Ray Jackson and I opened the Casino De Paris Striptease Theatre Club at 5-7 Denman Street, W.1. in London’s Soho on the 21st of April 1958, writes Eric Lindsay. It was above the old S & F Grill where, as an actor, I used to gravitate every afternoon from there to Taylors Sandwich Bar in Rupert Street, W.1. when I wasn’t working.
Ray and Eric 1958
We had been looking around for premises for about 6 months. Originally we thought of opening a night club with a complete drag show. We approached Danny La Rue, who was then working at Churchills Night Club with Ted Gatty, and he gathered a group of drag artistes together that he had worked with in the shows that used to tour the variety theatres in the 50s. We talked with them and told them that Ray and I were thinking of opening a sophisticated night club along the lines of the Carrousel Club in the Rue de Colisee in Paris. We had seen a night club in Lower James Street, funnily enough also called the Carrousel, which had a great atmosphere and for a long time we contemplated buying it. Fortunately for us, the original owner, who was a friend of ours and who had built it and ran it for many years, talked us out of it because he told us that the place was a white elephant. The gentleman’s name was Morrie Conley (now that is a name to conjure with!). A lot has been written about him, mostly bad, but I can only say that to Ray and myself he was a good friend and adviser and we had many happy times and dinners with him and his lovely wife Nan.
During this period a new Licensing Law 1957 had been passed which allowed theatrical performances in private members clubs for nudes to move, which meant that striptease had become legal. Previously all nudes had to be static in artistic poses a la the Windmill Theatre. The Windmill had had the complete monopoly of that genre of show business for years and the queues of gentlemen outside the theatre each day proved it.
It stood to reason that there were more people interested in seeing the naked body on exhibition than there were in going to see a load of “poufs” in a drag show, so striptease it was going to be!
Daily we used to see gentlemen in raincoats waiting in line to get into the Windmill Theatre. So with the new laws the market was wide open. Already a few clubs had got on the bandwagon and were doing excellent business.
1955 – In the Windmill Canteen. One of the most popular members of the Windmill Theatre staff is ”Margaret” who, for nine years has presided over the Canteen.
My Aunt, who ran a members social club in Brighton, told me of a social club at 5-7 Denman Street that was up for sale. It was the adjoining street to the Windmill Theatre. So Ray and I made an appointment to look over the place. We went along late one afternoon and climbed the wide staircase to the first floor. Above the first floor it turned out was a shoulder pad factory and above that an office suppliers. There were sliding gates in front of the double doors to the social club so we rang the doorbell to let whoever was there know that we had arrived and open the gates.
A very tall, grim looking man stood behind the gates who looked like Lurch from the Adams Family. He frightened the shit out of me! Anyway we told him who we were and he unlocked the gates and we went in, into what was an enormous room with loads of card tables. It looked like a speak easy from the 20s, and what with Lurch it made it even more authentic. The room had an enormous mahogany fireplace in the centre of the opposite wall, but the size of the place made it ideal to convert into a small intimate theatre. When I say theatre, we meant a real theatre run on the strict lines of a legitimate theatre with all the calls, half hour, quarter, five minutes and overture beginners please.
Lurch called for his other two brothers and they introduced themselves as Elliott, who was the youngest at about 50 years old and also the spokesman for the three, and Johnny, the eldest, and Lurch, whose real name was Mark. These were the Gold brothers. To me and Ray they were more like the Marx Brothers.
They were still running the place as a social club with Johnny cooking food in the kitchen, Elliott running the club and Lurch frightening everyone on the door. In the evenings they turned the place into a jazz club where Johnny Dankworth and George Melly used to occasionally play and sing; apart from the other Jazz Musicians who used to play. But really they were not doing any real business.
To make a long story short we agreed to go into a 50/50 partnership with Elliott and Johnny Gold providing Lurch (Mark) had no connection with the business and stayed away from the premises. We didn’t want to frighten the customers away with him on the door!
We got Peter Mullins the Art Director to design the theatre. I managed to buy theatre seats from the Q Theatre at Kew Bridge, which was just about to close. Doing business with Beatie de Leon who ran Q was some ordeal, as she was known to be a very tough lady and she was.
So the conversion started.
