Shirley (11 page)

Michael Sullivan made the first approach to Bertie Green, explaining that he was promoting a wonderful girl with an extraordinary voice. She was young and lovely and, though she was as yet unknown in London, she was a seasoned performer, even at that very moment on the last leg of a Hippodrome tour for Bernard Delfont.

‘Has she anything special to sing?’ asked Green. ‘Does she have her own songs?’

The question stymied Sullivan, but not for long. He immediately contacted a Soho connection in the music business and asked who was currently considered the best songwriter in town. The answer was Ross Parker who, among other things, had composed ‘There’ll always be an England’. ‘He’s tops,’ Michael was assured. Ross Parker turned out to be a large man with a very pleasant
personality but, as he told Sullivan, his fee was three hundred pounds per song.

Michael didn’t blink. He nodded, and arranged to take Parker to see and hear Shirley in her show, which was playing not too far from London at Chatham. Shirley was enjoying a good week in Chatham, where every sailor in port was eager to get an eyeful and earful of the singer.

Shirley was catching on fast. She was at her most enchanting when she met Ross Parker after the show. Wide-eyed and admiring. ‘Oh, Mr Parker, are you really going to write a song just for me?’ The trip to Chatham had done the trick; Sullivan would worry about the money later. Meanwhile, he and Parker began working together, meeting at the flat of Juhni’s mother who had a piano. At their first session, Ross said, ‘Just tell me what you want, Mike.’

Sullivan had already given the matter some careful and canny thought. ‘Imagine that we’re in a nightclub,’ he said. ‘Imagine beautiful girls, men wanting to sow a few wild oats looking at them; getting ideas, wondering. Staying up late. Burning the candle at both ends. That kind of thing.’

‘What do you want to sell, Mike?’

‘Sex.’

‘I think Shirley Bassey has a very good voice and she’s got a great future,’ said Ross. ‘Let’s write her a very good song. Why don’t we start with your idea about burning the candle. Lovely light. Fabulous flame. Let’s think about heat . . . burning . . . sex. The girl needs help, the man needs help. Let’s call this song “Who’ll Help Me Burn My Candle”. At both ends . . .’

Ross Parker was an inspired lyric writer. It took him a
little time, but when the song was finished, it was full of wit and innuendo. Shirley would need to learn fifty lines, and she still had one last booking, in Hull, before her tour was over. On the whole, the tour had gone smoothly, but in Workington an almighty row had erupted between Shirley and Michael over money. Most of their rows were over money. Shirley, it turned out, owed forty pounds in back commission to her first agent, Georgie Wood, and had held on to one of the salary cheques in order to pay it.

‘You’ve been using my money,’ declared a furious Sullivan. ‘You know you have to take your salary out and give the rest to me.’

‘I earn the money,’ argued Shirley. ‘I pay you.’

Resentment and anger escalated on both sides and led to Shirley in tears, while Sullivan insisted that he paid her and she owed him money. He drew up a balance sheet demonstrating just how much she was in debt to him. He was promoting her, he told her, and if she didn’t like the arrangement, he would tear up the contract there and then.

Never mind that she’d just had an unqualified rave review in Workington: ‘Shirley Bassey has a magnetic personality. We want to see much more of her.’

Never mind that next week she would be second-billed on her home ground, the New Theatre in Cardiff, where she would be going home to Sharon and to her mother . . . and Shirley wept because she couldn’t bear it if she didn’t go.

And so they made up. The week at Cardiff was a complete sell-out. All the Bay Girls came to the show and to Shirley’s dressing room afterwards, where she gave each of them a little keepsake that she had bought and wrapped.
At last, Shirley Bassey was ‘The Rose’. In Tiger Bay the most beautiful girl in the community had always been called The Rose. The label had connotations of grace and charm and elegance. It was a great honour, far more so than simply being called the most beautiful girl, and it was an honour that had never been accorded to Shirley.

Now, at the New Theatre, wonderfully lit in her beautiful dress and full make-up, Shirley Bassey brought prestige to the community. Now she really was ‘The Rose of Tiger Bay’.

