On the Haunting Beauty of Sue Lloyd

Sue Lloyd (1939 - 2011)

 

'The dead they do not die - they seduce from beyond the grave ...'

I. 

 

I mentioned in a recent post written in memory of Brigit Forsyth [1], that, as I get older, I find my desire is increasingly tied to nostalgia and has effectively become a type of spectrophilia - i.e., sexual attraction to ghosts, or, as in my case, the haunting images of dead actresses from the 1960s and '70s (the decades in which I was born and grew up). 

 

One such actress of whom I particularly fond at the moment is Sue Lloyd, who guest starred in many much loved English TV shows during this period, including The Saint (1964 and '67), The Avengers (1965), Department S (1969), Randal and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1970), The Persuaders! (1971), and The Sweeney (1976) [2].

 

Lloyd also regularly appeared as secret agent Cordelia Winfield, alongside Steve Forrest in the British television series The Baron (1965-66), but is perhaps best remembered today for her long-running role as as Barbara Hunter (née Brady) in the British soap opera Crossroads [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Although Lloyd had studied dance as a child and, in 1953, won a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School at Sadler's Wells Theatre, she unfortunately grew just a little too tall (5' 8") to play a swan princess. And so she became a model - even appearing once on the cover of Vogue - and a showgirl, before embarking on an acting career. 

 

Lloyd did also star in a number of films - including alongside Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965), Peter Cushing in the cult horror Corruption (1968), and Joan Collins in The Stud (1978) - but I'm not much of a cinephile and really only care (here at least) about her TV work.  

 

But what is it I like so much about Miss Lloyd, I hear you ask ... Well, simply put, she exuded the kind of dazzling beauty and sexual sophistication of the older woman which excited me as an adolescent and continues to work its magic some 50 years later ...

 

As Simon Farquhar writes in his obituary for the star who died in 2011 (aged 72):

 

"There was always something of the ghost of a fading Hollywood glamour queen possessing Sue Lloyd [...] With half-closed eyes, cigarette gravel voice and elegant, haughty poise, she brought an air of smouldering decadence and feline allure to often decidedly mundane productions, as if a world-weary Lauren Bacall was deeming to cross the Atlantic and play with the little people for a while." [4]    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lasses?' (2 Dec 2023): click here. 

 

[2] Unlike some other actors, Lloyd was delighted at the cult status much of her television work had acquired, and she happily contributed interviews and commentaries to subsequent DVD releases and responded to fan requests.

 

[3] Lloyd was in Crossroads from 1979 to 1985, so this slightly falls outside the period that interests me and is not really a genre of show that I particularly care for. 

[4] Simon Farquhar, writing in The Independent (30 Oct 2011): click here.

The Four Drakes: Part 2: Nick and Gabrielle

Drake is an Old English surname, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for serpent, draca, and thus etymologically related to dragon (and not to the word for a male duck). There have been a number of illustrious individuals by the name of Drake, including Sir Francis Drake and the comic entertainer Charlie Drake, both of whom we discussed in part one of this post: click here. 

Below, I wish to discuss a famous pair of siblings by the name of Drake, beginning with the younger brother ... 

Nick Drake (1948 - 1974): First the Day after Tomorrow Must Dawn for Me

Posh singer-songwriter and musician, Nick Drake, is a fine example of what Nietzsche terms a posthumous individual - i.e., one who only comes into their own and finds fame once they're dead.   

The prodigiously talented Drake signed to Island Records whilst studying English literature at Cambridge, releasing his debut album - Five Leaves Left - in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums - Bryter Layter and Pink Moon - neither of which sold more than 5000 copies on initial release.

The fact that he was extremely reluctant to promote the material by playing live and giving interviews to the music press, obviously didn't help matters. But one suspects that such reticence was more due to the chronic shyness and depression from which he suffered than any desire to create a mystique about his own person. 

After the failure of his third album, Drake retreated to his parents home and, aged 26, he took an overdose of amitriptyline pills, a prescribed anti-depressant. A verdict of suicide was given and although this has been challenged by some who knew him, his sister Gabrielle prefers to believe he made a conscious decision to end his life, rather than consider his death the result of a tragic mistake.

Five years later, the release of a retrospective album entitled Fruit Tree (1979) triggered a critical reappraisal of his work and by the mid-1980s artists including Robert Smith and David Sylvian were naming Drake as an important influence. Thirty years later, and he's now sold over two-and-a-half million records in the UK and US markets.

Gabrielle Drake (1944 - ): Serious Glamour 

To be honest, Nick Drake is no more my cup of tea than Charlie Drake; though again, that's in no way to deny or denigrate his obvious talent and intelligence. He's just too much of an introspective hippie for my tastes (Nick - not Charlie).

But his older sister on the other hand, Gabrielle - now there's someone I have always loved to see on screen; be it as the purple-wigged Moonbase commander Lt. Gay Ellis in UFO (1970-71), or as motel boss Nicola Freeman in Crossroads (1985-87). Her appearance in a 1967 episode of The Avengers as Angora and, a decade later, as Penny the schoolteacher in an episode of The New Avengers, is also worthy of note and something for which I'm grateful.

I'm grateful too for the fact that, unlike some actresses, Gabrielle was always happy when young to get her kit off and not above appearing in a number of seventies sexploitation films, including Au Pair Girls (dir. Val Guest, 1972), in which she has a leading role as Randi Lindstrom (that's right, ha-ha! she's Danish).

Perhaps of more interest to my more literary-minded readers will be the fact that she also appeared as a passenger (sacrifice) in a short film entitled Crash! (dir. Harley Cokeliss) and based on a story in J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. The movie also featured the author talking about ideas that he would later develop into one of the great twentieth-century novels. As one critic rightly noted, the presence of Miss Drake brought serious glamour to urban alienation.

Finally, it needs to be said that Gabrielle has worked tirelessly to ensure her brother's name and music live on and it's clear that, rather touchingly, she remains his biggest fan. In 2014, she published a memoir of her brother and in 2018 she collected a Hall of Fame Folk Award on his behalf.

I wish she were my sister ...

Notes

The Avengers episode mentioned above was from Season 5 and entitled 'The Hidden Tiger' (first shown in the UK on 3 March 1967); The New Avengers episode was 'Dead Men are Dangerous' (first shown in the UK on 8 Sept 1977). 

To visit the official website of the estate of Nick Drake, please click here.

To visit the Gabrielle Drake fansite on Facebook, click here.