When the builders were about to remove the fireplace we had a major drama with Johnny who said it had to stay as it had been there for over 50 years. I thought it must have been a family heirloom. So I asked him how many theatres he knew that had a fireplace in the middle of the room? Finally the fireplace went. Although there were a few tears and unhappy faces.
We built two dressing rooms for the girls and one for the boys, which was in the kitchen at the back of the theatre. The bar, which could hold about 20 people was at the very back of the theatre it had arched corinthian pillars around the whole bar similar to those on the walls, so you could watch the show whilst you had a drink. The theatre could seat about 70 people in total. It wasn’t large, but it was a ‘real’ theatre with so much atmosphere and a stage that was the width of the room at the very end.
“GETTING IT TOGETHER”
Whilst the conversion and building was in progress, it took a period of just over 3 months, Ray and I went to every variety theatre that was in the London area and saw every nude show that was to be seen. We also visited the Irving Theatre Club and the Panama and Gargoyle Clubs, which were already open with their nude shows. I have to say that we were not impressed. The shows were tatty and crude; there was no class or taste shown. We knew with our own experience in the legitimate theatre we could do better.
The girls looked as though they had just come in off the street. Their makeup was nonexistent and the costumes were appalling. The comics, if there was one in the show, did not seem to have any respect for the girls. In fact all the shows were bad.
From that moment Ray and I decided that if we were going to be in the nude business we would do it, as Gypsy Rose Lee said, “with finesse,” and that we proved over the many years that the Casino de Paris was open. We would bring the customers up to our level and not go down to theirs, as we proved, and they appreciated it. We would give them good entertainment in luxurious surroundings.
Our girls would look elegant and classy. Our girls would not look as though they had just come in off the street. Our girls would look glamorous and beautiful, and they were.
During this period we really got to know our partners Elliott and Johnny. Their name was Gold and they had hearts of gold. They were both the kindest and most honest pair that one could ever wish to do business with.
Johnny was caring and like a broody mother hen. He was always concerned that everybody was happy and had plenty of tea. His only problem was that he would worry about everything, you name it, and he would worry about it.
Elliott it turned out was a professional gambler, who would spend hours on the phone betting. The whole time we had the Casino de Paris I could never understand what a monkey or a pony or a Yankee was, it was all double Dutch to me. Gambling did not interest either Ray or me. Despite his gambling vice, and like all gamblers his fortunes used to fluctuate up and down, he would never involve the Casino’s money. He was completely honest and trustworthy. Being a gambler, he was very superstitious. Elliott taught us all the finer points of life, food and wine, where to shop for the best clothes and shoes etc., in fact everything. He was a kind of mentor to us for the finer things in life. He had a wife who was an invalid and lived in Brighton, but that did not stop his womanizing and having a lineup of some of the most glamorous and chic ladies I have ever seen. He was charm personified, a real ladies man. When one day I mentioned his ladies to Morrie Conley, he said, “You know why he gets all those birds?” I said, “No.” “Well, you see he’s hung like a horse!” So that was how I discovered Elliott Gold’s extra charm and that was why he was forever adjusting himself. The thing must have had a mind of it’s own!
Having seen all the theatre shows and those that were playing in the other clubs, we decided that we would follow their lead and start with a pianist/singer and drummer for the shows. We engaged a pianist called Alan Leigh who had a beautiful singing voice and also a drummer called Leslie. We had to get a choreographer because Ray and I hadn’t got a clue how to put a variety show together and do the dance routines. We found a girl who had been working at the Windmill Theatre, so she knew the score. We chose all the numbers and told her what we wanted. We did know what was good and what was bad and what was in good taste. We had realized earlier on that we would have to run our own censorship after seeing the way some of the other clubs were performing.
From Strand Lighting we installed the smallest lighting board that they made with 4 dimmers, as the backstage area was very limited. Later on I think we added one more dimmer to the side of the board, altogether I think we had about 15 spotlights to cover the whole stage area. Remember, we were novices at all these things. Ray and I were learning at the same time as we were rehearsing how to properly run a theatre. We learnt fast. One of our customers from Heaven and Hell told us he was a Stage Manager in variety shows, so we engaged him. He turned out to be useless and just lasted 3 months. We decided that we would do 4 shows a day from 2:30p.m. to 10p.m. and each show would run approximately one and a half hours at 2:30p.m., 4:30p.m., 6:30p.m. and 8:30p.m. It was a little like a factory, but it allowed us an hour till 11p.m. to keep the bar open for that last drink.
