Dr Who?

Is it a Police Box or is it...the Tardis?

On 23rd November 1963 (one day after the assassination of JFK) the McKenzie Trench-style police box began its journey from a functional and (back then) quite familiar item - as a telephone kiosk for the exclusive use of the police - to internationally recognised cultural icon.

On that date, a little after quarter-past-five in the afternoon, William Hartnell made his debut as the mysterious (and rather grumpy) Dr Who.  The early serials focused around his granddaughter, Susan Foreman (played by Carole Ann Ford) and her teachers, Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell) who had inadvertently got themselves caught up in the Doctor's adventures.

The BBC launched the series as an educational tool - to guide children toward learning more about science and history. Older "children" came to love Bill Hartnell's irascibility and his habit of trying to cover momentary lapses in memory by shouting "Chesterton!" as though William Russell's character needed constant warning of imminent danger.

An extract from the first serial "An Unearthly Child".

Amazingly, the most significant moment in the history of Dr Who might not have happened had the Beeb had more stories at their disposal. Serial Two was ready to run and the only completed script was "The Mutants" written by Terry Nation.  The use of "bug-eyed monsters" had been strictly prohibited by commissioner, Sydney Newman, but, left with no fallback scripts they were obliged to allow Nation's Daleks to air on 21st December 1963.

Due to poor storage and the BBC's policy of wiping or recording over old tapes (no longer the practice), many of the early shows have been lost. Included among these missing gems is part four of 1966's serial Tenth Planet, in which the first Doctor (Hartnell) "regenerates" into Doctor number two (Patrick Troughton).

Regeneration turned out to be a stroke of genius and a vital element in the programme's enduring success. Each new Doctor can bring his own slant, his own unique imprint to the character. How different is the current Doctor, played by Matt Smith from William Hartnell's original (and not just in terms of age - Smith took on the role aged 27, Hartnell was 55).

The Doctor is a Gallifreyan Sherlock Holmes - not quite one of us, but knowledgeable, ingenious, resourceful and fearless. With incorruptible moral fibre, whatever villains threaten, he will stand up to them and outwit them in the end.

Doctor's assistants Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury) compete for shortest skirt.

There have, so far, been eleven TV Doctors - which one is your favourite?
 

Andy Williams - may each day of the week be a good one...

'Depending on your age and race, Andy Williams' 1961 rendition of "Moon River" was either a transcendent embodiment of timeless beauty, or one of the more conservative, white-bread recordings of its time. Either your Christmas sparkled brighter because of his annual TV special, or it ruined an otherwise relaxing night. You loved or hated his taste in sweaters.'  (Los Angeles Times obit 26th Sept 2012)

Andy Williams - educating the Osmond Brothers in The Way of the Sweater.

Whilst most nostalgia for the 1960s revels in images of hippiedom, Woodstock and Swinging London, there was also a more "conservative" aspect - the cosy sixties, if you like - which thrived and contributed to the bipolar culture of the decade.

Andy Williams with his first wife, Claudine Longet and their three children.

Andy Williams represented a sixties that, rather than kicking against the previous generation, saw itself as the natural progression from them... more stylish, more laid back. Along with Burt Bacharach, Andy Williams stood for the kind of sixties your parents would be glad to have you bring home.

Having started his singing career, aged 8, as one of the  Williams Brothers Quartet, (their first hit being "Swinging on a Star", recorded with Bing Crosby in 1944), Andy Williams's solo career gained him international fame and his own weekend variety show. 

The Andy Williams Show was so successful it was imitated by stars on both sides of the Atlantic (all of us of a certain age will either experience a glow in the stomach or a throbbing in the temples at the mention of The Val Doonican Show - one of the imitators).

The show featured a comforting standard format - songs, comedy (gently humorous sketches, featuring the host), and a weekly guest star).  This last slot gave opportunities to a surprising range of up and coming acts including The Carpenters, but most significantly, introduced many black American acts to a wider audience (included here, The Temptations, The Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips).

Andy with Sonny and a pre-op Cher - hands up if you preferred her that way.

Politically, Williams was friend and supporter of the Kennedys, and would later lead protests against plans by the Nixon administration to deport John Lennon.

This sense of personal integrity and loyalty was also evidenced when, in 1976, his by then ex-wife, Claudine Longet was charged with shooting dead her boyfriend. Andy Williams not only testified as to her character, but also financed her legal backing and escorted her to court appearances.

Andy Williams may have represented a less edgy and far from iconoclastic aspect of the sixties, but the legacy of the man and of his music provides much to be admired.

