In Memory of Georgia Brown (1933-1992)

Georgia Brown as seen in A Study in Terror 

(dir. James Hill, 1965)

 

"A carefree, goodtime girl you see / Queen of swell society ..."

 

 

I. 

 

Ever since reflecting on Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century - click here - I've been constantly revising my own list of such figures ... 

 

For whilst I'd be willing to keep Kafka and Freud, I'm not sure about Gershwin or Bernhardt, for example, and would quite happily drop Martin Buber, Louis Brandeis and Golda Meir as these names mean nothing to me. 

 

In fact, come to think about it, I'd probably not miss Gertrude Stein, Albert Einstein, or even the Marx Bros very much either (and one presumes that Groucho Marx wouldn't want to belong on any list of Jewish luminaries that included him).

 

So, retaining Kafka and Freud, who would comprise the other famous eight? 

 

It's tricky: because some Jewish figures - such as Wittgenstein, for example - did not always identify as such, whilst others whom I would have added to my list - such as Larry David - don't qualify because they are still living and Warhol's portraits are exclusively of the dead.    

    

Then there are those like Amy Winehouse who are disqualified from consideration because although born in the twentieth-century, they rose to prominence and died in the early years of this century.  

Or those like Rhoda Morgenstern who are fictional characters and so I suppose don't count (though I'm not sure why).

 

Anyway, I think I can legitimately add the names of Anne Frank, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Derrida and Malcolm McLaren to the list (even if Derrida died in 2004 and McLaren passed away in 2010). 

 

And someone else I think I'm entitled to have on my list and would very much like to add (particularly if I can't have Amy Winehouse), is the singer and actress Georgia Brown ...

 

 

II. 

 

Born Lilian Claire Klot in October 1933 and raised in the East End of London, Klot grew up in a large, extended family of Jewish-Russian descent. Adopting the professional name of Georgia Brown, she established herself as a teenage nightclub singer and recording artist in the early 1950s and soon after made her first TV appearance.   

 

Without ever becoming a huge star, Brown had a varied and successful career in showbiz, including musical theatre; playing Lucy, for example, in the 1956 West End production of The Threepenny Opera at the Royal Court, and Nancy in Oliver! (1960) - Lionel Bart specially adapting the role for the woman he had known since childhood.   

 

From the mid-1960s, Brown concentrated more on developing a screen career - and I personally remember her best for her appearance as a singer at the Angel & Crown in the British 1965 thriller A Study in Terror, in which Sherlock Holmes (played by John Neville) is on the trail of Jack the Ripper [1].

 

Brown treats us to two music hall songs in the film - including the classic Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! [2], about which I have written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

An intelligent and politically conscious woman, Brown also appeared in the highly acclaimed BBC adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Roads to Freedom (1970), for which she sang the theme song La route est dure, and co-created another BBC drama - Shoulder to Shoulder (1974) - which chronicled the struggle for women's suffrage in late-19th and early-20th century. 

  

Brown continued singing and acting throughout the 1980s, but in her later years she limited herself to concerts, cabaret appearances, and guest spots on hit TV shows, including Cheers and Star Trek: The Next Generation (by then she was a permanent US resident).

 

Sadly, Brown died at the age of 58, in London, in July 1992. She was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery (the largest Jewish cemetery in California).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although not much loved or praised by the critics, I like this film; not simply because Georgia Brown is in it, but because it also features a young Barbara Windsor as Annie Chapman (the second of Jack the Ripper's canonical five victims). Readers who are interested can watch the 1965 trailer by clicking here. 

 

[2] Georgia Brown sings her version of 'Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay' (accompanied by Ted Heath and His Music) on the album A Little of What You Fancy (Decca, 1962): click here.