We placed an advertisement in the Stage newspaper for girls and held auditions for nude dancers and showgirls. We also placed another ad for boy dancers and also for another Assistant Stage Manager. We were lucky because there were many girl dancers who unfortunately were not tall enough to be in a chorus line like the Tiller Girls, but they were trained and disciplined. Two of the boys from the drag shows we engaged to work as young ladies in the show. They were Tommy Osborne who had the most beautiful soprano voice and Dougie Currie who looked like Marilyn Monroe when he was in drag, but the main thing was that he could also make costumes, which was much more important than his talent. In Drag they both looked great and passed as girls with the customers.
So there in the dressing room every day whilst we were rehearsing Dougie sat and made costumes, except for when he had to go on stage to rehearse, but he was a dreamer and very, very slow with making costumes. It would take him forever to sew on a sequin. In fact I would stay up with him all night trying to get him to finish a set. I would spend the night making black coffee and supplying him with pep pills. This went on for weeks until finally I said, “Enough is enough! We open next week on the 21st of April,” and somehow miraculously, I don’t know how, it all came together.
The CASINO DE PARIS WAS IN BUSINESS!
BY COMPLETION IT WAS A PERFECT BIJOU THEATRE
Kay Marshall
“OVERTURE AND BEGINNERS PLEASE”
Act 1 Scene 1
By the time we opened we already had over 2000 members, so the 2:30 opening show on the 21st of April was full and the Audience loved it. In fact they stayed for the second show and one guy even sat through the whole four shows. Not good for business, but it proved we were on the right track. For the 8:30 show we had invited a few of our theatrical chums, including Frankie Vaughan and his lovely wife Stella. I think they left in shock. It was the sight of seeing so much nudity!
Frankie Vaughan and Stella
Diana Dors, my old mate from the Rank Charm School, came with her then current boyfriend Tommy Yeardye. They both loved the show. When I asked Di why she kept on calling Tommy “Tommy Teapot,” she said, “He had a big Spout!” Luckygirl!!! We all then went for dinner after the show to Veeraswamy’s, an Indian restaurant in Regent Street, for a Vindaloo.
Then there was the film producer and director Herbert Wilcox, who came without his wife, the actress Anna Neagle. He became a regular, dropping in for the odd drink and a chat with the girls, especially when Anna was starring in “Charlie Girl” at the Adelphi Theatre. He would pop in for a drink and then go on to collect her after the show. Herbert had quite an eye for the girls, and they enjoyed chatting with him. Sometimes he and Ray would go to the Garrick Club for dinner.
Another stalwart of the club was Victor Spinetti. There were a few others but I’ve forgotten who they were.
The whole cast wore full body makeup, which looked great when they were lit and gave them a real Parisian Follies look. Unfortunately, this was something that we had to stop as it was ruining all their costumes, so I had to get the same effect with lighting.
I used the coloured Cinemoid Sheets that were sold by Strand Electric for their spotlights, and with trial and error I managed to get an even better effect than with the body makeup. In fact, I became quite an expert and painted their bodies with my lighting. This was to prove so handy for me when I became Zee as I had it in my contract that I always did my own lighting.
Here is a copy of the first program, all 6 pages and also a souvenir brochure of “Paris Sensations” the No.1 edition which started the run.
We produced around forty different editions at the Casino de Paris until its closure in 1976 when the lease ran out. We did so many that I lost count. I have copies of many of the adverts that we placed in the weekly magazine “What’s On In London.” I will intersperse them throughout the story with all the exotic names that I gave to some of the girls, but they will not run in chronological order as I’m too old to remember the sequence and the dates. Really, I’m just lucky that I found the ads. The same goes with the photos.
Striptease Artists Anne Dorte And Lis Dorte Who Are To Appear At London’s Casino De Paris.
