Shirley (16 page)

The management of El Rancho booked Shirley to return for the next two years, but unfortunately the hotel caught fire and burned to the ground before the year was out. Shirley, Michael and Lily waved goodbye to Las Vegas with its Fort Knox hotels and mafiosi hoodlums with no regrets.

Shirley Bassey was on her way to Hollywood.

Sullivan rented a car and drove them across the desert to Los Angeles; ‘I want a hotel with a swimming pool,’ announced Shirley, as they drove down Sunset Boulevard. She’d been earning nearly two thousand dollars a week and deserved a swimming pool.

That evening the girls dolled themselves up for a night out at the famous Ciro’s, Shirley had grown up in the postwar hey-day of cinema and loved to read all the fan magazines which peddled tales of stars such as Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth finding true love as they danced the night away at Ciro’s. Anybody who was anybody had to be seen at Ciro’s. When Michael and the girls walked in, however, it was obvious that ten years had passed since Tyrone Power danced with Lana Turner, and everyone knew Rita
Hayworth had gone to live in Paris with her new husband, Prince Aly Khan.

It was very dark inside the club, but Michael nevertheless totted up the heads of the paying customers through the gloom and realised there were only thirty people listening to Frances Faye, the talented and famously risqué American entertainer. He wondered how the owner of this no longer very popular nightclub, who had brought them over from England, was going to dredge up two thousand dollars a week for Shirley. They sat down and ordered a drink as the band began to play. It was surprisingly good. Shirley smiled. If anyone could do it, she could.

Shirley’s opening made a great impact on Sunset Boulevard. Some of the English colony attended, including Pamela Mason, wife of actor James Mason and daughter of the man who owned the Odeon cinema chain. She was one of the leaders of Hollywood society, and declared that Shirley had great talent, that she brought youth and freshness with her. Shirley was at her most electrifying at the opening and business at Ciro’s improved. Unfortunately, even this didn’t help the owner, Herman Hover. He offered Sullivan three hundred dollars and the rest next week. This went on throughout the six-week booking. It paid for Shirley’s hotel but that was about all.

Then a bill arrived from Las Vegas; Shirley’s gambling on the fruit machines had been put on to her El Rancho slate and this was one bill that had to be paid. Sullivan gave Shirley a stern lecture on the dangers of the little extras that mount up when put on your hotel bill. She must have taken this lecture to heart because for the rest of her life hotel bills
were sacrosanct. One of the worst rows Bernard Hall ever had with Shirley was over the price of a cup of coffee he had drunk which found its way on to her hotel bill.

The William Morris agency came to the rescue and booked Shirley into the Riverside Room in Reno with their own guarantee of one thousand five hundred dollars a week. They would also attempt to recover some of Shirley’s back pay from Herman Hover.

Shirley came into her own in Reno, a typical ‘Wild West’ town, where cowboys in stetsons still ambled around in search of rich divorcees, and there was probably still a stereotypical Sheriff in town. Shirley was a smash hit at the Riverside and she was happy and confident. She’d taken Las Vegas in her stride, and they wanted her back next year. She’d wowed them in Hollywood, so Reno was more like a holiday. She could do her act, then afterwards she could take her pick from the many invitations that flooded in and go out to have some fun.

There was no shortage of proposals in this town where divorce was so easy. Shirley was in a romantic mood when one of her suitors started talking about a wedding, and before she knew it she was engaged and being congratulated over the local radio. Fortunately, she quickly came to her senses, realising that she had fallen for a line, and broke the ‘engagement’.

She had two more proposals which were fun – but she didn’t take them too seriously. There was a convention of midgets taking place in Reno and most of them fell in love with Shirley. One of her songs was the ‘Let’s Do It’, and one of the lines in the song was, ‘
even little men who have to reach do it
.’ One of her admirers, a gentleman midget, sat
right in front. Shirley asked one of the Moroccan acrobats on the same bill, what she should do. ‘The last thing I want is to hurt him.’

‘Don’t change a word,’ came the sensible advice. ‘Just look him in the eye, give him one of your best smiles, and sing it.’

The week before they left Reno to return home, a letter came from Johnny Franz with the great news that, ‘The Banana Boat Song’ had gone into the charts. Johnny Franz’s faith in Shirley had been justified and, in time, thousands of pounds of royalties would come rolling in. Michael Sullivan now had a top performer on his hands, and could bargain as never before. Back in England, Shirley’s record would be playing everywhere, on BBC TV, on ATV, and on all the radio stations.

