Shirley (9 page)

‘You
must
keep your baby a secret,’ he urged. ‘If you become well-known, and I’m certainly going to try my hardest to make you famous, this is the kind of story that
the newspapers love to sniff out. You have to listen to me on this. And what about your family? Can they be trusted to keep the secret?’ Shirley nodded. ‘Now what about Tiger Bay and that other place, Splott?’

‘I know they won’t talk in Tiger Bay,’ said Shirley.

It was getting on towards seven o’clock in the evening when Sullivan drew the curtains, shutting out the life of theatreland below. Shaftesbury Avenue with its illuminated signs, the bright lights, the traffic, the noise, and the crowds of people going to the theatres. He took out two glasses, a bottle of rum and a bottle of lemonade. The rum was for him and the lemonade for Shirley. The first lesson began.

Lesson number one focused on getting rid of the Cardiff accent. Although Shirley’s accent could be very appealing, he wanted to make her speaking voice as beautiful as her singing voice. He handed her a copy of worn sheet music, Cole Porter’s ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’. ‘You are going to read this lyric to me,’ said Sullivan, ‘but first I want you to read it through once to yourself. Then read it through again, and finally read it to me. You will speak slowly, carefully, you are going to enunciate each word very clearly. Open your mouth, like this, round your lips, like this, then start. When you are ready I want to hear every word loud and clear.’

He was teaching her the old-fashioned way, the exclusive, expensive RADA way. Each word had to have a bell-like quality. He listened to her, corrected her, then made her go to the other side of the room and do it all over again.

‘You’ve got to understand the meaning of words,’ he told her. ‘Do you understand what “under my skin” means?
Have you ever been so in love that you feel your boyfriend has become a part of you? The smell of him and the feel of him, so that you can’t get him out from under your skin. Well, have you? Do you know what I’m talking about?’

Shirley said she thought she did. Privately, she wasn’t at all sure.

Sullivan explained that the song told a story, and that
she
must tell the story in the singing of it – every word must be heard as clearly as if it were a pinging bell. She must pour feeling into it. Doing her best to hold on to all these instructions, she sang the song for him, but it wasn’t right.

‘You’re putting about as much emotion into the song as a plank of wood,’ Sullivan told her. ‘You’re singing from your head, not your heart.’

‘What’s the difference?’ asked the by now thoroughly confused Shirley.

‘When you’ve loved a man and he doesn’t love you, then you’ll know,’ was the rather unhelpful reply, before he produced another Cole Porter standard, the witty and implicitly suggestive ‘Let’s Do It’. He told Shirley that the song meant exactly what she might think it did, ‘Now you’ve got to thrill me so much I can hardly sit still, but first you’ve got to study the lyrics.’

She drank some lemonade, Sullivan poured himself a large rum, then it was another song, another lesson, another break, after which she received her first lesson in how to project her voice properly. ‘Where did you learn that Mr Sullivan?’

‘When I was a kid and joined a circus for a month. Now, get over to the other side of the room and have a go. Imagine you’re in a theatre, and send your voice right up to the upper circle.’

He had guessed that Shirley wasn’t the type of girl who would sit in front of a mirror for hours on end, quietly practising – that would be too much like school – but he soon discovered that she was a quick learner. She had a knack for imprinting lyrics indelibly on her memory after what seemed like little more than a cursory glance at the page.

At home that night, he told his wife that Shirley was full of surprises. ‘She’s not at all like I thought she would be. She gives herself completely to what she’s doing. She’s unusual, and I’m really quite impressed.’

Although Juhni smiled and said how pleased she was to hear this, she still felt uneasy, almost frightened, of what he’d undertaken. Sullivan himself, however, was privately convinced that Shirley was like a beautiful vessel that he would fill with knowledge and expertise. She was going to be his star, his creation.

For her part, Shirley Bassey had much to think about. Her first lesson with her agent-teacher had been demanding and exhausting, but she realised that the new disciplines were the first step to fame and fortune. It should have been the most exciting realisation of her life, but she felt that she had made a bitter down-payment on her future by leaving her baby in Cardiff. It nearly broke her heart.