Ray and I agreed that we would do four editions a year. So fairly soon after opening the No. 1 edition, we started preparations and rehearsals for the next show, and so it went on and on. It was like a factory, but a very enjoyable one. I think it was soon after we had opened that a young lady joined the show called Audrey Crane (that was the name I gave her). Over the years, she blossomed and bloomed into a glamorous artist who could hold her own with all the continental stars that we engaged. She worked with us for many, many years. We took her with us when we went to the Cannes Film Festival, in fact we used to take her everywhere. Unfortunately we parted on very, very bad terms, which I have regretted to this very day. Ray and I both adored her.
Audrey Crane Of The Casino De Paris Talks To The Proprietor She Is Wearing Some Of The Jewellery She Has Recieved As Presents From Wealthy Admirers
Audrey Crane
Rehearsals would continue every day and I or Ray would be there. We would try to schedule it so that each artist would only come in a maximum of three times a week because they were working a full eight-hour shift. All those kids worked so very hard.
We never ever received a bad notice or write-up for the shows in either the newspapers or journals. The write-ups we received from Peter Hepple of “The Stage” made us sound as though we were the “Old Vic” of striptease. Even if I say so myself, the show was good, in fact it was excellent!
Well, rehearsals continued and I sat there every day for a year watching and remembering everything our choreographer did. Although she appeared in the show, she was off more than she was on. If I were to say that she was prone to accidents, it would be an understatement.
She would tell me that she was up most of the night setting a dance routine, and I believed her. That is until one day, when she had already set half of a ballet number the day before, she came back and ran through the part she had set only to say that she had forgotten what she had set and reset it all. The more I watched her the more I realized she was making it up as she went along. So I said to Ray that I could do the same thing, without having the trouble of trying to explain what we wanted. We would also not have the hassle of censoring numbers that she set, as she thought, as sexy and erotic, but which we thought were pornographic. There is such a fine line between what is sexy and what can be interpreted as pornographic. So it was the parting of the ways.
Girls In The New Floor Show Paris Sensations At The Casino De Paris In London
From the War days when I was still at school, I would go to Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the New Theatre at least twice a week. I could remember most of the lifts and dance moves, but I didn’t know what their names or the names for certain steps were. The choreographer would count when she did a routine, but I didn’t know it was either 4 or 8 to the bar. So, I would sit at home working out a number and count 11 beats, pause, 17 drum rolls, pause, etc, etc. No one had the nerve to tell me it was only 4 or 8 to the bar. I would make all the kids write down the different numbers, not knowing that they were transposing them into 4 or 8. It wasn’t until after a year that one of the boy dancers said to me, “Eric, it’s all just a count of either 4 or 8.” He explained why and I said, “Oh shit! You must all think I’m off my head.” Well it certainly made life a hell of a whole lot easier for me.
From 1958-1976 are what I call our Gypsy years because we never stopped moving. As the shows progressed, we progressed. We moved from Suzy’s flat above Heaven and Hell to the White House in Regents Park. We were becoming affluent! Next it was onto the Penthouse at 81 Boydell Court in St. Johns Wood, followed by the Stratford Court Hotel in Oxford Street. Then we had a new Neo Georgian House built at 14 Marston Close, Swiss Cottage. I couldn’t cope with all the stairs, 3 flights, and I was always forgetting something on the top floor so we moved to Edinburgh House in Portland Place opposite the BBC only to discover that the taxi phone in the street below would ring all day and all night. We couldn’t wait to move. Our next stop was 17C Sussex Heights in Brighton. The train journey to London took just one hour and it was beautiful travelling on the Brighton Belle, but when there were leaves or snow on the line it took between five and six hours, with no corridors! Nuff said! Finally, we moved into 68 Barons Keep in West Kensington. Phew! I’m out of breath. We never stopped. All this time the shows went on and they got better and better.
Anton and Andree. Andre (Angela) went on to marry Richard Lyon, the son of Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, the famous stage and radio act, who were a notable couple in show business society.
Anton and Andree. Andre (Angela) went on to marry Richard Lyon, the son of Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, the famous stage and radio act, who were a notable couple in show business society.
