The Three Ruperts: Bear, Rigsby & Pupkin

 

 

I. 

 

The modern English name Rupert is a truncation of the Latin Rupertus, which derives from Old High German Hruodoperht (or Hruodoberht), which also happens to be the origin of the name Robert. 

 

Meaning bright with glory, it is a name to be proud of, even if it has today taken on somewhat comical connotations, which is why - as we shall see - it was so suited to Leonard Rossiter's character, Rupert Rigsby, in the seventies TV sit-com Rising Damp; and Robert De Niro's character, Rupert Pupkin, in Scorsese's 1982 film The King of Comedy.    

 

Before discussing the above, however, I want to say a few words about the most famous Rupert of all - no, not Rupert Birkin [1] - but Rupert Bear ...

 

 

II. 

 

As a child, I never much cared for Rupert Bear ...

 

Even if I quite admired his colourful fashion sense - red jumper, bright yellow checked trousers, with a matching yellow scarf - he and his chums were just a bit too boring [2], living at home with their parents in an idyllic English village. No matter how exotic or magical their adventures, the fact was they always began and ended in Nutwood.    

 

However, it was the irritating theme song which opened the 1970s TV series The Adventures of Rupert Bear [3], that really turned me against him: I fucking hated that song - which added an erroneous definite article to the characters name - although the record-buying public obviously didn't share my feelings, as it reached number 14 in the UK charts in 1971 [4].  

Rupert, of course, started life as a comic strip character created by Mary Tourtel, who made his first appearance in the Daily Express in 1920. He soon became very popular and his since gone on to sell millions of books worldwide; the Rupert annual has been published every year since 1936. 

 

And so, like his rival, Paddington Bear - who first appeared on the scene in 1958 (and who I'm not keen on either) - Rupert is firmly entrenched in British popular culture; in September 2020, Royal Mail even issued a set of eight stamps to commemorate his centenary.   

 

Unfortunately, the stamps didn't make reference to the one great scandal that Rupert was involved in; the infamous Oz magazine case which resulted in the editors and publishers being prosecuted for obscenity and put on trial at the Old Bailey in June 1971 [5]. 

 

 

III.

 

Played (brilliantly) by Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp - a British sit-com, written by Eric Chappell, which was originally broadcast on ITV from September 1974 until May 1978 - Rigsby's first name was only revealed in one of the final episodes. 

 

In 'Great Expectations' (S4/E3), having agreed to pose as his estranged wife, Miss Jones and Rigsby dress up so as to look the part of a married couple:

Rigsby: "How d'you think I look?"

 

Miss Jones: "Very nice Mr Rigsby - though I can't call you that, what's your first name?"

Rigsby: "Err, we needn't go to those lengths Miss Jones."

Miss Jones: "Mr Rigsby we're supposed to be married, what did she call you?"

Rigsby: "Everything really."

Miss Jones: "No, I mean at the beginning, when she was being affectionate."

Rigsby: "Well, we never went in for endearments very much, not even at the beginning. No, she used to smile quietly at me, put her hand on mine and say: 'Now then ratbag.'"

Miss Jones: "Well I can't call you that. Now what's your name?"

 

Rigsby (embarrassed): "Well, it's a rather silly sort of name".

 

Miss Jones: "What is it?" 

Rigsby (mumbling): "Rupert."

Miss Jones: "Robert?"

 

Rigsby: "Rupert."

 

Miss Jones: "Rupert!"

 

Rigsby: "Yes, Rupert Rigsby."

 

Miss Jones (hiding her face and laughing): "I'm sorry Mr Rigsby, you don't look like a Rupert."

 

Rigsby: "Well of course I don't look like - he's a little wooly bear with trousers and a check scarf, isn't he? That's why I stopped using it."

 

Miss Jones (kindly): "Well I shan't, I think it's a very nice name." [6]

 

As well as being a very funny (and rather touching) scene, it also reminds me of the sixth season episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer's first name - Cosmo - is finaly revealed, much to the amusement of George, Jerry and Elaine [7].

The irony, of course, is that Rigsby isn't bright with glory - as the name Rupert suggests - but seedy with failure. Nevertheless, he's a strangely likeable character; far more so than Basil Fawlty, to whom he is sometimes compared.

IV.

 

Rupert Pupkin, on the other hand, is a far more disturbing character; a struggling stand-up comedian with mental health issues, desperate to get his big break. 

 

Long story short, in The King of Comedy (1982) he kidnaps a famous late-night talk show host, Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis), in an attempt to achieve the notoriety he confuses with stardom. As he tells the FBI agents who arrest him: Better to be a king for a night, than a schmuck for a lifetime. 

 

The film was admired by critics, but poorly received by the public who - at this date - preferred to see De Niro in what they understood to be more serious roles, little appreciating the amount of work he invested in the character of Rupert Pupkin. 

 

The fact that, by the end of the film, it's impossible to tell what was real and what was fantasy, also didn't go down well with moviegoers who, as a rule, like to know what's happening and not have to figure things out for themselves.

