CHAPTER XIII

FROM LIME GROVE TO PALM BEACH

Much as I had loved going to Australia and America it was good to be back in England. Of the three capitals, London, Paris and New York, unfortunately I prefer London. I say unfortunately, because one can earn far more money as a model in New York, and show and be photographed in far more inspiring clothes in Paris, but somehow there is something about the character of London life which always lures me back. Besides, I’d been in love for years with somebody who wouldn’t pop the question, and although others were popping it with flattering frequency, I was still hopefully waiting for ‘the’ one.

I have mentioned American television in the last chapter but I haven’t so far discussed British TV, although since my first year in modelling I have done a great many fashion shows on TV and have shown everything from 1900 bathing costumes with bloomers and long sleeves, to the latest in modern spectacles. Models are booked for TV in the same way as for shows and photographs, through their agents. One usually goes to Lime Grove or Wembley Park Studios the day before the show, or early on the day itself for rehearsals. In the old days we used to go to Alexandra Palace and drive out in a bus from the BBC in Portland Place which was quite a long journey and meant getting back very late in the evening—for which one would be paid five guineas. Now things have improved a little and fees for a day’s television at the BBC for a model is six guineas and ten guineas upwards for commercial television.

One always does a lot of waiting around on TV shows— first in the dressing room, then in the studios, then in the canteen. They usually give you two or three rehearsals for a fashion show; the models really only need one just to time the changes, but the cameramen and electricians need more to get the complicated positions of lights and cameras worked out. Someone from the make-up room usually watches the monitor (a TV set used in the studio whilst the show is going on) to see if the models’ make-up is correct for the lights. When you show on TV you have to move much more slowly and be careful not to make any jerky movements. You are told to look right at the camera and smile naturally at it, which gives the effect of you smiling directly at the viewers. At first this takes some doing, especially when the camera moves slowly towards you; smiling naturally is the last thing you feel like doing.

On one occasion on TV I was so nervous when I showed my first dress that I could feel my mouth literally trembling, as I tried to smile. To cover it up I put my hand to my face and stroked the side of my nose, trying to appear nonchalant. The same thing happened at my next appearance, so again I stroked my nose. The third time my mouth trembled once again but this time I couldn’t put my hand up as it would have begun to look like a secret sign or a nervous tic. There’s nothing more aggravating than watching a model who always does the same thing at the same time; you begin to wait for the mannerism and wince when it comes.

Once, when they were televising all the different cars from the motor show and showing them in action, I was booked to sit in a blue-grey Continental Bentley, wearing a blue evening dress and a sapphire mink. They wanted to show me coming out of a large house, walking to the car, getting in and driving away to show how simple it was, even for a woman to handle. It complicated matters when the producer found I didn’t know how to drive. We were working outside Kenwood House in Hampstead, and after several rehearsals with me shooting down the drive in kangaroo jumps, they tactfully decided it would look better, as it was a Bentley, for a man to get in and drive me away.

I was not only a ‘dumb’ model on TV: when it was decided to do a show called ‘The Story of Fashion’, showing what happened from the time the idea of a dress was conceived by a designer, to its actual display by a model, I was booked to play the part of the model. I was very pleased about it until Equity, the actors’ union, stepped in. They said as it was such a big part and I was not a member of Equity, a professional actress must play it. So I was given a much smaller part as one of the other models, with only a few lines to say. All the same, as it was the first time I had to speak, let alone act, on TV, I was terrified during the several days of rehearsal. But to my intense relief I sailed through my first two appearances and was amazed to hear my own voice saying all the things I was supposed to say. Finally the moment came for me to put on my big number, which was a very full black and white organza ball dress with a long sash of shocking pink. The dresser helped me into my enormous tarlatan underskirt and hooked it at the waist, over which went the dress and around which the sash was finally tied. I was handed my long white kid gloves and the jeweller fastened a magnificent diamond necklace round my neck whilst I fixed the ear-rings.

I made my grand entrance through the parted curtains accompanied by soft music, the commentator’s voice and applause of a genuine live audience, who were not simply actors or stand-ins. All the top fashion journalists had been invited to see the show in the studio to give reality to the atmosphere. Then, the most awful thing happened, right there in front of the Press and eight million odd viewers… my petticoat slowly descended around my feet. Each step I took I was walking up it. I felt as if I was in a potato sack. It was a frantic moment and there was nothing I could about it. It was too big to step out of, and kick aside, as it was made of very thick canvas. Meanwhile I was incapable of moving. Everyone was waiting for me to walk along the platform and show the dress but there I stood clutching at it with a strained smile and my face trying to look at ease.