We would go to Paris frequently to see an agent there called Lillette Voland who managed all the top striptease artistes, and to buy feathers from Madame Fevrier. Arthur Helliwell, the No.1 journalist at the time for The People Newspaper, was known and feared for his vitriolic and scathing penmanship by most people in the business. Laughed about Madame Fevrier, when we met him in Cannes one year and wrote a very amusing article about us buying feathers in Paris. But truthfully, they were unobtainable in England. All in all we always had good relations with all the Press.
Kathy Keeton Performing At The Casino De Paris Club. Keeton Was One Of The Highest-paid Strippers In The World. She Later Married Penthouse Publisher Bob Guccione.
One of the first artistes we brought from Paris was Ketty Rogers who had the audience standing in more ways than one! Occasionally we would have the odd customer who would misbehave. The girls were the first to point them out. It was Johnny Gold’s job to go along and speak to the offender. He would gently tap him on the shoulder and whisper, “Put it away old chap. You’re upsetting the girls!”
Ketty Rogers
“EARLY STAGES”
Act 1 Scene2
The shows were running swimmingly, but Ray and I were not happy with the music, it sounded so thin. We had already got thru three drummers and we were on our second pianist. Our latest drummer changed the tempo according to how he felt, and we were relying on a pianist who spent most of the time sitting on the loo and not at the piano. Imodium wasn’t around in those days otherwise I would have slipped him a couple every time he had his tea break! The girls were also not happy with the situation. It came to a point where we found ourselves having to incorporate so much taped music into the show, just to satisfy the whims and bowel movements of the musicians, that we finally decided to do the whole show on tape. We came to an agreement with the Musicians Union and The Performing Rights Society, and low and behold it was wonderful! The Theatre was overflowing with the sound of music and it was great!
January 1963: Dressed in miniscule fur bikinis, Kean Fluffles, Angela Parker and Audrey Crane, three of the glamorous girls performing in London’s Casino de Paris in London’s Soho.
There was an agent from Italy who frequented the Casino de Paris since we had opened whenever he was in London. He would always ask us to take a show similar to ours to the “Auberge des Pyramids” in Cairo for three months with all expenses paid, including food and accommodation and transport for fifteen people and hotel accommodation for myself. The show could then tour Greece and other countries. The money was excellent and the whole thing sounded great. Ray and I checked on the venue and found it was the No.1 nightclub in Cairo.
We also checked with quite a few artistes that had worked there and they all gave glowing reports. Ha! Ha! It is so strange with artistes, they never tell you the truth about the bad things that happen to them. Everything is always so wonderful and rosy. We were warned by our agent in London, Rosemary Andree of the Gaston and Andree Agency, that they promise you everything and then screw you when you’re there, but Ray and I were both hot headed in the excitement of it all and unfortunately we didn’t listen to her. By the way, in her day, Rosemary Andree was a famous beauty known as the Pocket Venus and worked consistently with Jimmy Gaston. They starred in their own shows as Gaston and Andree with their Nude Adagio Act in music halls throughout the 30s and 40s.I know I am digressing, but I have to show you these wonderful portraits that were taken by Walter Bird (1903-1969) of the Beautiful Rosemary Andree. As this story progresses, she became an important part of the Casino de Paris Story.
Walter Bird’s portraitures were in their time regarded as second only to the great Karsh of Ottawa. He was one of the giants of the London scene in the 1930’s. His impeccable taste ensured that his figure studies were unsurpassed. His images of beautiful women soon sent him into London’s top ten photographers.
Walter Bird’s portraitures were in their time regarded as second only to the great Karsh of Ottawa. He was one of the giants of the London scene in the 1930’s. His impeccable taste ensured that his figure studies were unsurpassed. His images of beautiful women soon sent him into London’s top ten photographers.
