Authors: Muriel Burgess
Sharon solemnly unpacked her little bag. She was a thin child but quite tall for her age. She had brought two books with her to read and someone had obviously told her never to interfere while grown-ups chattered. Bernard thought he had never seen such a delightfully well behaved little girl. She did all she could to please her mother, asked for nothing and smiled shyly when anyone looked her way. Iris and Bill had brought her up really well.
Bernard also noticed that Shirley was a very caring mother. When Sharon was young and Shirley had to pretend to be her aunt, she had guarded against showing too much affection, but now it was all out in the open. Shirley was a married woman and everything had changed.
Bernard remembered Shirley once telling him ‘Kenneth gave my daughter Sharon a name.’ Apart from that Shirley didn’t discuss her husband at all. Bernard and Shirley were delighted to see each other again and the three of them had tea on the hotel terrace, then went across the road to play on the sands with Sharon.
Bernard took Shirley for a drink at the Carlton that evening then, before going out to dinner, they went up to see Sharon. She had had her supper and was sitting up in bed reading one of her books. She said she’d be perfectly all right; she knew where all the bells were, and the maid who brought her supper said she’d look in again. She said she’d try to stay awake until her mother came home.
Bernard loved playing Uncle to Sharon and had a rare glimpse of Shirley as a mother. But somehow he couldn’t see Kenneth Hume in the role of father, anymore than he had seen him in the role of Shirley’s husband.
For Shirley, coming over to sing at one of the Casino galas was a good way to have a little holiday and earn money at the same time. All expenses were paid: airfares for the star and her manager, two or three nights at a top hotel and a fee of around seven hundred pounds for each appearance. But what Shirley hadn’t realised was that at the Summer Casino there were no dressing rooms for the stars, no entrance and no stage door.
The stars would, if possible, dress at the Majestic, then walk in the dark across a busy road filled with speeding traffic. They would then walk past the dustbins to the back of the Casino, descending right underneath the building past concrete pillars and steel girders, and clambering over the rubble of what was once the building site to reach the
iron steps clinging to the side of the Casino. On arrival, the star in question would look as if he or she had miraculously stepped straight out of the sea into the Casino.
The Summer Casino faced the sea and there was no wall behind the stage so it was open to the elements. The audience faced a wonderful floodlit panorama of the Côte d’Azur – the famous ‘String of Pearls’ comprising the Monte Carlo Casino and the Nice Casino, with all the yachts lit up in the harbour.
Bernard picked up Shirley at the Hotel Majestic as he was going to act as her dresser in the rubble underneath the Casino. The beautiful and delicate dress and stiletto-heeled shoes were too delicate to risk darting through the heavy traffic of the Corniche. Jeans, heavy boots and a pick axe would have been more suitable attire than the dress, which was made of diaphanous white material decorated with little bouquets of handmade glistening flowers. Bernard carried the dress over his arm and the matching shoes, plus everything else she needed, in a bag. Shirley had her make-up on and her wig in place as she clung to Bernard’s arm while he steered her very carefully towards the high steps that led to the stage.
When the diaphanous dress was safely fitted, the delicate shoes in place, the wig flicked up and the make-up checked, Bernard got her over the uneven surface of the concrete to the bottom step. He watched her climb the perilous steps rung by rung. When she was safely there he snatched up the bag and hurried round to the auditorium in time for the roll of drums and the voice that announced: ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen . . . Miss Shirley Bassey.’
Then it all happened. The brass serenaded the orchestra
and then the orchestra exploded with the sound of every instrument. The music poured forth and then she stood there, the goddess who had walked out of the sea. She opened her arms wide to the people who had come to listen to her.
The applause flows over the goddess. She looks so beautiful. The music is fantastic. She belts out the first number, the one designed to make everyone happy. ‘On a Wonderful Day Like Today’ . . . She progresses through her repertoire, song by song, all timed and chosen to draw her audience closer to her. A touch of
tristesse
with ‘As Long as He Needs Me’, but strength, too, and power. Now here comes
her
song, and she gives it everything she has.
