No one deserves more gratitude than John’s mother Rita and brother Andrew. No questions were off limits, and the skater’s jumbled boxes of papers were entrusted to me without condition or qualification. Even in her 102nd year, Rita has a memory that burns brightly. Many things in this book, however, will have shocked and saddened her. It is to Rita’s eternal credit – and Andrew’s – that they placed no caveats on my work. ‘As long as it is honest’ was their watchword, and I can assure them both (along with Andrew’s charming wife Celia) that it is that.
A handful of others deserve particular mention. In every sense, Heinz Wirz has been a boon. Without his precious letters from Curry, covering the formative first years in London, this book would have been a shadow of what it is. No email ever went unanswered. No subject was taboo. Alongside him, Meg Streeter also has my special gratitude. Following the sad death of Nancy – during the writing of this book – she and her sister Ellen allowed me to read every one of the letters Curry had sent to her mother over 15 years. To say this was a treasure trove would be an understatement. Once again, this required courage, and I thank the Streeter family for it.
Alongside them, special thanks must go to Penny Malec, Cathy Foulkes, Lorna Brown and William ‘Billy’ Whitener, four of John’s closest friends. Each was subjected to long interviews, telephone calls and emails over a sustained period of time. Cathy, especially, supplied encyclopaedic details which run through almost every page; from skater’s personal contracts to intimate, and deeply moving, letters. Tears were not unusual during many of these protracted conversations. Mine included.
In no particular order, I am also hugely indebted to the following. Dorothy Hamill; Haig Oundjian; Jane Eenhorn; Dr Baruch Fishman; Alison Smith; Elva Clairmont; Robin Cousins; Bobby Thompson; Courtney Jones; Nancy Streeter (who I was able to speak to shortly before she died); David Singer; Christa Fassi; Shelley Winters; Patricia Dodd; Stanley Taub; Felice Picano; Jocelyn Cassia; Gayle Palmieri; JoJo Starbuck; Nathan Birch; Twyla Tharp; Jirina Ribbens; Tim Murphy; Sander Jacobs; David Santee; Kevin Kossi; Adam Lieb; Eliot Feld; Mark Hominuke; Lar Lubovitch; Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux; Gabriela Galambos; Lori Nichol; Dita Dotson; Moira North; Larry Carpenter; Peter Dunfield; Sally-Anne Stapleford; Gillian Lynne and Peter Land; Richard Digby Day; Peter Farmer; Janet Lynn; Charles Cossey; Jean Diamond; Brian Gazzard; Charles Barker; Bill Fauver; Lee-Ann Miller; Patricia Crown; Joe Lorden; Amy Danis; Tom Fowler; Jane Hermann; Dick Button; Stanley Plesent; Julian Pettifer; Clovissa Newcombe; Millicent Martin; Mark Alexander; Malcolm Sinclair; Paul Heath; Fiona Barton; Donald Pelmear; Maggie Mille; David Spungen; Jacqui Harbord; Linda Davies; David Delve; David Barker; Dr Jonathan Jacobs, Alizah Allen, Keith Money, Susan Holmes, and Sarah Murch, who first planted the seed of this endeavour. Curry’s great rival Toller Cranston was also an incredibly generous – and candid – interviewee on numerous occasions. Sadly, he died suddenly at his home in Mexico City in January 2015. He was 65.
Help was also forthcoming from the Terence Higgins Trust, from Solihull School (who still had John’s form positions) and NISA, the National Ice Skating Association. None of which would have mattered but for the industry of firstly my agent Mark ‘Stan’ Stanton to start with, and, secondly, my delightful Bloomsbury editor Charlotte Ayteo.
Few books cover this period, but four proved particularly useful. The long-deleted ‘coffee-table’ book Curry co-authored with Keith Money (called John Curry) gave useful insights into his movements up to 1978. Dorothy Hamill’s A Skating Life reflected her own experiences in a very similar world. Toller Cranston’s shamelessly eccentric memoir Zero Tollerance pulls no punches, although it, too, is out of print. Finally, Black Ice, the hugely divisive book written by Elva Clairmont (under her married name of Oglanby) soon after Curry’s death.
Although Black Ice purports to tell the whole of Curry’s story, its key focus is the period during which Elva Clairmont, David Spungen and Curry worked together. Soon after publication, under immense pressure from various quarters, the book was withdrawn from sale with only a small number sold. During my researches, I discovered that – curiously – very few of those who campaigned against it, ever took the trouble to read it to the end. Those who did found a work which was journalistically suspect but nevertheless laced with startling truths. According to Elva, it was largely based on extensive tape-recorded interviews with Curry which were subsequently lost. Many of the quotes which are directly attributed to Curry, therefore, cannot be authenticated. For that reason, I have used very few of them.
Finally, I must thank my wife, Kay. For over two years she has lived in a peculiar ménage à trois in which the third party was a dead homosexual ice skater. Far too often I was with him when I should have been with her. Without her calming patience and her shrewd insights this story might well have consumed me. Hopefully we can now lose our gooseberry and return to a twosome. Much as I revere John Curry, he has been at times a gloomy bedfellow for both of us.
Last of all. Although Curry is gone, his work is not. On the internet – on YouTube – you will find almost every one of the glorious performances mentioned in this book. Find them. Watch them. And then read this book all over again. He really was that good.