To cut a long story short, we agreed to take a show to Egypt called “Eric Lindsay’s Folie de Londres.” I really should have called it “Eric Lindsay’s Folly!” We had fourteen artistes – two female singers, two girl dancers, four nude showgirls, two strippers, two boy dancers, one stage manager, one sound operator, and me. I had music specially orchestrated for a fourteen-piece orchestra which the agent told me would play for the show. Of course, he forgot to tell me that they couldn’t read music! I had new costumes made for the twelve artistes and we were to travel by train thru France to Marseilles and then get a boat to Egypt. I should have known it was doomed from the start when we had to stopover in Paris for six hours and change stations. My stage manager who was in charge of the costumes lost them in transit and didn’t tell me until we were 100 km outside of Paris on the way to Marseilles. He said he wanted to go sightseeing! The berk! So I pulled the emergency cord. The guard came and screamed and shouted at me, but finally I managed to explain to him what had happened and he arranged for the train to stop at the next hick town station, and all fifteen of us got off and waited while the powers that be in Paris tried to locate our lost luggage. Four hours later, we finally managed to get it on the next non-stop train, ‘Le Train Bleu’, to Marseilles, which made an emergency stop for us at the hick town so we could get on and precede with our ‘adventurous’ journey. I believe it was the first time in history that ‘Le Train Bleu’ made an emergency stop for a load of costumes!
The boat we caught in Marseilles had to be one of the oldest cockroach-infested trawlers that was sea worthy and I threw up most of the way to Alexandria. We were met at the docks by an agent from Mohammed Abdul- Nabi, the owner of the Auberge. The coach trip from Alexandria to Cairo seemed to me as though we had gone back to biblical times it was all so primitive. Still, I was optimistic, look on the bright side. After all, what more could happen? ? ?Duly ensconced, we started rehearsals in earnest for a week. Abdel-Nabi’s staff were as thick as planks, nodding all the time, but nothing was sinking in. So finally I made them write down all the lighting, sound, curtains and set changes over and over again. Abdel-Nabi would watch all this and say nothing. The opening night show was a disaster. If anything could go wrong it did. My stage manager was screaming at everyone. He had no lights, no curtains, nothing, and the music sounded as though they were skinning cats. Mohammed Abdel-Nabi said that he would try and make the show the second night, as my stage manager was upsetting his staff and he would speak to them and explain more, etc. etc.On the second night, the show went perfectly from beginning to end, just as I had planned and set it. Abdel-Nabi said to me later, “You see, you make show big catastrophe. Me, I make show big success.” I bit my tongue and thought,‘You crafty fucker!’ But I said nothing. I was hoping to get paid. Ha! Ha! So the show ran for three nights and then we rehearsed for the New Year’s Eve Gala with a special number with real live white doves that were quite tame and lived in a loft in the roof of the night club. The number was to go in at the very end of the show, which went on for about three hours, including belly dancers and singers and on and on and on. Then came our special number. The showgirls and Strippers and boy and girl dancers each had four doves. At the end of the number they would just wave their arms and the doves would fly around the room and then go back up into the loft, or so I thought! Or so we all thought! Ha! Ha!Show time! Eric Lindsay’s“Folie de Londres” was a big success. The belly dancers were a big success. Everyone was a big success! Then came our finale, the special dove number to bring in the New Year. As the final chimes rang out, the girls waved their arms and the doves flew around the room and the elite of Cairo that were our audience grabbed at the doves and tore them apart and wiped one another with the blood! On stage there was pandemonium. The two girl singers fainted, the boy dancers were shouting and going to the aid of the singers, and one of the showgirls, who was an animal activist, went into the audience and punched a guy in the face as he tried to wipe some blood onto her. The audience came onto the stage, trying to wipe blood on the kids. BEDLEM! And I had envisioned this beautiful number with the lovely white doves that would just fly away. Nobody told us that just before the show all their tail feathers had been removed so the poor buggers could just fly low around the room until they were butchered. This is what they call a civilized society? The kids refused to work anymore at the Auberge. So that was the end of the show and we prepared to return to England. Meanwhile, I was still paying the kids their full salary. I explained to Abdul-Nabi that it would be better all round for us to go, and he smiled and agreed. Little did I know that he had no intention of paying me any amount of money. When finally I got the British Embassy involved, he paid me a pittance and deducted all the train and boat tickets – all the expenses that I had incurred for him! In fact, I was left with flumpence halfpenny and a bad taste in my mouth. He kept me waiting around for a week to collect some money. He would keep me waiting outside his office for six hours at a time, and when he did see me he would give me a little just to tide me over for the day and tell me to come back the next day. During this time I sent a telegram to President Naser telling him of the treatment we had received from Abdel-Nabi and how bad it was for the image of the whole of Egypt. On the final day when he paid me my pittance in front of all his staff to show how big he was, I thanked him and told him, “You sir, are a PIG! I would never treat anyone the way you have treated me.” I left the premises with everyone in shock. No one had ever had the nerve to say that to him.
