Johnny Cigarini (6 page)

“Which way went he that killed Tybalt?”

– Johnny Cigarini

During my summers in Rome, starting when I was at Dean Close School and throughout university, I worked as a film extra at Cinecittà, the film studios outside Rome. They were the studios used to film
Ben-Hur
,
Cleopatra
, much of the works of the great Fellini and more recently Scorsese's
Gangs of New York
. Mussolini founded the studios for propaganda purposes under the slogan ‘Il cinema è l'arma plù forte' (Cinema is the most powerful weapon). I would later come to disagree, of course, and replace ‘Il cinema' with ‘Il advertising'!

The studios were bombed during the war by the Allies, and following World War II, Cinecittà was used as a displacement persons camp for an estimated 3000 refugees. I was there when all that had come to pass and Cinecittà was on the rise. For me, it was a great job because it gave me some pocket money, but only took up two or three days a week, with the rest of the time to go to the beach. My sister Maria and her husband Peter were members of Gambrinus, an exclusive beach club at Ostia, not far from where they lived at EUR – the beautiful ‘fascist architecture' suburb of Rome. Everyone at Gambrinus was shocked that I travelled from England by ‘auto-stop' (hitchhiking); it was simply unheard of in Italy. I remember feeling quite proud when they were all so shocked. It even helped me stand out a little.

I wasn't your average common-or-garden film extra; I was what they called a ‘figurazione speciale' – a featured extra. Most of the films shot in Cinecittà were now American productions, and the producers didn't want to make it too obvious that they were shooting in Italy, so they employed non-Italians to stand near the main stars. I worked with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas in
Cast a Giant Shadow
, playing one of a group of generals. John Wayne was a friendly man and we would talk often. Kirk, however, always seemed to be in character, and just sat around silently jutting that famous dimpled chin of his. He had a son of around sixteen, who was working as a rather officious assistant director at the time. I met Michael Douglas years later, when we had a stoned evening with Chessy Thyssen, and I asked him if it was he on the set of
Cast a Giant Shadow
. It was.

I worked with a number of other famous stars like Joseph Cotten and Angie Dickinson, but I don't want to over-egg my artistic contribution. I mainly just stood around, rather than acted. It was just a fun job really, giving me that extra pocket money I needed, and it was a great opportunity to see how film sets worked. Sometimes I would just sit on the side for hours and simply watch. I worked with Victor Mature and Peter Sellers on a film called
After the Fox
, directed by Vittorio De Sica. Sellers had recently had a heart attack and had to spend most of the time in his trailer resting, but he was with a new bride – a very pretty woman called Britt Ekland. I saw her and felt rather flabbergasted. I couldn't understand how Mr Sellers managed to gather any rest. Years later, I'd often see Sellers in Tramp and he was still the lucky charmer. He was going out with my friend at the time, a beautiful Swedish Countess named Titi Wachtmeister.

I met an actor from San Francisco called Clint Eastwood, although on this film he was ‘the man with no name'. I had heard at the time that he was pretty good, although I had never seen
Rawhide
. I just knocked on his dressing room door with no apprehension at all. He was shooting the spaghetti western
For a Few Dollars More
and was on his break. I asked him if I could work as an extra on his film. I remember he towered over me, his face creased and tensed and his eyes were slit and piercing. “It's not my department,” he said to me. Looking back, I had a classic Clint encounter and, at the time, I didn't even know it. He was also a friendly man. So, I was just a kid and I had already met John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Kirk Douglas. One thing was very clear about these men: they had a sense of confidence, a kind I had never seen before, and I guess I wanted it, too. I also worked with Lee Van Cleef, who was a real hoot. He would punch me in the stomach each morning in the coffee bar, just for laughs. They were good days and the work was exciting – much better than frying eggs in the Margate hotel.

