On the Jukebox this weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

And we've been known to scream about that certain thing called "The Boy Friend"

[He] went to Elstree Preparatory School, a Spartan institution from which he nevertheless won a scholarship to Harrow. “You’ll see some fellows doing things which will shock and disgust you,” warned his prep school headmaster. “They will ask you to join in, too, and this you will on no account do.” History does not relate whether young Sandy needed or heeded this advice.

We bid a sad farewell today to Sandy Wilson, composer, playwright and author, and one of the last "greats" of British theatre.

Although his output was wide-ranging (including revues for the likes of Peter Cook and Hermione Gingold, and tributes to both Dorothy Parker - on stage - and Ivor Novello - in print), and various productions of his such as Valmouth do get an occasional airing (to largely critical, rather than popular, acclaim), it is inevitably for one worldwide "hit" that Mr Wilson will be remembered the most. From his obituary in The Telegraph:

In 1952 the Players Theatre commissioned Wilson, for a £50 fee, to write a “divertissement”. The result was The Boy Friend. After some lengthening of the original two-act show, and various efforts to get it to the West End, it opened to general acclaim at Wyndham’s Theatre in January 1954.

Though it remained a perennial favourite and earned Wilson so much money that he was advised he need never work again, his own relationship with the play was a difficult one. He hated the Broadway production and was banned from rehearsals. He hated Ken Russell’s film version, complaining that his offers of help had been rejected. In 1984 he fell out with Cameron Mackintosh over a West End revival which also, he felt, veered too far from the original.

The Boy Friend is a camp, cult classic, not merely because of the Art Deco extravaganza that was the movie version (we saw an excellent production at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2006). Despite Mr Wilson's reservations, it is not a bad legacy at all, methinks...

The Boy Friend trailer

Facts about Sandy Wilson:

• Apparently the character of "Sandy" in the Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick camp comedy routine Julian and Sandy was based on Wilson (and Julian on Julian Slade).
• The Boy Friend ran for more than five years at Wyndham's theatre in London, spent more than a year on Broadway, and made an international star of the young Julie Andrews.
• He applied his artistic talents to home-made Christmas cards, usually featuring flappers, pierrots or harlequins in a mimimal setting of crescent moons and floating balloons.
• He lived for many years with his partner Chak Yui, not "in a little flat in Bloomsbury" but in Kensington, and eventually retired to Wiltshire.
• His autobiography I Could be Happy was published in 1975.

RIP Alexander Galbraith "Sandy" Wilson (19th May 1924 - 27th August 2014)

Thought for the day...

...Bush.



Kate Bush. Triumphant.

Even Alexis Petridis gave the lady's Before the Dawn comeback performance five stars.

And, for your delectation - the BBC's recent tribute documentary to Sidcup's finest ever export:

The Kate Bush Story

No more Dick

"Somebody who I think was having a go at me said that the problem with Attenborough is that substance matters much more to him than style. It was the most charming compliment that I could ever have been given. I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject."

"I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all."

"I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view. I prefer fact to fiction."

"At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone 'darling', it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that."

Whether as an actor - in such classics as In Which We Serve, Brighton Rock, The Great Escape, 10 Rillington Place or even Jurassic Park - or producer - Gandhi, Oh! What a Lovely War, Cry Freedom and Shadowlands among many others - Richard Attenborough's career was indeed remarkable. Along with his brother (that "national treasure" David), he was more of an "institution" than merely a showbiz legend. He out-classed them all, and we will miss him.

RIP, Dickie!

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE (29th August 1923 – 24th August 2014)

Meanwhile, at the nightclub...

...Jayne County performs for The Beatles!

Or does she?

Badass Digest begs to differ...

A plain singer with lots of expression?

"Only God makes a diva. No, just call me a plain singer with lots of expression."

Living as she did to 105, she had seen all the "divas" come and go - Callas, Tebaldi, Flagstad, de los Ángeles, Schwarzkopf, Sutherland - and still retained the elegance and poise of a true opera star.

Licia Albanese was an artist dedicated to her craft. From her début at the Met in New York in the 1940s, to her "retirement" in the 70s, she performed 427 performances of numerous roles in 16 operas. Regarded as one of the greatest singers of Verdi and Puccini in the operatic world in her day, seventy-two of these performances were as "Cio-Cio San" in Madama Butterfly. She sang with Toscanini, a great admirer of hers; she founded the the “Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation” dedicated to an operatic education for young people; and received the Medal of Honor for the Arts from President Clinton.

In her obituary today in The Telegraph:

Her voice was not large, or unusually beautiful, and she did not command the ethereal pianissimos of Renata Tebaldi, but Licia Albanese brought emotional warmth and exemplary diction to her roles - and an ability to identify completely with her characters.

According to her entry in the International Dictionary of Opera: "Nowhere was [her] mastery of her art more palpable than during the moments that required her to 'expire’ onstage, something she invariably accomplished with the most exquisite expressivity, whether called upon to demonstrate a gradual, quiet fading away (Mimi, La Bohème); a final feverish outburst (Violetta, La Traviata); an intense losing battle to cheat death (Manon Lescaut); or an act of unbearable poignancy such as the suicide of Butterfly.” She studied books about Japan for her characterisation of the tragic heroine and, when preparing for the “consumptive” roles of Mimi and Violetta, even visited a tuberculosis ward.

Here she is in triumphal form in 1953 as Cio-Cio, with a sublime version of one of Puccini's most tragic arias:

Licia Albanese – Un bel di vedremo [live at the Metropolitan Opera, 1953]

And here (proving once again that all roads lead to Stritchy) she is as the older "Heidi Schiller" in the 1985 concert production of Sondheim's Follies (at the 4:59 mark)...

Best of Sondheim's Follies

RIP Licia Albanese (22nd July 1909 – 15th August 2014)

Defining a man's elegance

"A well-knotted cravat is the first serious step in a man’s life."
Oscar Wilde

"A modern man has only one accessory to mark his presence - a cravat."
Alberto Moravia

"A cravat, a pipe and a robe define a man’s elegance."
Clark Gable

"If Freud had watched his patients’ cravats, he would not have had the need to listen to their dreams."
Luca Goldoni

"A true gent will always wear his cravat well."
Noel Coward

"Tell a man you like his cravat and you will see his personality open like a flower."
Countess Mara, American tie designer of the 1940s

"If a person steps on your cravat, you are to blame because you were kneeling."
Karl Lagerfeld

The broadcasting legend Nicholas Parsons has started a one-man crusade to bring back the cravat as an essential part of modern menswear.

We wholeheartedly support the campaign!