To prove that I am not exaggerating about Mohamed Abdul-Nabi, here is a cutting from the Al-Ahram Weekly Newspaper: “AS WAFIYA EL-FRANSAWI, A BELLY DANCER STATED, “THE ARTISTES HAD A LOT OF TROUBLE WITH MOHAMED ABDEL-NABI, THE OWNER, WHO WAS CHRONICALLY IN ARREARS IN ALL PAYMENTS OF THE PERFORMERS SALARIES”So he didn’t just do it to foreign artistes, he also did it to his own. I was lucky to leave with the shirt on my back. Meanwhile, one of my dances came to me and said that another agent wanted to see me. I met up with the agent and he told me he could get us an immediate contract in Athens paying the full salary that I had been contracted with Abdel-Nabi, plus air tickets from Cairo to Athens and all the same conditions as my previous contract, but we would have to to double, playing The Acropolis Theatre and also a night club. I said I would talk it over with my artistes and let him know, but I didn’t hold out much hope after the treatment we had received in Cairo. I was keen to return to England. That evening I spoke to the kids and told them about the offer I had received. They spoke together and said that they wanted to go to Athens and do the theatre and the nite club show. “After all,” they said, “ it couldn’t be worse than what has happened to us here in Cairo.” Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!!!
“BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS”
ACT 1 SCENE 3
The day of our departure to Athens I received a call from President Nasser’s Office asking me about the telegram that I had sent him, but I explained that we were just leaving for Athens and it was impossible for me to continue with my complaint. It was all too late! But I wonder what would have become of it had I stayed.
Athens, what a beautiful city! The Acropole Theatre was quite stunning and our Agent Frank Raptis wined and dined us and presented us all with flowers. What a gentleman! When I asked him about seeing the nightclub I was told that it was being renovated for our show. Fair enough. So we got down to sorting out the rehearsals and the running of the show at the Acropolis Theatre, which was to be incorporated into the variety show as a whole entity called Eric Lindsay’s Folies de Londres. The nightclub, we were told, would be ready in about a week or two, which was okay by me.
The reviews for the theatre show were excellent. Mr. Papadoppo-something, the the owner of the Acropole Thatre, loved the whole thing and he was very happy. Understandably! That week I was paid half salary as we were only fulfilling half of our contract, but I still paid the artistes their full salary. By the end of the second week we finally did a show at the nightclub. On the third week, we were told that the club did not have a license so we could not work there anymore. So there I was stuck with a contract for three months and only being paid half salary, which didn’t even cover the artistes’ salaries. While I was losing all round, the artistes were happy and the theatre was very happy. I found out later that it was their usual practice to arrange for two venues and only come up with one so that they would get everything for half price. The Greek agent Frank Raptis was screwing me to the wall!
After about four weeks and a lot of meetings with the theatre management, I had got nowhere. Mr. Papadoppo-something told me that he was holding me to the contract. Meanwhile mysStage manager and three of my girls who had worked for me before at the Casino de Paris told me that Frank Raptis had told all the cast that should I decide to take the troupe back to England, they could stay and keep all the costumes, etc. In fact, he promised them the whole show and said that if I caused any trouble he would have me arrested as he had done before to Monsieur Charley of the famous Charley Ballet in Beirut. I went berserk at the thought of losing everything to these crooks after all the work and money that Ray and I had put in to make the show possible. No way was I going to let them take everything away from me. Remember, I am a Scorpio. I went to the British Embassy (again) and explained the situation. The Ambassador told me that I was working for gangsters. Both Mr. Papadoppo-something and Frank Raptis ran their own Mafia group and they had all the judges in their pocket, so I couldn’t win.
Long story short, I had a meeting with all the artistes and put my cards on the table and explained the situation. I could not afford to subsidize their salaries every week and that I was ‘THINKING’of returning with them all to England. I didn’t say when. I told them that all their return fares were deposited with the British Embassy and if they wanted to come back with me they could. So I was not running off and leaving them. My five who worked with me at the Casino de Paris were quite happy to return to England, but the rest had already agreed with Raptis that they would stay and do the show and also keep my costumes.