The name Shirley Bassey had real power now. Sullivan called Leslie Grade in London. Without hesitation, Leslie, a really great agent and booker, said he would like to present Shirley Bassey in variety, and would pay their airfares back to London.

Shirley really began to grasp the fact that fame had arrived when Johnny Franz met her at Heathrow with a battery of press photographers and a toy boat filled with bananas. She was driven from the airport to a suite at the Mayfair Hotel, where she would meet the press and the booking agents. She loved the luxury suite to which she was shown. ‘It’s going to cost you sixty pounds a day,’ warned Sullivan, reminding her that she now paid her own bed and board; this was not Olivelli’s. Shirley beguiled the press and delighted the bookers and, the following day, told Sullivan she had received an invitation she could not refuse. She was
going to stay with the mother of an old friend, absolutely rent-free. ‘Who?’ asked Sullivan, determined to keep his eye on this valuable girl. ‘Gloria Davies,’ replied Shirley.

Gloria was the sister of Pepe Davies, the boy who gave her a backhander during the run of
Such is Life
, and who nearly ruined her first night at the Café de Paris when he wrapped his car around a steel gate. This boy was bad news for Shirley. ‘I thought that was all over,’ Michael said. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

Shirley told him that the accident had changed Pepe. He had been very ill for a long time but now he was all right, and she could handle the situation. She’d be sharing a room with Gloria. ‘Where do they live?’ Sullivan asked. He was fearful of the situation, but Shirley was no longer the naïve teenager, and she had a mind of her own. Of course, saving sixty pounds a day was a consideration, but he thought Shirley would be unwise to allow this troubled boy back into her life. Sullivan remembered him as a fair, rather average-looking boy. Shirley, deliberately vague, waved away all thoughts of problems.

Leslie Grade arranged another Hippodrome provincial tour for Shirley. This time, it was a number one tour and, for the first time, Shirley Bassey would have top billing. To her delight, the third week of her tour would be in her home town, Cardiff. Sullivan too, was delighted at this news; there was nothing he enjoyed more than a publicity campaign. He got in touch with Jack Thomas, a friendly Welsh journalist based in London. ‘Tell me all about Cardiff,’ he asked. ‘We must plan a great big homecoming.’

Shirley, of course, knew all about Cardiff. She was
thrilled to be going home. The first thing she would do would be to see her mother and Sharon. And she had wonderful news. For the first time in her life she had earned big money in America, and now she had a hit record that would eventually bring in more money. At last she could find enough ready cash for a down-payment on a house for her mother, not just any house, but one in a nice location on the Newport Road, towards the soft green hills of Wales, and away from the docks and the sea and Splott.

This was the first of three houses that Shirley bought for her mother. It wasn’t very big – just one bedroom – but her mother said it was big enough for her, and so light and airy. In the years to come Shirley would buy Eliza another larger house and then a bungalow.

‘I’ve got everything I want,’ declared Mrs Bassey Mendi. She’d been a widow for some time now. She had heard that her first husband, Henry Bassey, was dead, and that Mr Mendi had also died. She confessed to a journalist that she had never found problems with her mixed marriages. Living as she had done in Tiger Bay, where races intermixed freely, she had found no problems. She had never wanted to travel or leave her small corner of Cardiff. She did not think her marriages had affected Shirley. But her own life had been so enclosed, she could understand the problems that Shirley might encounter in the big world outside.

Eliza Mendi loved all her family but, houses aside, Shirley’s visits always brought her special pleasure. She’d given Shirley a charm for her bracelet, a gold disc shaped like a gramophone record, which Shirley always wore. Her mother always said how generous her youngest daughter was; how she would pay to have the house painted when it
needed it, how she always brought her mother the beautiful bouquets she’d been given. ‘She was always like that,’ Eliza recalled. ‘Even as a little girl everyone had to have a present at Christmas. She even saved up and bought me a teaset once.’ Shirley would talk about taking her mother abroad with her one day, but Eliza preferred to stay put, happy in her new home. She said, ‘I’ve had hard times, but now they are all over. I do worry over Shirley, it’s only natural isn’t it? But God rewards, and I couldn’t have anything better in the world than to know she thinks of me.’