For the next three months, Sullivan would book whatever available rehearsal room he could find, and Shirley worked continuously with the well-known pianist, Bob Wardlaw. He had agreed to stay the course with her, and to accompany her once Sullivan had booked engagements for her.

When Shirley told Sullivan that she had learned most of her songs by copying the recordings of famous American singers, he was aghast. She needed above all to acquire her own individuality. When she sang, people had to know immediately that they were listening to Shirley Bassey. Bob Wardlaw, he assured her, would help her to develop a style of her own. She must, he instructed her, forget about her American role models.

Michael Sullivan was giving Shirley a crash course – his version of what was taught at most stage schools. He was self-taught, but he’d been in the business all his life, he knew it all. In his opinion, she was getting the best, and on a one-to-one basis. If she slacked at all, he yelled at her to stop wasting his money. He had developed an excellent vocal technique himself, and when he lost his temper he could be heard halfway up Shaftesbury Avenue.

While Sullivan took care of interpretation, projection and stagecraft, Bob Wardlaw taught Shirley phrasing and breathing. Those bookers who wouldn’t touch a beginner, who prided themselves on never hiring a flop, advised Sullivan that if he could get her on a Moss Empires or Hippodrome circuit, she’d learn something nobody could teach her – how to fight her way through her act.

Shirley’s routine of lessons was relentless, but there were times when Michael would relax and take her out for a drink. On one of these occasions, he introduced her to TV producer Robert Hartford-Davis, around thirty years old, attractive and a man of the world. Shirley fell for him and always remembered him as the first man to take her to a ‘real’ restaurant, and to buy her her first bottle of perfume.

She was impressed by Hartford-Davis’s sophistication,
the fact that he knew his way around, and ignored the fact that she knew he had another girlfriend even while he was dating her. Shirley’s affair with Bob lasted about eight months, until he went out to Africa. Shirley later confessed that she had been devastated at his departure and, for the first time, really understood Michael Sullivan’s little lecture to her about being left by a man and suffering because she still loved him. Bob, she felt, really was ‘under her skin, deep in the heart of her’, and she cried her eyes out – but at last she knew how to sing Cole Porter’s song with her heart rather than her head.

During Shirley’s affair, Sullivan had never stopped grooming his discovery. He taught her one of the most important techniques for an entertainer: how to get, and hold, an audience’s attention. She must, he explained, mentally divide her audience into three sections, then ‘work’ each section in turn. ‘Your eyes,’ he told her, ‘must go to the front of this section of the audience, then to the middle, and then the back. Let the audience feel you’re with them, that each and every one of them is important to you and that you are looking at each individual. Then do the same with the next section, and the next. When you get a high note, throw your head back and hold it, then send it right up to the circle.’

To this day, this is basically how Shirley Bassey ‘works’ her audience.

Shirley had settled well into her working routine with Michael and Bob Wardlaw and, despite her preoccupation with Bob Hartford-Davis and her lessons, she also began enjoying the camaraderie at Olivelli’s, making a couple of friends among the boys in show business who also stayed
there. She grew to like most of her lessons, and found that her natural way of speaking, Welsh and precise, helped her in the phrasing of her songs.

But, as the weeks wore on, the thought that all her lessons and practice must eventually culminate in a public performance, began to worry her. ‘I don’t think I could do a solo act with a big orchestra. I’d be frightened,’ she confessed to Sullivan.

He assured her that there’d be nothing to worry about come the big day. ‘We’ll be with you. Bob will be there in the orchestra, playing just for you, and I’ll be in front listening and watching, and Juhni’ll be waiting for you in the dressing room. You’ll never be alone.’

The first big explosion between Michael and Shirley came over the dress she would wear when she actually performed before an audience. Shirley had made up her mind that it would have yards and yards of net in the skirt, and that it was going to be bright. Very bright. And when Shirley made up her mind, she was not to be budged.

A despairing Michael turned to his wife for help. As patiently and tactfully as she could, Juhni explained to Shirley that she had a beautiful body, that she was in the tall, slim, classical mould – the easiest, and the most exciting kind of figure to dress. She must wear something that was moulded to the lines of her body. It certainly couldn’t be net, and a bright colour would not be sufficiently sophisticated to make an impact. She, Juhni, envisaged Shirley in black velvet, off the shoulder – ‘because you have beautiful shoulders’ – with just a tiny strap for safety.