In all my time spent on the different sets, I had only two lines. In these Italian films, the dialogue, especially in the spaghetti westerns, was always dubbed and the recorded dialogue was usually badly translated from Italian. So the exact line I had in
The Tramplers
was, “Up there, it's your son that shot at you!” My grammar teacher would have turned in his grave, but I got the line word-perfect. I was ‘working' with Robert Mitchum and his real-life son Jim on the film, and now I had a speaking part, I was definitely part of the gang! I would go out with Jim Mitchum, who was about my age, every night to the Via Veneto, the scene of Fellini's movie
La Dolce Vita
. We would go to Dave's Bar, owned by Dave Crowley, a former lightweight British boxing champion from the 1930s. Jim and I, of course, would be looking for girls and we were ‘in the movies', so we found some without much trouble.

In the summer of '67, after my final year at Durham and before I started working in advertising, I had my best film extra job. I was in the Via Veneto one night when I ran into a group of British actors. I met them because I had been to school with one of the actors, Rick Winter, who by then called himself Richard Warwick. Richard was a very sweet man but was not destined to live much longer. He became one of the first victims of AIDS. The rest of the group were: John McEnery, a fine actor; Murray Head, who would become a pop star and have a big hit with ‘One Night in Bangkok'; and Bruce Robinson, who later became famous for what is now considered one of the greatest British films of all time,
Withnail and I
. They were all in Rome working on
Romeo and Juliet
, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. I got a job on the film through Richard Warwick and we worked together for a month. The funny thing was, I was an extra in the film for both the Montagues and the Capulets, but mostly I can be seen in the finished film as one of Romeo's gang members.

Director Franco Zeffirelli and his producer Dyson Lovell were seriously gay, and would take young film extras into their trailers whenever there was a break in filming. On my last day, Zeffirelli gave me a line to speak: “Which way went he that killed Tybalt?” It never made it into the finished film, but then neither did most of the parts played by the British actors, and they were professionals who had worked on the film all summer. I, however, was less than an amateur and only on the film a month. I am sure Zeffirelli only gave me the line to soften me up, or should I say harden me up, and I suppose I was grateful to him for it, but there was perhaps yet another ulterior motive. He came into my dressing room just as I was down to my briefs, put two floppy wrists on my shoulders, and said in broken English, “Why you 'ave to leave so soon? I 'aven't seen nearly enuff of you”, while staring at my crotch. “Why you no stay in Rome and become actor?”

“I'm going back to London for a job in advertising, because I want to use my brain,” I replied, slightly offhandedly. Well, the man went ballistic, defending the acting profession. Perhaps it was a stupid remark, but at least it brought the seduction attempt to an end. I had obviously refined my firewall over the years. The other thing that historic moment did was help me realise how made up my mind was to work in advertising, how determined I now was. Maybe I even had it in me to get good at it? Win some awards? What about even gaining respect? Like some of those movie actors had, or even like my father had gained in his profession.

It was true; the images on the internet I later found, that my father had taken of those movie actresses, was advertising work he was doing. I was following in his footsteps, subconsciously. The war had prevented him from achieving, so perhaps I could continue the things he couldn't – like carrying on a legacy. Maybe even creating one.

“It's all for nothing if you don't have freedom.”

– William Wallace

After my last summer in Rome, and working on
Romeo and Juliet
, I returned to London to start work at Hobson Bates Ltd. I bought myself a cream suit with black pinstripes from Burton the Tailors. It was September 1967, the Mamas & the Papas were top of the charts with ‘San Francisco', and
Casino Royale
had just hit the flicks. It was a September I will never forget. I went to work at my first pro job and my salary was £1000 a year, plus luncheon vouchers of course.

I joined on the same day as two other graduates, but when we got to the office, it was all a bit of an anti-climax. To start, no one seemed to be expecting us, or in fact know what to do with us. They all seemed too busy, everything was so frantic – it was the world of advertising. I recall standing at the front of the office, admiring the ringing phones, the papers being thrown, the loudness, the tempers, the red faces. We idled away the morning until someone suggested we go to the pub over the road for lunch. I guess I was nervous and needed to calm the old nerves, so I had a couple of pints that sunny day, but I was not used to drinking at lunchtime. I was also tired from my journey back from Rome. We got back to the office they had allocated for us and there was still nothing to do. I laid myself down on the sofa and went to sleep, but only for a moment. Roy Beaumont, the director in charge of the graduates, came into the office and cried out loud to all who could hear him, “HA… that Cigarini's already ASLEEP!” I suppose it wasn't the best thing I could have done on my first day in the office. An advertising tycoon to be? I wouldn't have put my money on me! But then again, I've never been a betting man…

