In Memory of Three Fictional Spivs

James Beck in character as Joe Walker in Dad's Army (1973) 

George Cole as Flash Harry in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

Arthur English as the Prince of the Wide Boys (1950) 

 

 

I. 

 

As a child, like millions of other people, I used to enjoy watching the TV sitcom Dad's Army (BBC, 1968-1977). Admittedly, some of the characters I found irritating - Clive Dunn's Lance Corporal Jones, for example - but most I thought amusing; particularly John Laurie's Private Frazer. 

 

The character who most intrigued me, however, was Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, a flashy petty criminal dealing in black market goods with a cheeky Cockney persona; i.e., what is known by British English speakers as a spiv.  

 

If Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) might have made a kind grandad, Joe Walker would've been a fun uncle and generous I'm sure when it came to birthday gifts and Christmas presents (even if they had fallen off the back of a lorry).  

 

 

II.  

 

The origin of the word spiv is obscure, although, perhaps significantly, it was the nickname of a small-time London crook and con artist, Henry Bagster, who was frequently arrested for illicit street trading during the early years of the 20th century and whose court appearances often attracted press coverage.  

 

Whatever its origin, the word wasn't popularised until the Second World War and post-War period, when many goods were rationed in the UK and spivs really came into their own as a distinct class of traders, with a distinctive look and way of dressing; hair slicked back with Brylcreem; a Clark Gable style pencil moustache; a trilby or other wide-brimmed hat worn rakishly at an angle; a long drape jacket with padded shoulders; a wide brightly patterned tie, etc. 

 

All these things were de rigueur for someone who wanted to advertise their entrepreneurial spirit at the time and look the business. One of the reasons the general public not only tolerated but seemed to admire these worldly-wise and larger-than-life characters - apart from the fact they could get you what you wanted - was that they looked so chipper and at odds with the austerity of the times [1].   

  

 

III.

 

The look was perfected by comedian and actor Arthur English, who, during his early professional career as a stand-up comic, adopted the persona of a stereotypical spiv and became known as the Prince of the Wide Boys (Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the writers of Dad's Army, were happy to admit that Private Walker was in part based on English's stage character) [2].

 

But the look was perhaps most memorably pushed to its comical extreme by George Cole, as Flash Harry, in The Belles of St. Trinian's (dir. Frank Launder, 1954); one of the greatest and most popular of British films [3].

 

Whether Harry might identify as a spiv is debatable and he tends to describe himself as a fixer and go-between; the man whom the girls trust to bottle and sell their gin, distilled in the school's chemistry lab and place bets on the gee-gees for them. 

 

But he looks like a spiv and acts like a spiv, so I think we can use this term in good faith (although the fact that he helps the sixth form girls find wealthy lovers and potential husbands doesn't quite make him a pimp). 

 

Let's just say that Harry's a shady character and a well-dodgy geezer; a ducker and diver who certainly has connections with the criminal community, even if he's not quite one of their own [4]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The fact is, the British working class have long had a soft-spot for loveable rogues and dashing outlaws. Thus, as Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey note, "although in both official discourse and the cinema of the period" spivs tended to be presented as "'dangerous, unpatriotic and un-British'", there was public ambivalence about them and even "a degree of sympathy for such glamorous, anti-authority figures" who, after all, helped alleviate the misery of wartime conditions. 

      See Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey, 'The Picaro and the Prole, the Spiv and the Honest Tommy in Leon Griffiths's Minder', in the Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (4), (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 513-531. The lines quoted are on p. 519. To read this essay as an online pdf, click here. 

 

[2] As Denis Gifford reminds us in an obituary for Arthur English published in the Independent (19 April 1995): "English was not the first to caricature the spiv on stage. That honour belongs to the great Sid Field, whose West End wide boy, Slasher Green, is immortalised for all time in the film London Town (1946)." But English's spiv act - "which he wrote himself and delivered at top speed in full motion" - was undoubtedly a thing of comic genius. 