‘Black!’ screamed Shirley. ‘Never! Black is for widows.’

‘Black,’ echoed Sullivan firmly, ‘tight-fitting and with a slit up the thigh.’

‘I won’t go on,’ yelled Shirley. ‘I won’t go on in black.’

‘Okay,’ said Sullivan, ‘then I rip up your contract.’ This exchange of threats and counter threats was subtly being established as a routine between them.

Shirley stormed out but, by the following day, she’d thought better of it and agreed to have her first fitting for a black velvet dress. However, throughout the making of it – Juhni’s mother, fortunately for the finances, was the dressmaker – Shirley affected lack of interest and contrived to miss a fitting whenever possible. She remained adamant that she hated black.

Not yet nineteen and very slim, Shirley needed some discreet padding on her hips so, to placate her, an arrangement of cerise satin was made that attached to the black dress without detracting from its line. A top-knot of hair was pinned on to her own to give her added height, and she was given long black gloves and gold gypsy earrings. Once dressed in her full regalia, she had to try and perfect the art of entrances and exits, to learn the necessary grace which was so far lacking.

At last, Michael Sullivan felt that sufficient preparation had been made. It now only remained carefully to plan Shirley’s public debut. He felt that the best course would be to assemble, and make bookings for, a complete variety show, with Shirley slotted to close the first half – always the second best spot on the bill. The plan was not well received. ‘No, no,’ Shirley cried on being told of it. ‘I want to be squeezed in somewhere easy. That way,’ she argued, ‘no one will notice if there’s a disaster.’

Sullivan was unmoved. ‘We start the way we mean to go on. Stars don’t “squeeze in” anywhere,’ he told her.

The theatre that was finally chosen for Shirley’s first venture into the big time, was the Hippodrome in Keighley, West Yorkshire. It looked a long way up the map of England but it was exactly the kind of venue that Michael Sullivan wanted. The town was neither too big nor too small, and the audiences were usually good. It was a number one provincial date and Shirley couldn’t have done much better. She still hadn’t mastered the art of getting off the stage gracefully so Sullivan decided that, at the end of her performance, she should stand behind the microphone facing the audience until the curtain was lowered.

That autumn Monday morning in 1955 after the train journey and a night’s rest in their hotel, the Sullivan entourage entered the Keighley Hippodrome for the band call – the run-through of the complete variety programme with the artists and full orchestra. The three of them, Sullivan, Bob Wardlaw and Shirley might have seemed calm, but inwardly their stomachs were churning. Shirley had plunged into a sudden crisis of confidence. She couldn’t remember the lyrics of her songs, she said, and she didn’t want second billing.

The cleaners were busy around them, their vacuum cleaners making a terrible noise. ‘It isn’t fair,’ Shirley burst out again. ‘I don’t
want
second billing.’ Sullivan ignored her. ‘After this rehearsal with the band,’ he told Bob, ‘we’ll have two more this afternoon. That’ll steady her down. Come on, Let’s get this one over with.’

As they walked through the theatre he conferred in a whisper with Bob. ‘What shall we do? It doesn’t look good.’

Wardlaw suggested they keep their fingers crossed and keep talking. ‘Poor kid, she’s terrified,’ he remarked.

‘So am I,’ said Sullivan, ‘but if we can keep her in one piece until six-fifteen for the first house, we might stand a chance.’ He was anticipating the collapse of his grand plan, indeed, of his entire career. He had staked everything on Shirley Bassey and here they were, her first appearance in a number one theatre, second billing, closing the first half and she was refusing to go on. They’d laugh; no, they wouldn’t laugh, they’d crucify him, and the manager of the theatre would go berserk. And he was already broke. Berry had even had to pay the rail fares up here and now Shirley wouldn’t go on. He turned round and saw her behind him, looking lost and frightened. He waited until she caught up with him then he put his arm around her. ‘Don’t worry sweetheart,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter, nothing matters. As soon as this rehearsal is over we’ll go over to the pub and have a drink and we’ll ask them to make you a nice cup of tea.’