Ross Parker had gone up to see Shirley in Hull so that they could rehearse the new song and try it out in front of an audience. Shirley often remarked later in her career that, at first, she didn’t understand half the words she sang in that song. That may have been so, but Ross was very pleased with her and agreed that he would act as her accompanist when she opened at the Astor club. Shirley relied on his guidance for the correct phrasing and emphasis – without his help, she still lacked the experience to put the song across to its best advantage. It was as important to Ross as to Shirley and Michael that his new song should be a success.

Shirley was having a new dress made for the Astor: rich white silk, moulded to the contours of her body down to the knees, then flared out in stiffened folds to the floor. White suited her wonderfully, and this dress for her London debut was a prototype for the sort of clothes that became her trademark. Not for her the diaphanous little numbers in flimsy chiffon that reveal more than they conceal, but something beautiful, dramatic, and discreetly
alluring. Her dresses have often had to withstand twenty-eight performances in a two-week booking; over the years they were designed to remain perennially fashionable.

Every outfit that Shirley has worn since her first London appearance has been made by an expert designer who understands what can happen to the dress. They have always been lined and made of resilient fabric. In the early days, Shirley had two brilliant young men, whom she called ‘the two boys’, who designed her stage clothes. She remained faithful to them and Douglas Darnell, who was one of those ‘two boys’, was still creating her outfits in the 1990s.

Agent Sonny Zahl, who negotiated the contract for Shirley’s two-week engagement at the Astor, had done well for her. Her salary was sixty-five pounds a week, a very decent sum in 1955. But, as Michael Sullivan said to her, ‘This is only a stepping stone Shirley, a stepping stone to something much better.’

One o’clock in the morning at the Astor club. By the pink glow of the shaded table-lamps, waiters are pouring champagne as music plays softly and couples in the red velvet banquettes hold hands. The cigarette girl, long legs in black fishnet tights topped by a lacy corset-style bodice, offers her tray of expensive cigars.

The background music ends, and Ross Parker slips into his seat at the piano. The orchestra plays an introduction and, floating across the heavily perfumed atmosphere, a disembodied voice announces, ‘Miss Shirley Bassey’.

A slim dark girl in a dramatic white dress appears in the spotlight. She is very young. Her face still has the rounded
contours of youth, but her expression is intriguing – half innocent, half knowing. This girl knows exactly what she is doing; she has been trained to give the illusion of sophistication. She raises a long, slender arm, displays a hand with long and graceful tapering fingers, and then she begins to sing.

The audience comes to attention. What a voice! By the time she performs her big number, ‘Help Me Burn My Candle’, everyone is held in her thrall. She is wicked, she is saucy; she invites every man in the room to ‘burn our boats together’ and, when she finishes, the room bursts into applause that seems as if it will never end. They don’t want her to go. Eighteen-year-old Shirley Bassey is a sensation.

In the dressing room afterwards, Ross Parker hugs her, Michael Sullivan hugs her. Michael is ecstatic. He knows that this is a breakthrough, he knows he was right all along. This girl has magic, she can rise to any occasion, and she has a showcase at the Astor where she will be seen and heard by the right people.

Berry and Sylvia went to see Shirley at the Astor. Years later, Sylvia recalled how she looked around the room at the sophisticated audience of rich middle-aged men and beautiful women, and the glamorous hostesses weaving between the tables, and thought that it was an awful lot for a young girl to cope with. Then Shirley made her entrance and opened her mouth, and was everything Michael Sullivan had always said she would be.

Sullivan had already calculated his next move. He had learnt that Ross Parker was one of Jack Hylton’s favourite songwriters, and that the two men liked each other. Jack Hylton was a very big name indeed, famous for his West
End musical shows, and Ross had promised Michael an introduction next time Hylton came into the club.

Jack Hylton had been famous for a long time. During the Thirties he had beguiled the younger set with his own band which played on the radio. Then, during World War II, his music had given heart while the bombs were falling. He belonged to the big band era, when world-famous musicians such as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller were at the height of their popularity, and Hylton’s music was transmitted constantly on the BBC. Shirley had more than probably sung along with his band as she packed her saucepans in Tiger Bay.