By now, all round, the people were whispering: ‘Poor Jean, she can’t move, it’s her petticoat.’ I tried frantically to catch the commère’s eye, but she was gaily chattering on about the dress—and apparently hadn’t noticed my predicament. The cameramen, after waiting for what seemed ages for me to walk toward the camera, began to pan-in on me. At last my skirt and petticoat were out of the picture, and I could move off, clumsily hobbling and shuffling to the dressing room. There was just time to gather my wits and my petticoat together before the cameras switched to the dressing room, where I was supposed to say a few lines to one of the girls. I also added a few lines of my own: ‘Gosh! Did you see my petticoat fall down? I could have died with embarrassment.’ The poor girl looked completely blank at this ad-libbing, and stared at me as if I’d gone off my head. I was afraid the producer would be furious with me for adding my own lines to the script. But when the show was over he came and told me how pleased he was that I had used my initiative in explaining something which had looked rather peculiar. As it was, it gave just that much more reality to a show which was meant to be a realistic version of what goes on anyhow. The next day, several friends who had seen the show remarked on how well I had acted—making my petticoat fall down, trying to hide the face, and talking to the other girl in the dressing room about it!

In the past, most of the fashion shows on TV were badly produced. The model girls were not chosen carefully enough, so as to have telegenic faces and a smooth style of showing clothes. Secondly, the garments were badly chosen with not enough thought given to line and texture. Thirdly, the make-up and lighting were not given enough individual attention for each girl. In the past the main difficulty was the question of fees. The problem used to be getting experts to work for the small salaries offered by the BBC, but now that has improved and with the added competition of ITV the organization has improved too.

One of the really good organizers of fashion shows for TV is Michael Whittaker. He always manages to give a show a certain character and difference. Once he had eight of us models showing clothes in a country house and instead of just walking up and down a dais or platform he made us sit or stand and walk about in different rooms of a house, which of course was actually a TV background with props but most effective and realistic. Michael has now started a model agency which is going to specialize in providing models for TV shows.

At one point in this country house show, Michael wanted me to descend a steep flight of stairs and as it was practically impossible for me to cope without my glasses, he let me wear them even during the actual TV show. I used to have a complex about wearing my ‘specs’ but I’ve been given so many attractive pairs by manufacturers that I’m now completely unselfconscious about them.

In the past I’ve had some nerve-racking experiences in various shows through having bad eyesight. Once in Bath a very high narrow platform was put up for us to model on. I think the organizers thought we were female Blondins. The rehearsal was not too bad because it was in daylight, but in the evening for the show the strong spotlights blinded me and the audience were in blackness beyond. As I gingerly picked my way along the platform I started to turn, with my skirt swirling out around me and as I tried to smile out at the audience which I couldn’t see, I lost my balance. An immediate gasp went up from everyone which warned me I must be on the edge. I just managed to stop in time, one more step and I’d have had the jarring shock of stepping into nothingness in my high heels and might easily have broken a leg.

Unlike most models I prefer doing shows to photography. To my mind shows are much more exhausting and demanding because one is ‘giving out’ more, but they are also much more satisfying because one is in contact with the audience and using one’s personality to put a dress over: a good model can literally ‘will’ an audience to like a real horror, and she can make even a sack look ‘chic’, whereas photographic modelling is more dependent on a good photographer.

Ways of showing clothes vary tremendously with the type of audience, and, obviously, the clothes themselves. In the provinces they prefer a natural style with big smiles all round, and on the whole are the nicest audiences to show to as they are very appreciative and quick to show it by clapping. In London a more reserved approach is expected. Shows for the buyers from stores are always rather boring because they don’t have the friendliness of the provincial ones, or the nervous tension of a Press show, or the glamour of a big gala. I often feel with buyers that they would much prefer to see the collection of dresses on a rail, as they must get so bored sitting through show after show.

Press shows are always the most nerve racking. The Press, that is the fashion writers from all the women’s magazines and national papers, see a collection before anyone else. They have to work very hard to get an overall picture of the new fashions and always have to write well in advance of publication (except the dailies of course).