 

Further, Rupert Pupkin is a troubling figure because he obliges us as film fans to examine our own behaviour and complicity with celebrity culture. Travis Bickle might shock us - and Max Cady [8] might terrify us - but Rupert Pupkin is the one who unsettles us most.    

Perhaps that's why Scorsese has called De Niro's role as Rupert Pupkin his favourite of all their collaborations ... [9]

  

Notes

 

[1] I have referred to and discussed Rupert Birkin - one of the four central characters of D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel Women in Love (1920) - many times in posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] I make an exception for his peculiar pal Raggety, a woodland troll-like creature made from twigs, who is goes out of his way to be annoying. Sadly, in the 2006 TV revival Raggety was transformed into a friendly tree elf so as not to frighten the children of Gen Z (aka Generation Snowflake). Worse: Rupert is obliged to wear trainers! 

 

[3] The Adventures of Rupert Bear (known as My Little Rupert in the US) was a live-action puppet series, based on the Mary Tourtel character Rupert Bear, produced by ATV. It aired from 28 October 1970 to 24 August 1977 on the ITV network, with 156 11-minute episodes produced over four series, narrated by Judy Bennett. 

[4] Rupert, written by Len Beadle and Ron Roker, was sung by the Irish singer Jackie Lee and released as a single in 1971: click here. 

      Funny enough, although not a fan of Rupert, I did like the theme song written by Michael Carr and Ben Nisbet for the English language version of the children's TV series White Horses (1968), which was also sung by Jackie Lee (and released as a single in 1968 - reaching number 10 in the UK charts): click here.   

[5] Oz was an underground magazine that flew the flag for the sixties counterculture. The UK version was published from 1967 until 1973, ed. by Richard Neville, a young Australian writer and hippie radical. Issue 28 (May 1970) of Oz was the notorious Schoolkids issue and featured a Rupert cartoon in which he is shown with a large erection and engaging in illicit sexual activity. After initially being found guilty of obscenity and sentenced to harsh jail terms, the magazine's editors were acquitted on appeal. 

      For an interesting recent article by Walker Mimms in The Guardian (4 Aug 2021), discussing how the Oz trial inspired a generation of protest artists, click here. 

 

[6] This lovely one minute exchange begins at 12:20 in the second episode of series four of Rising Damp. Entitled 'Great Expectations', it aired on 18 April 1978 and was written by Eric Chappell, directed by Joseph McGrath, and starred Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby and Francis de la Tour as Miss Jones. The episode can be found on YouTube, or viewed on Dailymotion by clicking here. 

[7] See Seinfeld, 'The Switch' [S6/E11], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Bruce Kirschbaum and Sam Kass. The episode originally aired on 5 Jan 1995. The relevant scenes concerning Kramer's first name can be viewed here. 

 

[8] Max Cady was the psychopath played by De Niro in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, also directed by Scorsese. 

 

[9] To watch the original trailer for The King of Comedy (1982), click here. 

Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)

Michael Gough gets to grips with June Cunningham in a 

publicity still for Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)

When the Museum of Modern Art inducts a British horror film from the 1950s into its collection at the behest of Martin Scorsese, you simply have to watch it when the opportunity arises, as it did, the other night, on Talking Pictures TV (the vintage film and television channel available on Freeview).

Horrors of the Black Museum (dir. Arthur Crabtree, 1959), is the first in what critic David Pirie dubbed Anglo-Amalgamated's Sadean trilogy; i.e., movies that placed an emphasis on sexual violence and cruelty, in contrast to the supernatural elements found in the Hammer horrors of the same era [1]. 

Written and produced by Herman (I Was a Teenage Werewolf) Cohen, the film exploits his personal fascination with the criminal memorabilia collected in Scotland Yard's so-called Black Museum and stars English actor Michael Gough as the mad, misogynistic murderer Edmond Bancroft: No woman can hold her tongue! They're a vicious, unreliable breed!

Originally, Cohen had wanted either Vincent Price or Orson Welles for the role, but the Hollywood stars would have demanded fees way outside of budget. And so Gough got the part and his scenery-chewing performance betrays the same bitter resentment of the evil cripple that he later demonstrates as the wheelchair-bound mad scientist, Dr. Clement Armstrong, in a famous episode of The Avengers [2].

Whilst the ingenius murders - committed with spiked binoculars, a guillotine, antique ice tongs, and even a laser beam of some kind - are all très amusant, by far the most memorable scene features London-born starlet June Cunningham playing Bancroft's blonde bombshell mistress, Joan, dancing provocatively to a bar room jukebox and having just about as much fun as a girl can have without taking her clothes off: click here.

Cunningham may not have been the most talented actress or the most beautiful, but in this red-hot scene she cha-cha-chas her way into cinematic immortality ... 

Notes

[1] See David Pirie, A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema, (1973). A revised edition was published in 2008 as A New Heritage of Horror (I. B. Taurus).

The two other Anglo-Amalgamated films identified by Pirie as Sadean in nature are Circus of Horrors (dir. Sidney Hayers, 1960) and Peeping Tom (dir. Michael Powell, 1960).

 [2] The episode to which I refer is, of course, 'The Cybernauts', from Series 4, (Oct. 1965).