*

My other sister Christina was by now married to a graphic designer, Gordon Miller. While working at Hobson Bates, I lived with them in their two small attached houses in Colville Place, off Charlotte Street. This made it very convenient to walk to work at Hobson Bates on nearby Gower Street. By 1968, I was living in Chelsea in a flat off the King's Road, with four young chaps. In total, we were paying twenty-five pounds rent a week. In total! Yes, just five pounds each. I was the lucky one (again) because I had my own room, but it was really more like a large cupboard; the bed took up the entire floor and it had no windows. You would simply open the door and fall onto the bed, something that I hear is still quite common for youngsters in London – living on a budget without any money to put down for a deposit on a double room. I think the going rate is a whopping £600 a month these days, just for a room. I don't know how they manage it.

One of my flatmates was Richard Synge, who I had been to school with. He was related to the famous Irish playwright J.M. Synge. Another was a Russian ballet dancer named Micha who was a look-alike for Rudolph Nureyev, and one was Vaughn Ingham, who later became a junkie. John Leaver made up the group. He was into music and introduced me to the sounds of Family, with Roger Chapman, and Sly and the Family Stone. The sixties were almost over and the seventies were coming. I could hear it in the music; there was a change coming, a big change. If the sixties were for me to mark a coming of age, the seventies would be the coming of money. But it wasn't just me, there was a sense of enterprise in people everywhere – they were tired from all the parties and it seemed people were ready to knuckle down and get to work. Or was it just me?

John Leaver sold advertising space for a new gig guide and he thought it was going to hit the big time. I remember when the owners Tony Elliott and his girlfriend had come down early from Keele University to start it. It was a fortnightly publication, and every two weeks they would come over to our flat. We would all sit on the carpet folding the single sheet in two, and addressing envelopes to the subscribers. The later-to-become-legendary DJ from the
Old Grey Whistle Test
, Bob Harris, was co-editor, so he would also come to the flat. The name of the publication was
Time Out
magazine. Tony Elliott bought out his, by then, ex-girlfriend very early, and
Time Out
went global. It is now published in sixty different countries. I still smile when I see a copy. I think back to the gang sat on the floor all those years ago.

In 1969, I bought my own flat. I worked at Hobson Bates with a very nice lady, Carol Adler; she was a copywriter and the daughter of harmonica maestro Larry Adler. She had a small flat at the other end of the King's Road, in a mansion block called Argyll Mansions, just on the corner of Beaufort Street. She was getting married at the time and moving to a bigger flat in Mayfair, so she sold me the fixtures and fittings to her King's Road flat for 500 quid. This is how people got cheap leases, paying what was called ‘key money'. Yet again, I got lucky; though on my taxed income there was no way I could ever have afforded £500, my granny had left me that much in her will from the sale of her house. The rent on the flat was cheap, just a tenner a week. Eventually that £500 from Granny escalated on the property ladder to £3 million by 2008. I'm not bragging, I'm just telling you… I'm lucky!

Somehow or other, Carol and I got hot and steamy the night before her wedding. We both managed to resist the temptation to consummate the marriage with the wrong guy, and I think she was always grateful to me for that. I still have strong memories of my first few days in my new flat. It was so exciting for me to have my own place for the very first time, after the years of growing up at Granny's and through uni, and pretty much living out of a suitcase since then. I had very little furniture – just a sofa, which Carol had left me – but that was fine, perfect in fact. The word to describe my life was perfect and I had the most important thing: a stereo system.

JOHNNY:

Freedom.