On the whole fashion writers are not as elegant and soignée as one would imagine from reading their articles, mainly, I think, because they are good journalists first and fashion experts second, and as they are working with fashion all day and every day they get rather bored when it comes to spending time on their own appearance. Of course as soon as I write this I can think of at least half a dozen examples to disprove my statement. Anne Scott James, for instance, is everything one expects a fashion writer to be—tall, dark, beautiful and very well dressed. Eileen Dickson, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, is an elegant blue-eyed blonde; Phyllis Digby Morton, who has a finger in almost every fashion and beauty pie, practices what she preaches, and there are many others like Eileen Ascroft, who always looks so dashing, Anne Edwards and Iris Ashley. On second thoughts it seems that the most competent women journalists are also the most attractive.

It is terribly difficult to write a good commentary for a fashion show; the commentators tend to ramble on in genteel tones about how suitable such and such a suit would be for a point-to-point or a shoot in Scotland, when the skirt is too tight to move in even along the run-way or the tweed is ‘loud’ enough to frighten the birds down to Land’s End. However, this is not their fault as they just have to describe the things the way the manufacturer wishes, who may never have been nearer a shoot in Scotland than Oxford Circus.

Every season all the big stores send out illustrated catalogues of their goods to customers and any interested people. One spring, Harrods decided to use a 3-D photograph of a bathing costume. It was to be the first 3-D fashion photograph in England, and meant giving a pair of cardboard specs with one red and one green cellophane lens with each catalogue, to get the 3-D effect. I was booked to do the job and Roye, the famous photographer of nudes, was to take the pictures. It was a ‘weather permitting’ job which meant that if the weather was bad we would not work and I would not get paid: a maddening and too frequent situation in England where the weather is so unreliable. Fortunately that has been changed now and the model gets paid half-fees for W/P jobs that have to be postponed. The day we were to do the 3-D job was dull and gloomy, the studio rang the Air Ministry for a weather report on Margate and were told it was brighter there, so off we went in a station wagon, the photographer, his assistant, a girl from Harrods’ publicity and me. When we arrived at Margate it seemed just as dull as London and certainly much colder, with a howling gale blowing, and I was in no mood for bathing suits. I had to change in the ‘Ladies’ at the local pub. When I slipped my coat off on the beach, ready and anxious to get the thing over, Roye, the photographer, said to me discreetly: ‘Would you mind putting some falsies in?’ I certainly did mind, I hated the idea. What on earth did he want me to look like? Anyway I didn’t possess any of the horrid things—but he had obviously come prepared for this, for he produced some, pink and crude looking; whereupon we started an argument, with him insisting on my using them and I refusing point blank to do so. In the meantime I was freezing on the beach, so finally I took them disdainfully and flounced off behind the rocks, where I buried them in the sand and returned triumphantly to Roye, saying: ‘There now, is that better?’

‘That’s much better!’ he replied. So everyone was happy.

From bathing costumes to Bethlehem, a model’s work is nothing if not varied. One day a Belgian magazine chose me to represent a modern version of the Holy Mother for their Christmas cover. I was to wear a modern dress and hold a tiny baby, and in the background there was to be a nativity scene complete with empty crèche. Peter Clark, the photographer, had great difficulty in finding a crèche but eventually his ever resourceful receptionist, Valerie Welch, borrowed one from a local convent. The job was not easy as keeping a tiny baby quiet with a stranger holding him under hot studio lights is no joke. I was scared stiff of dropping him. However, all went well until suddenly for no apparent reason the baby started howling, making me feel completely helpless. In the end we discovered that the buckle of my dress was scratching his leg, and considering how painful it must have been the mite was very restrained.

The picture caused a lot of amusement amongst my friends, particularly as only a short while before I had been painted representing a Gaiety girl for an inn sign in Hastings. The picture had been commissioned by Watney’s, the brewers, and the artist, Anthony Page, had been told to choose a girl he thought typical of the Gaiety girls, twentieth century version. It was fun to do as it was the first time I had my portrait painted. I was wearing a tightly laced black and white striped silk dress, hired from a theatrical costumiers, cut very low in front rather like a Gibson girl and wearing a Gainsborough hat, so that the result was a combination of Gainsborough, Gaiety and Gibson. When the portrait was finished I was driven grandly round London in my ‘get-up’ by Mr Sanders Watney, wearing a grey topper, in his stage coach drawn by four magnificent greys, with a coachman blowing a horn, ending up at Watney’s brewery in Victoria where I had to unveil the picture amidst toasting and camera clicking. The picture was hung outside the brewery as an inn sign, before being taken to its final destination in Hastings, where it now hangs outside the ‘Gaiety Inn’, with my complexion getting somewhat weatherbeaten.

