heep Type—he seeks to prove how very humble and insignificant he is by heaping praise upon others.
4: The Maiden Aunt’s Delight—these men associate with older women because such women make no heterosexual erotic demands upon them.
5: The Solitary Drinker—although he is not gregarious or even friendly, his eyes are constantly roving, covertly peering at others in the bar, particularly other men, seeking a sign of recognition from another secret swish. When he sees one he will give a signal in return and soon both fruitcakes will depart to enjoy a “courtesy exchange.”
6: The Octopus—they put their hands on other men’s shoulders, dig them in the ribs, slap their thighs…
7: The Middle-Aged Mama’s Boy—such an obvious Oedipal situation may indicate homosexual tendencies or homosexuality in adult men of any age, married or single.
8: The Youth Lover—he is constantly engaged in youth work, organizing clubs, leading outings, playing the part of the jolly, ebullient uncle.
It would be interesting to do the opposite of everything on this list and see how long it takes our social, family and sex lives to fall apart. Just a thought. Anyway, Top Secret finishes the article with this bomb: “These are by no means the only types of secret swishes but they are the ones the average person is most likely to encounter.” So basically, the list is all well and good, but anyone can be gay. To which your average non-Neanderthal would reply, “Yes, anyone can be gay. And?” Well, and the editors of Top Secret suggest that anyone displaying suspicious behavior should be investigated more closely. Hmm… we wonder what depth and form those investigations should take? More scans below.
Mandy Rice-Davies, one of the central figures in the politically explosive John Profumo Affair of 1963, died of cancer early this morning. Most accounts of the Profumo scandal describe Rice-Davies as a prostitute, and indeed Stephen Ward, one of the principals in the fiasco, was imprisoned for living off the earnings of Rice-Davies and other women—another way of saying he pimped. But Rice-Davies spent a good portion of her final years denying that she was a call girl, saying she didn’t want her grandchildren to remember her that way. Unfortunately, the history of a scandal is hard to rewrite.
Whatever her means of support during the Profumo Affair, what is certainly true is that she was young and beautiful and somehow found herself at the nexus where rich, entitled men and beautiful women always seem to meet. The Profumo Affair’s world of secret parties, middle-aged male egos, and a lurking Soviet spy came into being during the most paranoid years of the Cold War, and John Profumo’s role in it cost him his position as Secretary of State for War in the British government.
After the scandal Rice-Davies sang in a cabaret in Germany, lived in Spain, moved to Israel where she opened nightclubs and restaurants in Tel Aviv, released music and books, appeared on television and in film, including the The Seven Magnificent Gladiators and Absolute Beginners, and was involved in the development of a Stephen Ward-based Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. She accomplished plenty. But as long as she is remembered it will be for Profumo, Christine Keeler, the parties and scandalous revelations, and the near-collapse of the British government in 1963. If you’re interested in reading more, we talked about Rice-Davies in a bit more detail here and here.
Playing Christine Keeler probably seemed like a good career move at the time, but it didn’t work out that way.
This issue of The National Insider appeared today in 1965 and features cover star Yvonne Buckingham. The headline refers to her, and the reason men thinks she’s sex mad is because she starred in 1963’s The Christine Keeler Story as the titular Keeler, whose affair with Britain’s Secretary of State for War John Profumo caused a scandal. We find it fascinating that the film appeared in November 1963, mere months after the revelations became public. That’s quick action.
Buckingham had already begun building an acting career, having appeared in at least twenty movies beginning in 1957, but for some reason, after all this steady work, she managed just one more role during the 1960s, and only two more in total. We have no info on whether starring as Keeler negatively affected her career, but certain roles have a way of doing that. Certainly Buckingham thought so, if NationalInsider can be believed. For example, the blurb beneath her cover photo reads: They ask what I think of Negroes as lovers, says Yvonne Buckingham. This refers to the scandalous revelation that Christine Keeler had a black lover who was peripherally entangled in the Profumo scandal.
In essence, the British press seems to have thought it would be good fun to portray Buckingham as a version of Keeler. The tactic probably helped sell papers and probably even expanded Buckingham’s public profile, but building a very specific association with a persona non grata such as Keeler in the minds of movie producers also very likely diminished Buckingham’s chances to land a wide variety of movie roles (you can get a sense of how toxic even the most tenuous connection to Keeler was by reading what she had to say about ithere). Buckingham eventually solved her career problems—in the early 1970s she gave up on the British film industry and moved to Brazil.
Q: What do you do when you find yourself in the middle of a national scandal? A: Parlay the recognition into money. The above photo of Welsh-born party girl Mandy Rice-Davies made us think yet again of that question and answer. The first time we remember considering them (because Rice-Davies was before our time), was during the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. Lewinsky appeared on the cover of a national magazine and an acquaintance of ours commented that she must be mortified by the entire situation. But we noted, “Not so mortified that she didn’t manage to get into an expensive photography studio and get these shots made.” Not an affordable thing for a D.C. intern with legal fees looming, but no problem for a person who has signed a representation deal and is being backed by managers.