The mini - Mary Quant

The Skirt

"Good taste is death, vulgarity is life." Mary Quant

According to Mary Quant's own website, the mini-skirt revolution actually started in 1955, when she opened Bazaar boutique in the Kings Road, Chelsea, London. Irrespective of the truth of this (and she should know, eh?), the mini will forever be viewed as the mainstream fashion statement of the sixties.

In Mary Quant's view, her aim was to free women to move and run more easily. The miniskirt as a weapon of feminist progress?

Quant's goal was certainly to bring fashion to the high street and to make it accessible (in terms of price) to the many, rather than the few. Among Quant's innovations (or at least, the ones she's often credited with) are vinyl boots:

and coloured tights:

She also helped popularise, in collaboration with Vidal Sassoon, that other classic sixties look, the "five point" hairstyle.

This clip is worth the watch - not just because it's a genuine Quant press launch. The commentary and background music are 100% 'staid sixties'.  Quant and the "Chelsea look" may have been 'swinging' but the voice-over sounds like a refugee from Pathé News:

The mini - Alec Issigonis

Be it cars or skirts, the sixties was undeniably the age of the mini.

The Car

Designed by Alec (later Sir Alec) Issigonis (born in Smyrna, now Izmir, Turkey), the Mini was a response to the impact of the Suez crisis on fuel supplies. Although there is little doubt that this car's popularity, unique and distinctive design and versatility were the reasons for Issigonis being knighted in 1969, he himself was more proud of the Morris Minor - a car he felt brought decent private transport within reach of the working classes.

Alan Aldridge mini - Design Museum, London.

It is perhaps one of the more poetic ironies of the second half of the 20th century, that the political mess which drove a final nail into the coffin of the British Empire, gave rise to an enduring icon of British (well, Greco-British) design.

Okay, okay, hold your 55-91 horsepower.  Here it is. Looks a bit sedate compared to later car-chase scenes but this 1969 scene is an unforgettable sixties moment. Enjoy!

David Bailey - 1960s photography

It's the sixties, yeah? So, allowing for whatever sex/gender/sexual orientation you might be, here's a question for you:

Who do you want to be (with)? Jagger? Hendrix? A Beatle? James Bond?  Or maybe, then again, how about this guy?

Self-portrait

Jean Shrimpton - "the Shrimp"

David Royston Bailey - born 2nd January 1938, in London's East End (ie the rough bit).  With Jean Shrimpton as his model, Bailey almost single-handedly rewrote the rules for fashion photography, introducing attitude, action and novel background settings into their work together:

Bailey (along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy) was at the heart of capturing the image and essence of so-called 'Swinging London':

Michael Caine - 1965

Mick Jagger - 1964

Bailey's 1964 poster-print collection "Box of Pin-ups" covered subjects from The Beatles to the Krays:

The Kray brothers - notorious London gangsters.

But for most of us, men and women, it will be Bailey's gift for making his female subjects look beautiful, enigmatic, intriguing...desirable which endures.

"We were all killing ourselves to be his model" Grace Coddington (Vogue model 1960s)

Grace Coddington with Vidal Sassoon

Catherine Deneuve -- 1965

Marianne Faithful

Never, of course, forgetting, The Shrimp:

David Bailey - the 60s have never ended.

Janis Joplin

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,

you just turned your back on the crowd,

you got away, I never once heard you say,

I need you, I don't need you,

I need you, I don't need you 

(Leonard Cohen, "The Chelsea Hotel")

The Queen of Rock and Roll

Just like Jimi Hendrix, Janis seems to have "endorsed" an 'official' website from beyond the grave.  To be fair, it is referenced 'the Janis Joplin estate'. It's also a fine source of Janis info, so we'll leave it at that...

Janis Joplin, the woman with the voice that could simultaneously charm the birds out of the trees and strip the paint from walls.

Janis Joplin, the woman who inspired song and verse, and, let's face it, not a little hard drinking and illicit drug-taking.

Janis assaults a song with her eyes, her hips; and her hair. She defies key. shrieking over one line, sputtering over the next, and clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave. When it does leave anyway, she stands like an assertive young tree, smiling breathlessly at the audience, which has just exploded. Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener.
Richard Goldstein, Vogue, May 1968.

                     One of the most watched videos on YouTube with over 14 million hits.

The Queen of Psychedelic Soul

Although her career lasted only about four years, and many of her key live performances were hampered by heroin and booze, Janis Joplin opened paths for women vocalists and her influence worked through Stevie Nicks, Pink, Alanis Morisette, Bonnie Raitt and many others. 