      English signed off his first radio broadcast with the following rather lovely lines:  

      "This is Arthur English shoving orf to the tune of 'The Windmill's Turning'. Shove on the coal, blow the expense,  just keep the 'ome fires burning. Perhaps I've made you larf a lot, I 'ope I've brought yer joy.  So 'ere's mud in yer eye from the end of me tie, good night - and watch the boy!'

      To read Gifford's obituary for Arthur English in full by clicking here.   

 

[3] Such was its success with critics and moviegoers alike, that The Belles of St. Trinian's gave rise to three sequels: Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957); The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960); and The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), all directed by Frank Launder.

 

[4] In this he's very much like George Cole's other iconic character, Arthur Daley, in the long-running TV comedy-drama Minder (ITV, 1979-1994). They are, of course, distinct characters created by different writers and operating in different eras, but whenever I watch the Crombie-coated, trilby-hatted, cigar-smoking Arthur Daley, it's hard not to have thoughts of Flash Harry. 

      Interestingly, there was initialy resistance to the idea of casting George Cole in the role of Arthur Daley as he was seen as a bit too refined: "It was only when Euston Pictures's executive producer Verity Lambert intervened, noting that Cole had made a name for himself playing Flash Harry, the spiv in the St Trinian's films, that the deal was sealed ..." 

      See the excellent essay by Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey cited in note 1 above, p. 518.  

 

 

Bonus: Flash Harry making an entrance in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954): click here.    

 

 

Loving the Alien: Nyah - the Devil Girl from Mars

 

Patricia Laffan as Nyah in the kinky sci-fi classic 

Devil Girl from Mars (dir. David MacDonald, 1954)

 

"They're scared of girls in the war of the worlds ..."

 

 

I. 

 

Some films you have to see to believe; and Devil Girl from Mars (1954), starring Patricia Laffan, is one such ...

 

 

II. 

 

A black-and-white British sci-fi, produced by the famous Danzinger Brothers [1], Devil Girl from Mars tells the story of Nyah, a stern but alluring alien dominatrix dressed in a shiny, black PVC costume [2], whose mission is to acquire Earthmen for breeding puposes; her home planet's male population having been severely depleted during a war of the sexes. 

 

Whilst open to the idea of a rational negotiation, Nyah is prepared if necessary to use advanced technological force - rayguns and robots - to accomplish her mission and thereby secure the future of her race. 

 

Intending to land in London, damage to her spacecraft - caused when entering the Earth's atmosphere - obliges Nyah to land instead outside a remote Scottish village, surrounded by moorland. Making her way to the public inn, she encounters a small cast of colourful characters, including an astrophysicist, a journalist, an escaped convict (in love with Doris the barmaid) and a fashion model [3].

 

The inn's landlord is played by everybody's favourite Scottish actor, John Laurie, who is perhaps best remembered today (despite a long and impressive film career) as Private Frazer from Dad's Army (1968-1977); sadly, he doesn't anticipate his later TV role and declare the above to be doomed, even when Nyah is threatening to kill them all, with the assistance of Chani, her menacing automaton.  

To cut a long story short - although, actually, the film is only 77 minutes in length - the escaped convict proves to be the hero of the hour, successfully sabotaging Nyah's flying saucer after take off and sacrificing himself in order to save the men of Earth from a fate worse than death; i.e., becoming sex slaves on Mars to a race of cruel superwomen, with a penchant for PVC and BDSM ... [4]   

 

III.

Obviously, almost everything about this film - made on an extremely low budget - is poor; the acting, the dialogue, the sets, the special effects, etc. And yet, paradoxically, as one critic said at the time: "There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect." [5]    

 

And its way is - to use the slightly tiresome trio of words that have been central within critical discourse for some time now - queer, kinky, and camp. In their discussion of the film, Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane emphasise the perverse dynamic [6] at play within the film and how such has (supposedly) political implications. 