Two days later there was a national holiday and the theatre was closed, so it was our D-Day. We got to the theatre early and started packing the costumes, leaving just left a few. I told the theatre staff that we were having them cleaned. So, with the trunks all packed, we went straight to the station and I booked the tickets and saw the kids off to England. This was where I made the big blunder. I had booked to fly out to England that evening. I checked into the airport and went through customs. As I was getting ready to board the plane, the police came running after me and took me back to immigration, where I sat all night waiting for transport to take me back to Athens. While we were waiting, the police sergeant who was there told me they all knew Frank Raptis and Mr. Papadoppo-something, who were well-known major crooks in Athens. Anyway I wasn’t arrested, I was just detained. To me it was about the same thing except I was free to walk about and still had my passport. I spoke to the British Embassy and they got me a lawyer who came to court with me the following day. My case was set aside for two weeks for a judge to hear, during which time I could not leave Greece. My solicitor told me that Frank Raptis had got all the artistes that stayed to sign a paper written in Greek which said that I had stolen all their costumes. Of course the kids didn’t know what they signing, but they signed just the same.
I spoke with Ray and the Gold Brothers and told them exactly what had happened and explained that I was perfectly okay and there was no need for any of them to come out. So that done, I decided to see what I could do. Every day I used to sit and try to work out an escape route. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to get a false passport, but I didn’t know where to get one. I thought of escaping across the border to Turkey dressed as a nun as I thought maybe passport control wouldn’t ask a nun for her passport. I thought I could wear a burka and just have my eyes showing until I realised I would have to be travelling with someone. All these things were going through my head, but I stayed and waited. Oh, fuck it! I might as well sit it out!
I gave my solicitor all the papers and receipts that I had for the costumes that I’d had made in England and also the insurance policy that I had with Lloyds of London, but he said that they wouldn’t mean a thing as the judge was already in Frank Raptis’s pocket. So much for Justice! It was all corruption, corruption, corruption! On the day of the trial I went to court and the judge adjourned it for a further two months so that he could study all the facts, but he allowed me to leave the country on condition that I would RETURN! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You didn’t see my arse for dust! Bye, bye Greece!
“WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.” YEARS LATER, I HEARD THAT FRANK RAPTIS HAD BEEN MURDERED. WELL, IT COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED TO A NICER CHAP! ! !
“HOME SWEET HOME”
ACT 1 SCENE 4
Back in England, thank God! What a hiccup all that was! I arrived back with my tail between my legs. The whole experience left me with a nasty taste in my mouth and a desire never to do another show again on foreign shores. I had learnt very fast that those people had no respect for a contract or the law. In fact they made their own laws and rules. Rosemary was the first to say to me, “I told you so,” and she was right.The Casino de Paris, however, was going great guns and I quickly got over my bad experience and got back into the swing of things. We brought over many artistes through the Lilette Voland Agency in Paris and they were normally booked for four weeks at a time.
Cha Landres
There was the exotic Cha Landres (pronounced ‘shall undress’. Get the pun?), ‘The World’s Highest Paid Striptease Star,’ who arrived at the theatre wearing a floor length Ranch Mink Coat and then stripped on top of a grand piano and then played Clair de Lune with one hand whilst the other removed her G-string. She was a very classy act!
There was Dany Faret from the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris who was stripped by a puppet whilst she was asleep in her boudoir. Her act was quite intriguing. Being French she was very temperamental and used to beat the ‘shit’ out of the puppeteer regularly. Maybe he liked it?
During this time a young man named Gerry Maycock came along to the Casino in reply to an ad that we had placed in the Stage newspaper for a stage director. He came to us directly from the Savoy Theatre, where he had been working as Chief Electrician for 4 years. Well, the Savoy’s loss was our gain. He became our mainstay for running the whole show backstage; he did the electrics, the organizing and running of the whole show and still had time for a game of chess whilst everything else was going on.
Ray and I relied on him completely. He was loyal and trustworthy. Gerry worked for us for over 10 years. How he ever managed to perform all the lighting cues that I gave him I will never know, but the trouble was that he was so good at doing them that I would take advantage of him and always expect more.
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