And who has ever had a better Porsche than this?

One admirer of her work who was not afraid to speak her mind, clearly felt the world did not deserve Janis:

"Yesterday I went to see Janis Joplin's film here, and I started to write a song about it, but I decided you weren't worthy. Because I figured most of you were here for the festival, and you just really... Anyway, the point is, it pained me to see just how hard she fell. Because she got hooked into a thing, and it wasn't on drugs. And she played to corpses." Nina Simone at Montreux Jazz Festival 1976.

The lamentable "trend" of dying young - something previously restricted to 19th century Victorian poets and their heroines - re-emerged in the sixties, with Jimi Hendrix as its king, Janis Joplin its queen.

Perhaps Nina Simone is right. Maybe we mere mortals don't deserve her and the rest of those supernovae of the sixties. Maybe we are just hopeless, soulless "corpses". But if we keep on listening, perhaps her voice may yet blow a breath of life into us... It's worth a try, don't you think?

Sean Connery - the real James Bond.

'Who's the best James Bond?' This was a question never asked in the 1960s. There was only one James Bond, and his name was Sean Connery.
Aficionados of Ian Fleming's books were initially up-in-arms about the casting of a body-building former milkman (and a Scot, at that) as the quintessential suave, ruthless English spy - Commander James Bond.

Yesh, Moneypenny, that's me in the middle in the white trunks.

What Connery brought to the role, which silenced the critics (or drowned their objections under a tidal wave of acclaim) was a rugged masculinity, which few of his British peers were able to match (then or since).

As Mick Jagger would do in popular music, Connery in the role of Bond was able to feed both male and female fantasies.

                            "Live dangerously with the superbly resourceful James Bond"
Man or woman - who could resist an invitation like that?

Connery made five Bond films in the sixties:  Dr No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967).  After that came a four year gap before his "final" (not quite) appearance as 007 in 1971's Diamonds are Forever. 

A quick online survey shows that the issue of the best ever Bond film, leans heavily towards Goldfinger (though my vote would go to From Russia with Love).  Where do you stand? (That's what the "comments" box is for!)

Since Daniel Craig took on the role, bringing a certain fallibility and even human vulnerability to Bond, the franchise seems to have been revivified. For those who were around in the sixties, however, the question 'Who was the best James Bond?' is probably as easy to answer as it ever was.

1960s art - Andy Warhol

"In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes"  

Andy Warhol exhibition catalogue Moderna Museet Gallery, Stockholm (1968)

Whilst Marcel Duchamp's audacious challenge to the art establishment happened in 1917, and Picasso was already sixty years into his deconstruction and reconfiguring of the very meaning of what it was to be a visual artist, the 1960s can nevertheless be regarded as a bursting into life of many divergent strands of hitherto repressed and constrained visions.  Technological advances were incorporated into the iconoclasm of the age, and one name seized the moment more conspicuously than any other.

                                          Andy Warhol

Warhol's artistic talent threw up challenges to film, theatre and music as well as photography, painting and sculpture.  

Perhaps the greatest innovation of the 'Pope of Pop Art', was turning cultural icons into icons of art:

(This, incidentally, could be yours for a mere $1,800 plus $50 shipping)  Though perhaps you would prefer:

And why not have the entire, 10 print set? Yours for just £10,000 and I bet if you haggle, they'll let you off the $150 shipping charge). 

One of many great things about the sixties is that there's a song to capture every mood and occasion. Let me see now, ah yes...

Whatever became of that other big idea of the sixties: anti-consumerism?

Hmmm...anybody feel like they want to 'stick it to the Man'? Then again, if you really feel like laying some bread on a cat...

1960's - have they ever gone away?

I know what some of you are thinking - what's the point of trying to bring back the 60s when, for many of you out there, they've never really gone?

Fair point. So, let's just say this place will be a haven, perhaps even a little bit of a shrine or, best of all 'a happening' (although, as you'll see if you follow the link, that term originates in the 1950s). The song of the same name, though, is pure sixties...

The sixties were about a spirit more than hard facts (after all, 'hard facts" will leave us with some less than psychedelic images of the decade). Don't dwell on that. Let's focus on the essence of the sixties as we would like to remember them. Let's stick it to the Man. 

Nostalgia, in non-lethal doses, can actually be a healing and restorative form of medication (or should that read 'meditation'?)

Join us on this trip... turn on, tune in and (for just a few minutes, at least) drop out.