Bernard, a performer himself, knew she was now experiencing one of the greatest feelings in the world, one you would do anything on earth to have. It wells up like a torrent inside and takes everything you are with it, and then it flows from you to consume those people out there.
After the show Shirley and Bernard were both on such a high that it was going to take a long time to come down. They laughed, they clung to each other, they drank champagne, they tried to eat but couldn’t. Who can eat when you’re as high as a kite? Finally, when Shirley thought she might be able to sleep, he escorted her up to her room. Sharon was fast asleep in her bed, her book lying open next to her.
Bernard said he’d better go but he’d be back tomorrow to take her to the airport. They stood whispering outside the bathroom door and he put his arms around her and kissed her. He felt exactly as he had six years ago when he held the nineteen-year-old Shirley in his arms, Shirley must
have felt the same because her foot went up and her heel pushed open the bathroom door, and she drew him through it . . .
The married life of Shirley Bassey and Kenneth Hume was unusual, to say the least. To begin with they did not live together. Kenneth had a flat in Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, and remained there after his marriage; Shirley bought a house in Chester Square, Belgravia, and moved in with Sharon, a nanny and a butler. It was one of those tall storeyed town houses with numerous stairs and a room for the hired help to sleep in right at the top. The kitchen is in the basement, the study and dining room on the ground floor, drawing-room on the first floor, bedrooms and bathrooms on the second, nurseries on the third.
As neither husband nor wife were the kind who wanted anyone to cook them three square meals a day, and they were not really into entertaining, the dining room was practically unfurnished.
Kenneth, who lived mainly in his own flat, had bad eating habits, preferring fast food that wouldn’t tie him down to sitting at a table. Shirley’s favourite room was always the bedroom and every morning at 12.00 she had breakfast brought up to her there by the butler. On the tray there was always a plate of scrambled eggs.
After two years of marriage, Shirley had come to terms with the fact that she and Kenneth could not be happy as husband and wife. She later said that they were very content together at first but Kenneth could not cope with their marriage. He told her that when he married her he wasn’t that much in love with her. Shirley had believed completely
in his love and later admitted that this was a devastatingly hurtful revelation. From the moment he told her, she began falling out of love with him. Conversely, and perversely, when he realised what was happening he wanted to try again.
Each did love the other in their own way, but ‘in love’ was over for good. It became an open marriage and Shirley felt she was free to act as she wished. Kenneth was her manager and he masterminded her career; and whenever she needed advice, anywhere in the world, she always called Kenneth to ask for help.
He knew she saw other men and would ask, ‘Did you enjoy your date with so and so?’ Shirley would then ask how he had found out and he always said, ‘a little bird told me.’
And Shirley was always away on tour. Every year after Christmas, in January or February, Shirley went out to Australia. She had remained enormously popular there and would tour for two or three months. She had friends – Bruce Gordon in Sydney and the Irishman John McAuliffe in Melbourne. A few months later John’s name would unexpectedly be linked in London with hers.
Shirley returned home from Australia in the spring of 1963, and to publicise her next concert Mr and Mrs Kenneth Hume called a press conference at the Dorchester Hotel. Not only was Shirley going to appear at the Talk of The Town, but Kenneth had other, more startling news for the journalists: Shirley was pregnant. He was going to become a father.
‘What do you make of it Mr Hume?’ asked a journalist.
‘I’m pleased,’ said Kenneth, ‘although a little baffled.’ He had every reason to be a little baffled. His wife had been away for months and now she was having a baby in November.
‘Didn’t you and Shirley split up before she left for Australia?’ enquired the same nosy journalist. They all enjoyed needling Kenneth who most of them either knew or suspected was gay. ‘Didn’t you tell us it was because of irreconcilable differences? What were they, Mr Hume?’
‘We’re together now,’ said Kenneth sharply, ‘that’s all that matters.’ The happy couple explained that it had been difficult for Shirley to conceive; they had tried so many hotel bedrooms all over the south of England without success.
‘But now,’ said Shirley, displaying the sense of humour which had become a valuable weapon, both on stage and off, ‘I’m pregnant and I’m knitting socks and I don’t know how to turn the heel.’