 

Nyah, they claim, is a "genuinely shocking figure in the staid world of British film-making of the time"; one who imparts an "eroticised threat to a patriarchy that was increasingly troubled in the post-war years", which is why Devil Girl from Mars is, therefore, "not only a camp classic but an ideologically significant moment in 1950s British cinema [7].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Edward and Harry Lee Danzinger were American-born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and early '60s, thereby having a significant role in shaping the popular imagination of movie goers and TV viewers during this period.

 

[2] I'm guessing it wouldn't be leather, as it's hard to imagine Martian cows, but I'm not sure and it could well be that Patricia Lafflan's costume - designed by Ronald Cobb - features both leather and vinyl elements. 

 

[3] I appreciate that readers who have not seen the film or checked out the IMDb page - click here - will think I'm making this up, but I can assure them I'm not. And as it says in the trailer, this is a story that might yet be true!

 

[4] Whether this atones for the (accidental) killing of his wife for which he was convicted, is debatable. As is whether all Earthmen would thank him for his actions; I know quite a few who would have happily returned with Nyah to Mars and submitted of their own free will to a life as stud males servicing nubile alien females.   

 

[5] Gavin Lambert, review of Devil Girl from Mars, in The Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol. XXI, No. 240 (1 January 1954), p. 83. 

 

[6] The 'perverse dynamic' is a theoretical concept developed by Jonathan Dollimore in Sexual Dissidence (1991). It refers to the production of perversion from within the very social structures that often seek to deny such. The pervert is thus revealed not to be a remote alien being, such as Nyah, but one of us after all.    

 

[7] Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film (BFI / Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 212. Readers will rightly detect my scepticism about such claims of 'ideological significance' and sexual radicalism. 

 

 

To watch the trailer to Devil Girl from Mars, click here. 

 

And for those who simply must watch the whole film, it's available on YouTube: click here.

 

 

Musical bonus: Bow Wow Wow; 'I Want My Baby on Mars', Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980): click here.  

 

 

On Women and Fish in The 39 Steps

Lucie Mannheim as Annabella Smith and Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret

in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935)

Starring a very dashing Robert Donat as Richard Hannay and an ice-cold and elegant Madeleine Carroll as Pamela, Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is a masterclass in how to construct a compelling cinematic narrative in which melodrama seamlessly combines with screwball comedy.

Obviously, the most memorable of all scenes is that in which Pamela - whilst still handcuffed to Hannay and unsure whether he’s an innocent man desperate to clear his name, or a sadistic murderer on the run - awkwardly removes her wet stockings. It remains an unsurpassed moment of kinky delight that lovers of film and fetish have cherished for over 80 years.

However, there are two other scenes and two supporting performances that I’m also very fond of, each involving a vulnerable woman - and a fish.

The first takes place in Hannay’s London flat when he cooks a haddock for Annabella, the mysterious spy played by Lucie Mannheim, a Jewish actress forced into exile from her native Germany by the Nazis. As one who knows what it is to genuinely fear for her future and have to flee and to hide, she plays the part with real conviction and makes Hannay's ironic remark about persecution mania cruelly apt.

The second scene, which parallels and reverses elements of the above, unfolds in the crofter’s cottage. Hannay charms the young wife, Margaret, played by Peggy Ashcroft, who asks him if it’s true that all the ladies in London paint their toenails, before cooking him a fish for supper and then helping him escape from the police in the middle of the night, thus vicariously fulfilling her own desire to flee the loveless existence to which she's been doomed by marriage to an older man (played by John Laurie).

Both these women seek out and desperately require Hannay's help. They are, in a sense, as caught up in circumstances beyond their control as he is. And yet Hannay is unable to save either of them; Annabella is murdered and Margaret abandoned to a life of rural misery and domestic violence.

Only Pamela refuses to be bullied or victimised by any man. She may be dragged all over the Scottish moors by Hannay, but she never loses her sangfroid. Say what you like about Hitchcock blondes, but they're never going to allow themselves to be done up like kippers ...