Virtue (32 page)

This is typical, it seems, of Godiva. ‘She’s amazing,’ says my party source, ‘so little of the sort of ego you find in your average movie star. Always wants to know everything about everybody she meets, never wants to talk about herself. No wonder her popularity has skyrocketed!’

With difficulty, I get her back onto the subject in hand. Her new-found wealth must come as a bit of a shock to her, I say. ‘Well, yes and no. I was absolutely desperate when I met Leonard [Wildenstein], doing anything I could to get by. But though everything went after my parents’ tragic death, I grew up in a good family, and I still remember what it was like to have lovely things about me.’ Her eyes mist over as she remembers her happy childhood. ‘They were lovely, my parents. They taught me all my values. I still miss them, think about them every day. They weren’t grand folk, they were simple, good people and I like to think that I take after them. Material things are lovely, of course, but they could never replace real things, like love, and goodness, and a happy family.’

How is she getting on on the set of
Beach Bunny Massacre
? ‘Wonderful. Hilarious. I was nervous at first about showing so much flesh, but everyone makes it so easy I can’t allow modesty to get the better of me.’ It’s quite a departure from the part of Melanie DuChamp, I say. ‘Ooh, I know.’ She giggles. ‘Melanie’s such a natural lady, so dignified and accomplished even though she’s only young; it’s been a real challenge getting into the mind of someone like Sandee Carlton after that. She’s a typical Californian girl: all fun and frolics, maybe a bit superficial, but good at heart.

And it’s been great getting to act all scared! Very difficult when you know that what’s on the other side of the camera is Kurt and his whoopee cushions!’

So there you have it. Godiva Fawcett: lady, child, star of the future. She may have come from nowhere, but I predict that she won’t be going back there. We’ll be seeing a lot more of this actress before she’s done.

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

Variety

Byline:

Beebee Sachs

Date:

11 31 69

Headline:

Review: Beach Bunny Massacre (AA). Dir. Kurt Hamilton.

Good old Kurt Hamilton, King of Schlock. He’s never made a good movie yet, but they never fail to entertain, not least with the timing of their release. After the arthouse success of
Ski Chalet Killers
in the summer, the eternal joker brings us
Beach Bunny Massacre
, a stabfest set in and around the cultural wasteland of Malibu. It’s all the usual stuff: cheap film stock, inadequate lighting, unknown actors mugging to camera, largely female cast whose primary talents seem to consist of a combination of
embonpoint
and the ability to stuff both fists in their mouths at once.

As usual, plot consists of a thinly disguised excuse to get a girl, make her wet, make her clothes fall off, make her run. This reviewer tends to find this level of sophistication a bit heavy going after the first ten minutes, and after thirty, I would scarcely have been awake but for one little thing: Godiva Fawcett, the little English lovely who raised all the hoo-ha earlier in the year when she turned in a not-half-bad showing in
The Power Machine
. Aptly named after a lady who lost all her clothes in medieval England, this girl spent practically every frame in a bikini in various stages of decrepitude. From the moment of her first appearance, to her last little vignette with a big rubber ball after the action was over, I was glued upright in my seat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. The girl was awful. The girl stank like eight-day-old fish. Her attempt at an American accent was so laughable it was contagious. Her reactions were so wooden, so scripted, so utterly risible you wondered if she was taking a rise from the director. Fawcett? Force-it, more like. Natalie Wood looks lifelike by comparison.

In other words, perfect casting. This absurd tale of bikini wax and screaming bimbos has all the hallmarks of another Hamilton cult classic. See it in a fleapit, see it with a quart of tequila, see it if you dare. Word has it that Fawcett has already landed another part in Stephen Swift’s upcoming wartime drama
Calais, Mon Amour
. I can hardly wait for them to storm the beaches.

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

The Moviegoer

Byline:

None

Date:

02 15 70

Headline:

‘Surprise’ Oscar nominee rates chances

Godiva Fawcett, the outsider who has come from the back to be a surprise nominee for this year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar, has been speaking to the
Moviegoer
about her chances of winning. ‘I’m just stunned to have been nominated,’ says the British twenty–year-old, whose more recent role in
Beach Bunny Massacre
received universal brickbats on opening a couple of months ago. ‘I haven’t got a hope of winning, not with the sort of talent I’m up against. I’m only thrilled that I’ll get the chance to go to the ceremony at all.’

You said it, Godiva.

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

Information Weekly

Byline:

Staff Reporter

Date:

06 28 70

Headline:

Not so much amour on location

Rumours reach us that all is not peachy on the location shoot of
Calais, Mon Amour
, where Miriam Baylor is kicking up rough about favouritism. Youthful blonde co-star and recent Best Supporting Actress loser, Godiva Fawcett, it seems, is copping all those little on-set luxuries so beloved of the thespian community, and Miriam is spitting mad. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she was overheard saying to a dining companion in a local French eatery the other night, ‘but we all know her deal was finalised in the restrooms at Ciro’s.’

What can she mean?

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

Fish-Eye Lens: the alternative movie magazine

Byline:

Orange John

Date:

02 13 71

Headline:

Go-diva!