As noted on TV Tropes, the evil cripple is a morally and physically compromised figure, though often possessing a genius intellect. The linking of disability, or physical deformity, with a predisposition towards madness, criminality, or vice, is, of course, an ancient device that regrettably reinforces negative cultural stereotypes.


To watch the original theatrical trailer for Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), click here.

Les Fleurs du Mal: Iris and Violet

Jodie Foster as Iris in Taxi Driver (1976) and 

Brooke Shields as Violet in Pretty Baby (1978)

For those like me, born in February, the iris and violet are flowers that hold special significance; the former taking its name from the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow (coming as it does in a wide array of colours); the latter a symbol of fertility associated with Saint Valentine, that holy fool adored by lovers and epileptics the world over.   

But iris and violet are not just types of flower; they are also popular (if slightly old-fashioned sounding) girls' names.

Indeed, they happen to be the names of cinema's two most famous child prostitutes: Iris, played by 12-year-old Jodie Foster, in Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1976); and Violet, played by 12-year-old Brooke Shields, in Pretty Baby (dir. Louis Malle, 1978). 

I was of a similar age to the above girls when these films came out, so don't really remember the reaction at the time; probably there was some controversy and a certain degree of moral outrage from the usual quarters, but I'm pretty sure that today giving these roles to such young actresses would be inconceivable.

Indeed, the only recent film I can think of employing a child actress in a similarly controversial manner is Kick-Ass (2010). But 12-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz was playing a comic-book character (Hit-Girl), not a prostitute. And whilst she certainly participated in the on-screen violence and freely used obscene language, neither Moretz nor her character were overtly sexualised (if one overlooks the schoolgirl uniform, etc.).  

Looking back, Foster has spoken of the at times uncomfortable atmosphere on set whilst filming Taxi Driver and confessed that she cried when she first met the costume designer and put on Iris's (now iconic) hooker outfit. A self-confessed tomboy, she naturally hated having to wear hot pants, halter tops, platform shoes and a big, floppy hat. In other words, it was her wardrobe rather than the psycho-sexual complexities of her role that upset Foster.

Shields, too, seems not to have been psychologically or emotionally damaged in any way by her experiences as a child actress and has stated she has no regrets starring in Pretty Baby alongside Susan Sarandon and Keith Carradine. Indeed, she remains resolutely proud of the movie and her role in it: "It was the best creative project I've ever been associated with, the best group of people I've ever been blessed enough to work with," she told Vanity Fair in an interview to mark the 40th anniversary of the film's release [click here].  

Quite how she feels about the Sugar and Spice series of eroticised nude photographs she posed for, aged ten, taken by Garry Gross, I don't know ... But that, as they say, is a post for another day ...

Notes

For a related post to this one on the case of Iris Steensma as fashion icon, click here.

For a musical bonus - Blondie's 'Pretty Baby', from the album Parallel Lines, (Chrysalis, 1978) - click here. 

The above track was inspired by the film; the film, however, took its title from an earlier ragtime song called 'Pretty Baby', written by Tony Jackson, that has been recorded by (amongst others) Bill Murray (1916), Bing Crosby (1947), Doris Day (1948), and Dean Martin (1957).

Double Dutch

Malcolm on set whilst filming the video for 'Double Dutch' and me 
receiving a silver disc to mark sales in the UK of more than 250,000 copies

One of the (many) joys of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is an extensive soundtrack that affords one the opportunity to hear Malcolm McLaren's still remarkably fresh sounding single 'Double Dutch', taken from his debut album, Duck Rock, and released in the summer of '83 when, all over the world, high school girls were taking to the ropes ...
 
I don't know why Scorsese (in collaboration with music supervisor Randall Poster and executive music producer Robbie Robertson) selected this song, but it presumably has some significance to him as it's one of only 16 - out of 60 used in the movie - to feature on The Wolf of Wall Street: Music from the Motion Picture (Virgin Records, 2014).    

For me, it's a track that has a very special resonance and brings back happy memories of a time when I was working at Charisma Records as an assistant in the press office, alongside the very lovely Lee Ellen Newman, and as a sort of intermediary between the label and McLaren's office on Tin Pan Alley, managed by the indomitable Carrolle Payne.

I recall, for example, meeting those dark and lovely skippers from New York who featured in the video for McLaren's single and who are name-checked in the lyrics to the song (Hey Ebo! Ebonettes); I remember also riding around Town in a limo with the Rock Steady Crew who had come to teach Londoners how to breakdance and elevate graffiti into an urban art form (but that - as they say - is another story ...). 

Although there were other songs on Duck Rock I liked more than 'Double Dutch', the latter - co-written and produced by Trevor Horn - was undoubtedly the catchiest and, in reaching the UK chart position of number 3, also McLaren's biggest hit (though - surprisingly - not so in the US).

Whilst primarily about the sport of competitive rope jumping, 'Double Dutch' is also an excellent example - arguably - of McLaren's willingness to cheerfully engage in cultural appropriation and the racial fetishisation of young black girls in order to further his own commercial and artistic ends ... 

Play: Malcolm McLaren, 'Double Dutch', the third single release from Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983): click here. Note: this is the 12" version of the song.