Likewise this photo of Mandy Rice-Davies tells the world she isn’t the least interested in hiding, but rather in embracing her unexpected fame, derived from her role—along with friend Christine Keeler—in the Profumo Affair that rocked Britain’s conservative government in 1963 with tales of wild parties, paid sex, and nuclear secrets. Rice-Davies used the notoriety she gained to release pop singles, open nightclubs bearing her name, and write an autobiography and a novel. She and Keeler weren’t the first ordinary citizens to rise to fame on the back of a sexual scandal, nor the first to use that recognition for their benefit, but their case seems like a historical marker, telling us we were entering fully into an age inwhich infamy, pain and public spectacle would rank equally with creativity and intelligence as undifferentiated collateral to be traded for cash. A culture of Hiltons, Kardashians and Joe the Plumbers speaks to this truth. You can read more about Mandy Rice-Davies here.
The infamous Profumo Affair exploded onto British front pages during the spring and summer of 1963, outing Secratary of State for War John Profumo’s affair with the call girl Christine Keeler, and leading directly to his humiliation and resignation. More than a year later the other call girl at the center of the scandal—Mandy Rice-Davies—was promoting a tell-all book about her time in the sex trade. It was called The Mandy Report andon the cover of Confidential from May 1964, we see Rice-Davies holding the book and looking pretty darn pleased with herself.
The Mandy Report was actually rather cleverly formatted as a tabloid-style magazine, and between the covers Rice-Davies claimed to have spent quality time between the sheets with the likes of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Mitchum, Bob Hope, George Hamilton and many other household names. Mostly, the men denied it, of course, but to paraphrase Rice-Davies herself: “Well, they would, wouldn’t they?”
Call us prejudiced, but we tend to believe women about situations like these, even when they happen to be trying to drum up sales—and especially when they aren’t. In pulp novels women publicly lie about this stuff all the time, and as a fictional device it’s fun, but in the real world there’s a lot of potential for danger and social loss that makes us think falsehoods in this area are relatively rare. But that’s just us.
We don’t know how many copies The Mandy Report eventually sold, but the fact that it’s still widely available online might be an indication that it did okay. Later in life, Rice-Davies stayed in the spotlight, acting in film and television. That’s her below, relaxing on a beach on Majorca circa 1963, and if you’re curious you can read a bit more about the Profumo Affair at an earlier post,here.
American sci-fi/horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft dies of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island at age 46. Lovecraft died nearly destitute, but would become the most influential horror writer of all time. His imaginary universe of malign gods and degenerate cults was influenced by his explicitly racist views, but his detailed and procedural style of writing, which usually pitted men of science or academia against indescribable monsters, remains as effective today as ever.
2011—Illustrator Michel Gourdon Dies
French pulp artist Michel Gourdon, who was the less famous brother of Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, dies in Coudray, France aged eighty-five. He is known mainly for the covers he painted for the imprint Flueve Noir, but worked for many companies and produced nearly 3,500 book fronts during his career.
1964—Ruby Found Guilty of Murder
In the U.S. a Dallas jury finds nightclub owner and organized crime fringe-dweller Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby had shot Oswald with a handgun at Dallas Police Headquarters in full view of multiple witnesses and photographers. Allegations that he committed the crime to prevent Oswald from exposing a conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have never been proven.
1925—Scopes Monkey Trial Ends
In Tennessee, the case of Scopes vs. the State of Tennessee, involving the prosecution of a school teacher for instructing his students in evolution, ends with a conviction of the teacher and establishment of a new law definitively prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The opposing lawyers in the case, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, both earn lasting fame for their participation in what was a contentious and sensational trial.
1933—Roosevelt Addresses Nation
Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the medium of radio to address the people of the United States for the first time as President, in a tradition that would become known as his “fireside chats”. These chats were enormously successful from a participation standpoint, with multi-millions tuning in to listen. In total Roosevelt would make thirty broadcasts over the course of eleven years.
This idyllic scene for Folco Romano’s 1958 novel Quand la chair s’éveille was painted by Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan. You'd never suspect a book with a cover this pretty was banned in France, but it was.
and married her. As Gisela Winegard she maintained contact with Profumo after he entered politics, and he allegedly wrote letters to her on House of Commons stationery.
story begins with the tale of a company president who unknowingly hired a gay man and had no idea until several years later when the hiree—now a manager—got drunk at a company party and began slapping and scratching another man. Soon four employees were involved in this spat. The company president exclaimed: “My God! Those men are all queers!”
which infamy, pain and public spectacle would rank equally with creativity and intelligence as undifferentiated collateral to be traded for cash. A culture of Hiltons, Kardashians and Joe the Plumbers speaks to this truth. You can read more about Mandy Rice-Davies 
