History for Fun #2

Beware Austerity Eyes That Paralyzed

From Fact: Doing Without Even After You Win

Lots imagine how great it would be to have met one or all of the Beatles. What fun to find common ground with that irreverent lot, but here’s the thing, a massive thing. We of stateside spoilage had not a thread in common with these or any Liverpool boys or girls, virtually all of whom knew life in the rawer than we of comparative, if sustained, privilege, ever would. Did postwar Yanks experience rationing, meatless most days, endless austerity as did all four Beatles plus pop faves off the Isles we thought spoke for us? They might not have remembered the war but sure understood scarcity of necessaries afterward. Bombs had stopped falling, but still was shortage of most staples, this to gruel another nine-at-least years, time aplenty for Beatles and contemporaries to know want as way of life. How did they respond to us who had things so easy? Brits still in the 1960’s were rags beside Yank riches, us swimming in gravy from babyhood. All who grew up in England after the war knew what it was to be without. They’d darn a sock rather than toss it away and buy a new pair. Everything was had in minimum. Kids swapped toys for sweets, soap was precious, “Make Do and Mend” meant patches on clothes and forget embarrassment because all your mates endured a same thing. Think life was markedly better by the swinging sixties? Not so pampered Americans would notice. Look close at English films from after the war, and years after, to see dimes stretch to dollars, putting on appearance of prosperity where really there wasn’t any. 1963’s Children of the Damned is a UK home movie for how desolate life still was long after Britain had “won” its war. I use quotations for fact the country went flat broke financing what in many ways was pyrrhic victory. Yes, they were free and no longer nightly blitzed, but who financed their defense? Us Yanks, us who boomed after the surrenders and never had things so good as we would for generations to come.

Not Much of a House, We'd Say, but Postwar Blighted Britishers Were Thankful to Get It

Britain emptied vaults to secure “lend lease” and other loans from the US. Their gold supply ended up in our Fort Knox. Ironic to see James Bond rescue that US asset from clutches of Auric Goldfinger. British empire crumbled in the wake of war. They just couldn’t afford colonies anymore. India split in the late forties and Egypt rebelled in 1956. The rest disappeared like mercury over hardwood flooring. A cultural comeback came with the sixties, music and movies, though they’d not last at pitch with which they began. Back to semi-doc Children of the Damned which seems to me another of “wreckage” work Englanders engaged to make a best of settings that would loudly reflect a world struggling from under rubble of war. Children’s civil servant chums share a tolerable flat, those they assist in hovels you’d not house dogs nor cats in. Titular children are damned by everyday circumstance no less than whatever unholy force guides them. Children of the Damned lifts veil off hardship but barely relieved by 1963. Much location in London sees houses, buildings, too few rebuilt from mess left after Germans hit, most telling a famous church, St. Dunston-in-the-East, blasted by the Blitz (1941) to leave but outer walls, a tower and a steeple. Initial building went up in 1100, remains today a public garden. As if to emphasize devastation from the war, Children of the Damned used also interiors of the church, no set adequate to convey impact upon said ruin. Were horror-seekers put off by real horror Children of the Damned conveyed? I sensed much at age nine that was barren and hopeless in this London, in-part product of story told, but more so places utilized to tell it, stark beside my gingerbread world. And to think the Beatles would within weeks debut on Ed Sullivan where a whole new face for England would emerge.

Well-Traveled "Black Forest" Near Hammer's Humble House That Doubled as Studio

Speaking of horrors, was there good reason for Hammer Films to focus on period backdrops? Did these  spare us lingering looks on post-apocalypse peeking still from an English landscape? Bray’s picturesque if sinister “Black Forest” seemed a garden spot beside London even when and where it swung. People beset by vampirism and werewolfery at least were not poor and just this side of ration books. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing, Victor Frankenstein, the rest, dress elegant and wear tall toppers. To step into parlors, even pubs, in a Hammer horror is to sample a Whitman box filled with flavors. I never had to worry where their next feast came from. The Baron breaks from cutting a cadaver and there’s chicken alongside his bloody scalpels to sample. Compare with also-Hammer but contemporary-set Cash on Demand where Cushing heads bank management  and won't waste a copper-plated steel penny. Where Hammer staged latter-day scares, it was often sparce conditions that scared us more. The Quatermass series excels for science explored on penurious terms, Brian Donlevy having constructed a rocket, but who heck paid for the thing? He investigates alien intrusion largely on his own dime it seems, facilities he’ll consult barren of resource as we’d expect for British sci-fi set in 50’s there-and-then. The Quatermass Xperiment in 1956 (known here as The Creeping Unknown) captured reality frightful as whatever alien posed a threat. Latter on-the-loose stalks a riverbank mostly mud and, in all ways, uninviting where a dingy little girl plays with her dolly to seeming satisfaction, daily life for the character and maybe Jane Asher (b. 1946) who plays her,  Asher of later and close association with Paul McCartney and co-starring with Vincent Price in Masque of the Red Death. If anyone could tell of Britain in sustained hard times, then 60’s rebirth if but partial, it would be Jane Asher. Has she shared insights from the era? I note from Google that she has not so far done a memoir but has written several novels plus a tome about cake decorating.

Hammer's Idea of a Splurge Would Easily Have Been These Picturesque Models

Scores of others, many still around, sat both ends of Britain’s cultural seesaw. Think Dave Clark, who with his Five recorded hit after hit plus starred in Catch Us If You Can (US title: Having a Wild Weekend), which Greenbriar visited in 2013. There are but two of Clark’s Five left, Barbara Ferris, also of Catch Us, having lately left at eighty-eight. It’s been writ, by me on occasion, that UK imports rode a tough sled because we wouldn’t groove with their accents and idiom. I begin to wonder now if it was more the defeat their contemporary-set features reflected, that “wreckage” earlier referred to. Was this why late 40’s Brit melodrama leaned so heavy on period backdrop, where production wealth could at least be simulated by costumes, real castles or estates, maybe Technicolor for added splash? Look at recently released Saraband for Dead Lovers, an astonishing Blu-Ray, or restored Blanche Fury. There are others. Hammer took a lot of stylistic instruction from these. Were postwar British movies more palatable where set way past? Remember it was solidly Brit and puffed sleeve Tom Jones that took 1964’s Academy Award, this after Lawrence of Arabia, also British and set far back, took the prize for 1963. Not to dump on The Apartment, but given the authority, I’d have awarded Brides of Dracula in 1961. Still would, even at this point in life where I should know better.