The Secret History of Entertainment

The Secret History of Entertainment
David Hepworth

To my wife Alyson and our children Clare, Henry and Imogen

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

INTRODUCTION

ELTON GOES SHOPPING

ROCK AND ROLL WAS INVENTED BY A LOOSE LUGGAGE STRAP

THE MAN WHO DIED ON A TV CHAT SHOW

THE MAN WHO WAS MEANT TO BE BOND

THE MYSTERY OF ‘WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?’

ALEC GUINNESS’S STAR WARS PENSION

KENNETH WILLIAMS’S LAVATORY

DAVID BOWIE’S EYES ARE DIFFERENT COLOURS

THE VOICE OF GOD

THE POCKET SUPERSTAR

THE BABYSITTER WHO INVENTED COUNTRY ROCK

MONKEE MOMMA MAKES MILLIONS

ENGLISHMEN WERE THE GODFATHERS OF AMERICAN ROOTS MUSIC

WHICH ONE’S PINK?

BROWN M&MS AND OTHER ROCK STARS’ RIDERS

DELIA SMITH MADE THE LET IT BLEED CAKE

CHANGING SEX IN SHOW BUSINESS

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ IS STILL IN COPYRIGHT

SOME OF THE BEST LINES ARE MADE UP ON THE SPOT

JACK NICHOLSON GREW UP THINKING HIS MOTHER WAS HIS SISTER

THE TRAGIC LIFE AND LONG DEATH OF JACKIE WILSON

THERE’S ONLY ONE MANCUNIAN IN FRASIER (AND IT’S NOT DAPHNE MOON)

KEVIN COSTNER MADE NICK LOWE A MILLIONAIRE

MADONNA CO-WROTE A HIT WITH A DEAD MAN

HARRISON FORD HAS THE RUNS

BRUNO BROOKES, BOB HARRIS AND 35,000 RECORDS

FARGO IS NOT A TRUE STORY – BUT THIS IS

THE ROLLING STONES ACTUALLY HAD SIX MEMBERS

THE WORLD’S ONLY CELEBRITY DOG

THE HISTORY OF FUCK AND THE MOVIES

ICI ON PARLE HIP HOP

RICHARD GERE OWES HIS CAREER TO JOHN TRAVOLTA

WORKING TITLES

THE LONESOME DEATHS OF FRANKIE HOWERD AND BENNY HILL

THE TERRIBLE EARLY LIFE OF RAY CHARLES

THE AMAZING STORY OF ‘BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY’

LITERARY ANCESTORS

I’D KNOW THAT SCREAM ANYWHERE

THOSE AREN’T JULIA ROBERTS’S LEGS ON THE PRETTY WOMAN POSTER

THEY KNEW IT WAS DIRTY BUT THEY DIDN’T KNOW HOW

NOBODY LAUGHS IN THE SIMPSONS

THE NUDES IN THE DISNEY CARTOONS

CHOLLY ATKINS IS THE TRUE FATHER OF MODERN POP

ICI ON PARLE HOLLYWOOD

THE KENNY G PAT METHENY SPAT

A BAD DAY TO DIE

WHY ELVIS NEVER TOURED OUTSIDE THE USA

THE LOST WORDS OF STAR TREK

SORRY, BUT THEY NEVER SAID IT

DYNASTY

SHIRLEY MACLAINE AND WARREN BEATTY ARE SISTER AND BROTHER

WHO WAS ‘YOU’RE SO VAIN’ ABOUT?

HIT MOVIES ARE DECIDED IN THE FIRST WEEKEND

BOB DYLAN’S SECRET SECOND WIFE

THE MOST CONNECTED ACTORS

THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND RIFFS

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITHOUT HAVING A HIT

THE SIMPSONS AND THE GROENINGS

WHEN THE BBC CLOSED FOR BATHTIME

DOWN ON HIS LUCK, SINATRA PLAYS BLACKPOOL

THE OSCARS REHEARSAL

AMERICA DOESN’T GET BRITISH COMEDY

PEOPLE WHO COULDN’T LEARN LINES

ROCK STARS WHO SERVED THEIR COUNTRY

THE ALBUMS PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS…

NOBODY THOUGHT THE WALKMAN WOULD WORK

THE FOUR TOPS’ FIFTY-YEAR CAREER

MOM IN A BOX

HOW TO RENT A SUPERSTAR

JUMPING THE SHARK

RHYMING SLANG

THEY DIED WITH THEIR SLAP ON

GOT THEM ALT.NEO BREAKBEAT HANDBAG LOUNGECORE BLUES

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The expression ‘anorak’ has become the standard way of describing any individual – generally a male one – who takes an excessive interest in minutiae.

