Leaving Home by Anne Edwards

Author:Anne Edwards [Edwards, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2012-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

The early sixties in England were a time of extremes. At Ascot, the Queen and the racetrack’s elite attendees all wore these extraordinary hats. Skirts were midcalf. The Queen, still a young, pretty woman in her midthirties, dressed in coordinated colors—hat, dress, purse, all matching—as did all the women in her party, although the colors the ladies of the royal family wore could not be replicated by others. If the Queen wore pink, no one else could. That stood for the Queen Mother’s and Princess Margaret’s choice of garment shade as well. The Queen and her mother were ardent horse fans while Margaret enjoyed the side pleasures, for Ascot was the high point of the “social season,” a time that had little effect on the rest of the Queen’s subjects. Prince Philip and the other attending gentlemen wore top hats, their unfurled black umbrellas (with handsome silver, ivory, or gold handles) giving them a three-legged look. If a dribble of rain fell—as often occurred—there would be an orchestrated opening of the umbrellas to cover milady’s plumed and flowered hats (almost a whole garden of flowers it seemed of some).

On the streets of London, in the clubs and chic establishments, designers like Pierre Cardin had shortened women’s skirts to heights that displayed a less-than-discreet section of a thigh. Dresses were designed in tents, triangles, and discordant (or just plain splashy) colors. Hair was so bouffant that it was difficult (except in royal circles!) for a woman to wear a hat. I personally believe that the bouffant hairstyle spelled the beginning of the end for milliners around the world. There was even a madcap fad (very short lived) for paper dresses. The new British musical had come into its own with Anthony Newley’s and Leslie Bricusse’s Stop the World—I Want to Get Off, and their follow-up, The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd, while the previous season’s Oliver!, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, went on to become a smash Broadway hit. The new international male film star was dashing Scotsman Sean Connery as James Bond, perfect martini in his hand, a sharp-titted beauty at his side, as he prepared to save the world from destruction. Cockney accents and bastard English heroes like Michael Caine’s Alfie were in. Reversing the trend, the very English Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady became Hollywood’s top grossers in the same year.

And the music! Let us not forget the music. Sure, Mozart and Schumann were reliable choices at Royal Festival Hall, and the overforties spun Frank Sinatra on their home phonographs. But the most-played music, the sound that would change popular music, that singularly everyman, pop phenomenon, were the Beatles. Strange bedfellows that they were—Walter Shenson and Leon were part of the producing team that made the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night, directed by Richard Lester, who was a nonconformist. With A Hard Day’s Night, he broke radically with the established precedent of performance-based musical sequences. The Beatles came alive, popping right

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