FADE OUT:

As account executive on the Playtex account, I had to attend a sales conference. There were three girls modelling the bras at the conference: two young twins from Malta and an exotic one from British Guiana, Shakira Baksh. She had come third in the Miss World competition in '67 and stayed on in London to do modelling work. As the story goes, Michael Caine saw her on a TV commercial for Maxwell House coffee and thought she was “the most beautiful girl in the world”. He became obsessed with finding her, and eventually he did. He tracked her down through his agent and they have now been happily married for over forty years. It's a great story and I was fortunate enough to have dinner with them one night after the premiere of the film
The Mission
. I was taken there by a beautiful Greek-Scottish girl, Stassia Stakis, whose family owned an eponymous chain of hotels. She was a friend of Michael Powell, who was also at our table. Powell, along with his directing partner, Emeric Pressburger, were pioneering film directors from the 1940s. They made award-winning films, the most famous one being
The
Red Shoes
. Powell is considered one of the great British film directors of that era – up there even with Hitchcock. He was with his wife Thelma Schoonmaker, who was a film editor, had edited all of Scorsese's films since
Raging Bull
. The food was good, but Michael Caine saying “not a lot of people know that” was even better.

The young twins at the Playtex conference were Mary and Madeleine Collinson. They were seventeen and had just arrived in London, in April 1969. The first Zeppelin album had been released, Nixon had become president, John Lennon married Yoko and I took one of the twins, Madeleine (I think), out for dinner after the sales conference. She came back to my flat and, me being me, I didn't dare make a move. I thought she was just so sweet and innocent. My mistake, she certainly was not. She told me they were living in Connaught Square, with someone called Victor Lownes. The name didn't mean anything to me. I later found out that Victor ran the Playboy Clubs, and had allegedly been sleeping with the twins at that time! The next year they were in
Playboy
magazine, the first identical twin Playmates of the Month. They became B-movie actresses, and made
Groupie Girl
,
Twins of Dracula
and
Some Like It Sexy
.

I stayed two and a half years at Hobson Bates and the client lunches, as promised by Anthony Sampson, did happen, which I took quite a fancy to, but I didn't actually like the work. The problem was that account executives had three or so clients, and you had them for the entire year. This made it quite monotonous, and if you didn't get along with your client, there wasn't a thing you could do. I personally had difficulty finding any chemistry with my accounts. They were tobacco company Gallaher's (I had never had a cigarette in my life), Playtex bras (I didn't wear a bra, and neither did most of the girls I knew) and Reckitt & Colman (I hated Hull in the north of England, where they were based). Also, account executives had to wear suits and ties, and I could see that the creative types were having more fun in the free-and-easy 1960s. I decided to switch tracks; after all, it was 1969 – a year of change.

By that time, my sister Luisa was back in Italy, after a successful career in London as a model. She had been Miss Shell and every Shell petrol station had a life-sized cutout of her on the forecourt. By then, she was working in Milan, as the sales representative for all of David Puttnam's English photographers. David had started out like me as an account executive, but at Collett Dickenson Pearce, and was now a very successful photographer's rep. Later, he would become a top film producer and win a Best Picture Oscar for the great
Chariots of Fire
. He is now Lord Puttnam and I was to see a lot of him when I was a friend of Charles Saatchi – but not yet.

I went to visit Luisa in Milan. I stayed at a hotel called the Arena, but it was known as something quite different – “the Fuck Palace” – and only models were allowed to stay there. Through one of Luisa's photographer friends, I was able to get a room, but I was the only man there (and yes… I did). Outside, there were all the Italians in their Ferraris and Alfa Romeos, waiting for the girls to come out. I met one of my lifelong friends that time in the Arena, Roberta Booth, a photographer and holographer. Roberta was later to introduce me to Baja (pronounced Baha) California, where I was to live in the years to come. Nothing happened between us at the Arena, but we did have a brief fling back in London. She is incredibly beautiful, still a peach and one of my best friends, and I talked through with her how I was considering following in David Puttnam's footsteps to become a photographer's rep. Meanwhile, my sister Christina, her husband Gordon Miller and I had been going out to dinner every Friday – usually to Luba's Bistro off Knightsbridge. They had a lot of creative friends including photographers. Between them and Luisa, I got together four photographers who needed repping. I was all set to go, and just about to resign from Hobson Bates, when one of those fortuitous events that changed everything occurred…