Hylton, a shrewd Yorkshireman, had got out of the big band business and become an impresario, producer and theatre owner. He had bought the Victoria Palace and the Adelphi in the Strand, and had a lease on the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, all of which were used mainly for musicals, family entertainment and comedy. Some of the Hylton shows were homespun, but he also presented big, glossy American musicals.

One evening, Jack Hylton arrived at the Astor, accompanied by the French comedian and cabaret producer Robert Dhery. Ross, as promised, introduced Michael Sullivan to the short, middle-aged, bespectacled Hylton, who still spoke with a pronounced Yorkshire accent. The two men talked about TV, in particular the nightly show that Hylton had arranged to stage for Associated Television. Then Shirley made her entrance.

After the tumultuous applause which always greeted the end of her act, Hylton turned to Sullivan and said, ‘She’s very good, you know. Do you think she could open at the
Adelphi tomorrow night?’ Sullivan swallowed hard. This was too much too soon, even for him. ‘I’ve got to find someone to fill a small spot,’ Hylton continued. ‘The girl I’ve got is in hospital with peritonitis, and I think this girl would do. It’s only for two weeks until Tony Hancock can take over.’

Without pausing to consider any of the negative implications, Sullivan agreed.

‘Be at my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and we’ll sort out her songs.’

Only then did the realisation dawn that Shirley would have to do three shows a night: two performances nightly at the Adelphi Theatre, and her cabaret at the Astor at one o’clock in the morning, but Sullivan refused to allow this to bother him. He knew what this chance offer could lead to – Jack Hylton was in television in a big way, and he had his own nightclub, the Albany, from where his late-night shows were televised. He was a very important man and, through him, Michael could realise his dream of introducing Shirley to an audience of millions through that little box which would soon be in every living room.

It did finally occur to him that Shirley would have to spend five hours every night at the Adelphi, even though her spot was in the first half. Jack Hylton was a stickler for the whole cast being present for both the opening of the show and the finale. Tomorrow would be a very exhausting day for his star-in-the-making.

Shirley had a strict rule that nobody should wake her before midday. Her friend Bernard Hall, a dancer who later toured with her as her road manager, recalled how he would go in to her at twelve noon and very gently touch her
eyelids until they fluttered open. It was a way of ensuring a happy start to the day, but that was of no concern to Michael on that morning when work preparations had to be made for the Adelphi show. His phone call, nearer eleven than twelve, brought a furious response from Shirley. ‘Eff off; I want to sleep. Go away!’ At that moment she couldn’t care less what Jack Hylton’s demands were.

Sullivan, already carried away with visions of star-making headlines in the newspapers, knew this chance was too good to lose. He took a deep breath and yelled back, ordering her to get up and get ready; he’d be round to pick her up in ten minutes.

His biggest problem that morning, however, was to find Ross Parker who had apparently vanished. Without him, there wouldn’t
be
a new star, because Hylton wanted Shirley to sing ‘Burn My Candle’ in the show, and there were no band parts for the Adelphi orchestra. There were no band parts for any orchestra. At the Astor, the number was sung to piano accompaniment only, and Parker hadn’t got around to scoring it yet.

Eventually, Ross was tracked down in Brighton, where he had gone to relax for the day. The Adelphi orchestra’s enterprising leader, Billy Ternant, had to copy down the scoring by phone, down which the composer sang it to him. The next problem was the gold lamé sheath dress that Hylton wanted Shirley to wear. It was too big for her and had to be safety-pinned up the back, which meant that she must remember never to turn her back to the audience. The six-fifteen opening of the first show was held back for quarter of an hour to give Shirley and the musicians enough time to rehearse.

When the pressure was on, Shirley would grow icy calm. No longer did she lose her temper or begin to panic as she would have done not that long ago. It was others who let her down. Comedian Dave King, for example who, though well-primed by Sullivan, forgot Shirley’s name when he introduced her. But it didn’t matter, Shirley overwhelmed the audience with another unforgettable performance.

Next morning the newspapers lived up to Michael’s hopes and expectations: ‘Shirley the Shy Bombshell . . . From Cardiff’s Dockland to West End Triumph . . . Jack Hylton’s newest discovery.’ That last brought a wry smile from Sullivan. So Jack Hylton had discovered Shirley Bassey, had he? Oh well, you couldn’t win ’em all.