But why ‘anorak’?

In the 1960s, during the heyday of pirate radio in the UK, devotees of the stations would take pleasure trips out into the North Sea to photograph the boats from which they broadcast. These radio fans were instantly identifiable by the brand new weatherproof gear they had purchased for their voyage. Hence ‘anorak’ became the noun to describe anyone with the kind of chemical imbalance that would lead them to undertake that kind of expedition for no reason beyond the satisfaction of their own curiosity. Or, indeed, to know any of the stories that follow.

The Secret History of Entertainment is a collection of stories that not a lot of people know, stories that explain something of how the entertainment business functions and why some huge and familiar things are the way they are. It touches on the strange lives of stars, the exotic language of the business, the unimaginable wealth of the few, and the hard, complicated struggles of the many. It encompasses huge triumph, utter tragedy and some farce. It deals with everything from why there are no laughs in The Simpsons to the economics of hiring The Rolling Stones for your birthday party.

It started life as a feature in Word magazine in 2003. This in turn grew out of a conversation in the pub. It was the sort of conversation where people who know too much about nothing very important swap entertainment anecdotage to keep each other amused. If there were two people there who hadn’t heard the story before, it went in. This book has been put together in the same spirit. If you know it all already, then bully for you. After you with the anorak.

ELTON GOES SHOPPING

Every Monday if he’s in the UK, or Tuesday if he’s in the US, Elton John buys three copies of the major new record releases, one for each of his homes in Atlanta, Windsor and the South of France.

ROCK AND ROLL WAS INVENTED BY A LOOSE LUGGAGE STRAP

On 5 March 1951, while on their way down Highway 61 to a recording session in Memphis, touring R&B band Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm lost an amplifier off the roof of their Oldsmobile. At the session, producer Sam Phillips attempted to repair the damaged speaker cone with a piece of cardboard. The resulting distorted sound, the musical equivalent of a folded piece of cardboard jammed in bicycle spokes, became the key element of ‘Rocket 88’, the Jackie Brenston side cut at that session which is now widely regarded as the first rock and roll record.

The accident that befell guitarist Willie Kizar’s amplifier on the road to Memphis can be considered the father of every subsequent attempt to electronically manipulate sound in the name of excitement.

THE MAN WHO DIED ON A TV CHAT SHOW

Jerome Rodale was a pioneer of the health and fitness movement of the late 1960s. His publishing company, Rodale Press, launched the very successful magazine Men’s Health. On 5 June 1971 Rodale, who had predicted he was going to live to be a hundred (‘unless I’m run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver’), was recording an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show when his chin dropped to his chest and he appeared to be asleep. ‘Are we boring you, Mr Rodale?’ Cavett enquired with unseemly levity. It transpired that Rodale had died of a heart attack. The show was never broadcast but the incident later inspired an unforgettable Alan Partridge show in which the eighty-four-year-old Lord Morgan of Glossop expires on the Partridge couch.

THE MAN WHO WAS MEANT TO BE BOND

Sean Connery established the physical type for James Bond with his appearance in the first Bond film, Dr No, in 1962. But Bond’s creator Ian Fleming had someone rather different in mind when he first unveiled his character in the 1953 book Casino Royale. In the original description of the agent, Vesper Lynd, first in a long line of Bond girls, describes him as ‘very good looking’ and says ‘he reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael…there is something cold and ruthless about him’. At the time, Carmichael’s career as a composer of such cosy classics as ‘Stardust’ and ‘Georgia On My Mind’ was winding down. He was sixty when the first Bond film was made. He did make a few film appearances, as in To Have And Have Not, but remained more comfortable straddling the 88s than wielding the Walther PPK. ‘There are other things in life besides music,’ he once remarked. ‘I forget what they are but they’re around.’

THE MYSTERY OF ‘WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?’