What is it about a British accent that makes otherwise able men lose their heads altogether? We’ve just seen an early print of Stephen Swift’s
Calais, Mon Amour
, and the thing that beats this correspondent is this: how come Godiva Fawcett? The girl’s pretty, but there are thirty thousand girls as pretty in the Beverly Hills area alone. She can act, a little bit, as long as no one asks her to stretch herself beyond the two faces – haughty duchess putting down retainer and soppy duchess bringing soup to farm cottages – she’s at home with. What she has to offer beyond that beats the hell out of me. One thing’s for sure: after a brief vogue in the early months of last year, we can fairly much say that the girl has turned to box-office poison.
Calais
is reputed to have run over budget to the tune of $2m, mostly because of extra film costs run up by the need to reshoot vital scenes, and previews suggest that the film is likely to get a week in mainstream auditoriums at most. I for one won’t be sorry if this chick disappears from our screens altogether; that De Havilland simper is beginning to make me want to reach for my Six Shooter.

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

Daily Express

Byline:

Hickey Column

Date:

10 06 71

Headline:

The pull of Hollywood gets weaker for Godiva

Godiva Fawcett, who left these shores three years ago for the lure of Hollywood and stardom, is to return to Blighty after a spell of ‘resting’ in her Beverly Hills home. ‘In the end,’ says the plucky twenty-year-old star of
The Power Game, Beach Bunny Massacre
and the ill-fated
Calais, Mon Amour
, ‘I just miss England too much. The Californian lifestyle is fabulous, but it’s such a shallow, bitchy world and in the end I found it hard to live with. People make so many promises, and in the end I felt terribly let down. I was constantly in work, but increasingly the roles I was offered were undemanding, and I want to do more with my life than just spend it in front of the lens. I have always been interested in charity work, and intend to get more involved once I’m back on more caring shores.’

Godiva is also to star in a pilot for a new ITV sitcom,
Daddy’s Girl
, and has high hopes for its success. ‘The part I’m playing is right up my street,’ she claims. ‘She’s a real old-fashioned English rose, just like me. I can’t wait to get started.’ She is also hoping that her love life will enter a more settled phase when she returns. ‘I dated a lot in America,’ she says, ‘but there was never anyone special.’ And is there someone special now? ‘Yes.’ She smiles. ‘There’s someone special: an Englishman who I met while he was over here looking for new investment opportunities.’ And does this Englishman have a name? ‘It’s early days yet,’ she says with typical discretion, ‘and he’s the sort of person who hates publicity. We’ll just have to see what happens.’

When I wake, it’s dark outside and Harriet, in a cheerful voice, is saying, ‘So she kept griping and moaning all night: this wasn’t good enough, that wasn’t seasoned enough, she didn’t want radicchio in her salad, only rocket, and why hadn’t they asked her, going on about how Linds – she’s the other waitress who was sharing the shift with me. She’s still a mate, actually. You’d like her – should’ve been filling her wine glass before it got down to halfway empty, there’s no hand cream in the Ladies and what on earth was she paying all this for if they weren’t even going to put hand cream in the Ladies, that sort of crap. A really horrible woman. She’d probably have nicked the hand cream if there had been any. One of those people who thinks that because they’ve scored a bit of money they’ve become magically exempt from the basic book of manners. And Linds knew that after all that running around, she was going to turn out to be a really mean tipper. You always know the mean tippers from the way they don’t even look at you in case they strike up some relationship and get a twinge of guilt.’

Ah, the teapot, I think, close my eyes again and drift for a bit while she finishes. Register that Harriet definitely sounds a bit different from usual: sort of like she might be batting her eyelashes while she talks. If I didn’t know better, I would almost suspect that she was flirting.

‘So once she’s pigged herself on four courses and three refills of the breadbasket, she wants fresh ginger tea because she says that the food has given her indigestion, and Linds is thinking: yeah, perhaps if you’d eaten less of it … So anyway, Linds tell the kitchen, and someone has to stop making food right in the middle of the busy period in order to go and blag some sodding ginger from the Chinese restaurant down the road and chop it up. And then obviously they have to leave it to infuse for a bit because ginger doesn’t take just like that, so it’s ten minutes before Linds can get it to the table.’

Harriet’s companion murmurs, shifts in his seat.

‘So when she arrives, this old bat goes, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for hours. Do you keep all your customers waiting like this? I call it terrible service. Don’t expect a tip from me. Give me my tea,” and Linds apologises and points out that ginger takes a while to infuse, and she goes, “Takes a while to have a cigarette out back when you should be working, more like,” and Linds gives her her tea and goes off to take some deep breaths. And the next thing she knows, this woman’s clicking her fingers at her – God, you’ve no idea how annoying it is to have someone click their fingers at you like you’re a sea lion or something – and going, “You’ve let this tea sit around for so long it’s stone cold. I wanted hot tea. Go and get me some hot tea.”

‘What a bitch,’ says the bloke. ‘I think she’d’ve got her tea in the face if it had been me.’

‘Too right,’ says Harriet. ‘But Linds did something else which worked much better. She took the pot back into the kitchen, where they had a ceramic hob for keeping sauces warm and that. And she turned it up full and put the pot on the hob for, like, five minutes with her hand sitting on the lid so it got immune to the heat, and waited until it was really, really boiling. And then she carries it through with her bare hand and sets it down on the table in the front of the woman, and says, “There. I hope that’s hot enough now, madam,” and walks away. So when the old hag goes to pour it out, there’s a shriek and the whole restaurant practically bursts into applause.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says the man. ‘Remind me not to tangle with your friends. What happened?’

Mike. It’s Mike the copper. Mike the fanciable copper with the blue eyes and the way of stepping in to rescue you when you least expect it. Of course. I’m not asleep because I’ve drunk too much; I have a headache because there’s a great big lump blistering up under my scalp. I open my eyes.