There was something else Shirley could do while she was in Cardiff – talk to her sister Iris about Sharon. Shirley knew perfectly well that Iris and Bill wanted to adopt the child, whom they loved very much. Sullivan was always saying, ‘Why don’t you let your sister adopt Sharon? You’re going to travel around the world and you can’t drag a kid along with you.’ Shirley did not agree, she would never let anyone adopt Sharon. She’d gone along with Sullivan’s insistence that Sharon must be kept a secret for the time being, but some day, perhaps when she was well-known, people would be more understanding and it wouldn’t destroy her career.

She had another worry. She was going back to the New Theatre in Cardiff with top billing. In 1954 she had appeared there in the cast of
Hot from Harlem
and the locals in Tiger Bay thought it was a sleazy revue. In 1956 she had gone there in variety with second billing, but now in 1957, like a dream come true, she was going home, top of the bill, and was worried sick that they wouldn’t like her.

Sullivan said, ‘What about that club you used to belong to? Wasn’t it called the Rainbow Club? Now how about
making them a presentation?’ Shirley was immediately suspicious. Sullivan had a way of making her money disappear. ‘It’ll come out of publicity expenses,’ he explained. ‘I think two hundred and fifty pounds might be a good idea.’ Shirley was impressed. This was a large sum, and the Rainbow Club had once been an important part of her young life.

The rousing song, ‘There’ll be a welcome in the hillsides when we come home again to Wales’, could have been Sullivan’s theme song. He was going to leave no stone unturned. There’d be bands, there’d be fanfares, trumpets, bugles, and maybe a ladies orchestra with the girls wearing those tall black Welsh hats. A big parade, of course, perhaps a Druid or two and a Welsh choir. And behind it all, would come the open limousine with Shirley Bassey enthroned on the back seat, brushing away a tear as she waved to the crowds lining the streets.

‘Forget it, Mr Sullivan,’ said the Cardiff police when Sullivan went round to show them his itinerary. ‘This will be on a Sunday, you say. In this town people go to church on a Sunday.’

‘But I’m bringing home one of your national treasures,’ pleaded Sullivan.

‘Not on a Sunday,’ said the cops.

‘But people in show business have to travel on Sundays. Last show Saturday night, open Monday matinee.’

‘In Wales you will still be arrested, Mr Sullivan.’

Sullivan neglected to tell Shirley about the risk of arrest if they went ahead with his plan. In fact he didn’t tell her anything at all about her welcome home. Much better to make it a surprise, especially if they arrested her. And if that
did happen, it would certainly make the front pages, which would be no bad thing. However, he did abandon some of the wilder elements of his scheme.

British Railways were much easier to deal with than the Cardiff police. They agreed to a great banner being tied across the front of the train while it rested at a red light outside Cardiff Station. When the train arrived, the platform was five-deep with members past and present of the Rainbow Club, and as the train glided in, the band of the Boy Scouts struck up, closely followed by the big drums of the Boys’ Brigade.

Shirley’s surprise at her reception was so great that she began to cry. She was still weeping when a little dark girl, her hair arranged in plaits on top of her head, handed her a huge bouquet of lilies and irises as she was led outside to where the limousine awaited her. Perched high on cushions with her ranch mink stole draped behind her, surrounded by garlands of flowers, and the bouquet on her lap, Shirley brushed away her tears and smiled for the photographers. The big parade set off down the wide mile towards the Queen’s Hotel. ‘Start waving,’ whispered Sullivan. More shining limousines followed, filled with newspaper staff and photographers, waving flags and dispensing balloons. Cars from
The Empire News, The People
and Phillips’ Records.

Six hundred people lined the streets, and Shirley, who’d only seen this kind of thing in the movies, outdid them all, waving, throwing kisses and having fun. She was back where she grew up and she recognised faces in the crowd and exchanged greetings. ‘Yes, it’s great to be home,’ she shouted.

Outside the Queen’s Hotel, the family waited. Shirley’s mother, of course, her sister Iris, with little Sharon, her other sisters and her brother Henry, and the sisters’ husbands and children. Screams of joy from them all, then tears and laughter, and little Sharon clung to the skirts of her beautiful Auntie Shirley. Shirley Bassey was well and truly home again.