One evening in 1986, Dan Rather, one of the best-known figures in American network news, was assaulted while walking down Manhattan’s Park Avenue by two well-dressed men he had never seen before. One man punched Rather and kicked him in the back while loudly demanding, ‘Kenneth, what’s the frequency?’ The victim took refuge in a nearby office building and the men ran off. Rather’s account of this puzzling incident was widely disbelieved, given his flair for self-dramatisation (he once took to signing off bulletins with the word ‘courage’), and his alleged assailant’s question was adopted in some quarters as slang to denote cluelessness. In 1997 it was concluded that the man who had set upon him was a disturbed individual named William Tager, by then serving a prison sentence for the murder of an NBC stagehand. At the time, this unfortunate individual was under the impression that the media were beaming messages to him and presumably thought such a prominent member of the media as Rather would know the actual frequency. The incident – or possibly Game Theory’s 1987 song ‘Kenneth, What’s The Frequency?’ – inspired REM’s song of almost the same name on their 1994 album Monster. Dan Rather, who is as averse to personal publicity as most news anchors, subsequently appeared with the group on backing vocals when they undertook a Saturday Night Live appearance.

ALEC GUINNESS’S STAR WARS PENSION

Throughout his career the venerable actor Sir Alec Guinness remained obsessed with the fear of losing his new-found prosperity and tumbling back to his very humble origins. (He was born Alec Cuff, the product of a brief liaison between a barmaid and an unidentified toff. ‘My mother’s a whore,’ Guinness once said. ‘She slept with the entire crew on Lord Moyne’s yacht at the Cowes Regatta.’) Even when firmly established as one of the greatest cinema actors of his generation and constantly in demand for work, guests at his Sussex home were horrified at how parsimonious Guinness could be in everyday matters like food and central heating.

In 1975 Guinness had a meeting with an unknown director called George Lucas who wanted him to play Obi-Wan Kenobi in a film he was planning called Star Wars. The initial offer made to him was a fee of $150,000 plus two per cent of the producer’s profit. This was the kind of generosity they needed to show to get a respectable name like Guinness to put on the marquee. The favourable critical reaction to the film’s release cheered him considerably, though he had no inkling of what a monster he had helped spawn: ‘This could bring me in $100,000 if it does Jaws business as predicted.’

Unprompted and encouraged by the early box-office returns, George Lucas then asked him to take another quarter per cent, and Guinness’s diaries record his satisfaction at this ‘temporary fortune’. ‘The bank telephoned to say they’d received £308,552,’ he wrote on 1 February 1978. More money followed, but the publicity attending the movie’s success attracted the Inland Revenue, who subsequently made life hard for Guinness. For the rest of his life he was indignant about claims made in the press about his Star Wars earnings. Even though he found the films irritating and the experience of making them dull, he signed up to do cameos in the next two movies and cheques kept appearing throughout the early 1980s. In November 1983 he greeted one for $250,000 with rare delight: ‘That will pay for our daughter’s schooling, our Italian holiday and our prefilming holiday in India.’ His co-star Harrison Ford, who was one of the few members of the Star Wars cast with whom he struck up a rapport, used to refer to him as ‘The Mother Superior’ behind his back.

KENNETH WILLIAMS’S LAVATORY

A walking parody of fastidiousness, the late Carry On actor and radio performer was neurotically suspicious of human society and utterly obsessed with hygiene. He lived alone in a flat in the West End of London where he kept clingfilm over his cooker to ward off germs. He never invited his friends round for dinner because, he said, ‘I can’t stand the idea of another bottom on my loo.’ On the rare occasions that people did drop in on him unexpectedly they were asked to use the facilities at the hotel across the road from his flat.

DAVID BOWIE’S EYES ARE DIFFERENT COLOURS

When the young David Jones of Bromley was thirteen he was involved in a fight over a girl with a school friend called George Underwood. This resulted in his taking a blow to his left eye from a fist (and not a pair of compasses or a toy airplane propellor as some more lurid accounts have it), which caused him to be hospitalised for over four months. At first he was in danger of losing his sight altogether, but ultimately he was left with a permanently enlarged pupil in his left eye. This still shows predominantly hazel, in contrast with the natural blue of his right eye. (The rim around the iris is still blue in certain photographs, although the issue may be clouded by Bowie’s occasional use of contact lenses.) Bowie and Underwood, who subsequently played in bands together, have remained close friends since the incident.