Samantha Hume was born on 7 November 1963, in the London Clinic in Harley Street, weighing six pounds, ten ounces.
Shirley took the tiny baby, Samantha, and a nanny, with her on her January 1964 tour of Australia.
This was the year of
Goldfinger
and on her return to England she reigned supreme thanks to the James Bond blockbuster. It had happened this way. On one of her tours, Shirley’s musical director was budding composer John Barry, a fine musician and a young man destined for fame. During the tour, John said to Shirley, ‘I know your policy is never to listen to music without lyrics, but please listen to this.’
‘Because it was John Barry who asked me and I liked and respected him and loved his talent,’ explained Shirley, ‘I broke my policy and listened. As I heard the first few bars, I knew, and I said, “I don’t care about the words, I love the music.”’ The title song for
Goldfinger
, for that’s what it became, was a world hit. Shirley’s voice, displaying all its incredible pitch and range, opened the film and set its tone. It was a dynamic performance, although Shirley had found the recording of the song against the rolling background of the changing credits one of the hardest things she ever had to do.
Shirley became known internationally as ‘The Goldfinger Girl’. Crowds of her fans gathered at airports all over the world, serenading her with the song. Noël Coward and Bernard Hall went to the première of the film together. Afterwards Noël enthused to Shirley, ‘My darling girl, what a wonderful voice you have.’ It was a huge compliment from the man known in his profession as The Master, and a harsh critic.
Noël Coward was always sure that he had a great deal to do with the success of
Goldfinger
. It was he who brought the original James Bond to the screen. He telephoned Ian Fleming, the author who created 007, and said, ‘I’ve just the boy for you, next to me, right here in my house. He’s your James Bond,’ and then he took Sean Connery, an ambitious young actor round to meet him.
With the success of ‘Goldfinger’ and with Kenneth behind her, Shirley’s career flourished. She liked the routine of coming back from Australia with the knowledge that the right kind of bookings had been fixed up. One of them was the popular theatre restaurant, the Talk of The
Town, off Leicester Square, which had once been the London Hippodrome. Before Samantha was born Shirley had appeared there and now in 1964, she had a return engagement at the venue which played host to the best: Eartha Kitt, Lena Home, Judy Garland, to name but three.
Bernard Hall met Kenneth some time before this and saw how much he had changed. Traits that he had noticed when they were both young were now more exaggerated. He was still the same mixture of bravado and insecurity, but now he was like quicksilver. There’d be charm, but if you said the wrong thing you’d get an icy blast of his foul temper. Kenneth could be insufferable and demanding, and an almighty great crack was appearing in the House of Hume which would soon split wide open.
Shirley’s new musical director, Kenny Clayton, newly engaged by Vic Lewis at Kenneth Hume’s office, walked right into a family drama and wondered what had hit him. A musical director plays for the star, he sits at the piano at the side of the stage, playing but watching the star all the time. He tours with the star and is very important, because he is there to support and help. If the star has little musical background, he will advise. He is the rock if the performance starts going wrong. Kenny Clayton was now there for Shirley Bassey, paid by her and her husband. Shirley could quarrel with her husband, her stage manager and her road manager, but any star with sense does not quarrel with her musical director, for without him she does not sing.
Musicians are usually gentle creative people, not destructive influences, and Kenny Clayton was hoping that he and Shirley Bassey would get on well. This particular morning in a Belgravia Mews studio Kenny Clayton was
feeling happy, it was his first appointment as musical director. He had played in orchestras, as accompanist, and was known for his musical ability. He was a good tempered man, and enjoyed the company of women.
This morning they were going to rehearse the songs for Shirley’s opening at the Talk of The Town. She arrived and walked straight over to the piano where Kenny was sorting through the music. They chatted and Shirley said she would open the show as usual with ‘On a Wonderful Day Like Today’. It took time, but they were just getting to the right key for Shirley and he was playing the song through again when a door slammed. In marched a short man who stared at them and banged the door shut behind him. He was in a very bad temper as he yelled, ‘That’s all wrong.’