Doing a beauty shot for Atkinsons of Bond Street one day, I was asked to hold a white Persian cat close to my face to give a soft pale effect. White Persians were obviously out of season, because the studio couldn’t get one anywhere and had to compromise with a blue Persian. To get the white effect, they sprinkled talcum powder all over the cat’s face so that she looked as if she’d dipped it in the flour bin, but her owner assured me that it was not cruelty to animals, as when pedigree cats are shown (and naturally she was a pedigree!) they always brush them with powder beforehand, like a dry shampoo.

I made a particular effort to get one of the photos when it came out, because I love cats and this was a beauty. Unless a model pesters the life out of a photographer she never sees her pictures until they appear months later in a magazine and then only by accident if she happens to buy that particular issue. I often open a magazine at the hairdresser or in the dentist’s waiting room and find an unexpected picture of myself that I have forgotten all about, and sometimes I find it hard to recognize myself as I look so different each time.

Some time after my first KLM show in Holland, I went there again, this time to show furs in Amsterdam. It so happened that a friend of mine, Paul Richey, was there at the same time visiting HRH Prince Bernhard. He had introduced me to the Prince in London and on several occasions we had all gone to the White City to watch greyhound racing. The Prince is a great dog racing enthusiast, and I am very lucky at betting, so between the two of us, we backed lots of winners.

Paul took me to dinner at Soestdijk Palace, the Dutch Royal Family’s country home, the equivalent of Windsor Castle. Queen Juliana received us with great friendliness and warmth, inquiring about my visit, and showed genuine interest when I told her about the furs from London, and asked if it could be arranged for her to see them. Later we watched a film in the private cinema which was the only reminder that one was in a Royal Palace, in what was otherwise a very unpretentious household. (Queen Juliana even prefers that her guests should not curtsy to her.) Unfortunately a few days later, when they arranged to show the furs privately to the Queen, I could not take part because I had to be back in London for another show.

In the spring I received a wonderful invitation from Miss Fairchild and Sherman from New York, to spend the whole of February in Palm Beach. I hadn’t had a holiday in ages, and it was much too exciting an invitation to be missed, but what was I to do? I knew that together with seven other models I had been booked by the Ambassador magazine to go to the Palace Hotel, St Moritz for a show, right in the middle of February. I rang my agent and explained my predicament; but she was quite definite about my being unable to change the booking for St Moritz, as it had been booked for over four months. The only thing for me to do was to take the bull by the horns and ring Mrs Juda of Ambassador magazine, and ask if she could possibly release me. I didn’t really hold out much hope, but it was worth trying.

It was the first time in all my years of modelling that I had asked for a booking to be changed, and I hated spoiling my record. As soon as I said on the telephone: ‘I’ve got something terribly difficult to ask you,’ Mrs Juda replied: ‘I can guess what it is.’ When I explained about Palm Beach, she was wonderfully understanding and said she realized what an exciting invitation it was and said: ‘Of course you must go.’ I was so happy, I could have hugged her. I sent a cable off immediately to Miss Fairchild accepting the invitation, hardly believing my good fortune.

A model is usually booked months ahead for shows, and weeks and days for photographs, so her private life has to take a back seat. She must be available at all times to her agent for bookings, although it is very tempting to ring up and tell them not to book you for such and such a day, as you are going racing, or to a wedding, or to the country. It doesn’t pay to do this too often or the agent begins to feel you are unreliable, and generally not sufficiently keen to give things up for your work, so they lose interest in you.

A few weeks later, I was lying in the dazzling sunshine in Palm Beach, and visiting Miami, which is a sort of glorified Blackpool, and eating turtle steaks in Florida Keys, looking out across the Gulf of Mexico. London and work seemed very far away. Soon after I arrived, the Fairchilds said I must go with them to South America, in March. Sadly I told them that I would have to be back in London by March 1 in order to start work again at Harvey Nichols on March 2. ‘Who is Harvey Nichols?’ said Miss Fairchild. I explained it was a store in Knightsbridge.

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Well, they’re quite well-known in London, and I can’t let them down because before I left my agent rang all the people I was to show for on my return, asking if they wanted to do any fittings on me before I left for Florida. Harrods and Liberty’s both cancelled me, saying that I might never return once I got to Palm Beach, but Harvey Nichols said that if I swore I would be back, they’d take my word for it and would rush through some fittings on me before I left, so I can’t very well let them down now.’

I returned to London having had one of the best holidays of my life, looking as brown as a coffee bean and feeling hideously righteous. I did Harvey Nichols’ show with a feeling of martyrdom, wistfully thinking of all I’d missed—Brazil and Argentina, Peru and Venezuela, and wondering if a conscience was really worth its keep.