A review of the BBC Documentary – & ruminatIons on a bygone era:
The infamous tale of Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice Davis and John Profumo – which almost led to the collapse of Macmillan’s Government – has been told before. So too Stephen Ward’s part in it. It’s often been recounted by the self-same ex-Express journalist, Tom Mangold, who first reported on the events as they originally unfolded in the early 1960’s. Mangold, now one of if not the last living witness of this story, presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the scandal in 2013 but this, his televisual retelling, is well worth watching.
Credit BBC & British Movietone News / AP Archive
History has long vilified Stephen Ward as pervet, pimp, and as a procurer of young women. His legacy has been to be remembered (if he was remembered at all) as louche, a lothario and a social climber. His crime? To be judged and damned by the morals of an earlier era; of a deferential age. In an interview in the Daily Mail as recently as 2014, Mandy Rice Davies said of Ward: “I’d never heard of him practising anything that wasn’t, today, in the book Fifty Shades of Grey.” Her words remind us that, as the novelist L.P. Hartley wrote:
“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
In 1961 when Profumo had an affair with Christine Keeler (two years before the scandal broke) nice girls didn’t – or didn’t admit to being sexually active. The Pill, released at the end of 1961 on the NHS, was only available for married women. Abortion was still illegal. And, in the early 1960’s, young people could and did leave school at fifteen to join the workforce. They were considered adults.
The BBC drama The Trial of Christine Keeler starring Sophie Cookson, Ellie Bamber, James Norton, and Emilia Fox (which was first broadcast at the end of 2019) reframes the Profumo Affair through the eyes of the young Keeler. It makes much of her vulnerability (supposed or genuine) given she was then nineteen. It also frames Ward as a groomer of young women, firmly linking the historical scandal to today’s #me-too era.
This documentary takes a different tack.
Here Mangold sketches a portrait of the osteopath and socialiser in the same way Ward, as amateur artist, might have once captured someone’s likeness. Black-and-white interview film footage from the era (which can currently be viewed on YouTube) shows a man with panache, elegance and style. But, what comes across most clearly in the footage, is his naïveté. Dr. Stephen Ward was a Vicar’s son, whose maternal grandparents were Anglo-Irish land owners. His was a middle class upbringing, with little academic success. Yet, after the war, he managed to inveigle himself into the upper echelons of society and was befriended by people like Lord Astor. His naïveté? His belief that such friendships would withstand the shock of political and legal scandal, and that the establishment wouldn’t close their doors to him. In fact they stitched him up as scapegoat extraordinaire, in a meeting at the Atheneum Club, closing ranks to better protect their own reputations.
Tom Mangold, who befriended Ward whilst covering the Profumo scandal, narrates and hosts the documentary with the full benefit of hindsight. In exploring the miscarriage of justice which befell Ward he contextualises the tale, paying scant lip service to today’s perspective on yesteryear. Or, to put it another way, Mangold doesn’t much concern himself with the possible vulnerability of either Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice Davies. Instead he makes it clear they both were, as he himself was, more world-wise – and streetwise – than his subject.
In 1961 Mandy Rice Davies met Christine Keeler whilst both girls were dancers at Murray’s Cabaret Club, a private members club which had first opened in Beak Street in 1913 and which, in its post-war heyday, had over 60,000 members. Mandy had come down to London from Birmingham, leaving her job as a fashion model for a department store. She was sixteen. Christine was three years older. Neither of the two girls were sheltered ingenues from the Home Counties and both had dated, and were dating, numerous men.
“Royalty, film stars, and leading politicians rubbed shoulders with gangsters on the fringes of polite society. Princess Margaret, King Hussein of Jordan, Jean Harlow, Randolph Churchill, the Krays – all were members of this notoriously exclusive Club.”
murraysclubarchive.com/history
One such man was Dr. Stephen Ward.
Ward had trained as an osteopath in America before the war, but was unsuccessful in getting his qualifications recognised by the RAMC for wartime service. Thus he was commissioned first as a stretcher bearer and then as second lieutenant for non-medical duties. Posted to India, he met and treated Ghandi (whom he said had a profound effect on him) but his wartime experiences lead to a nervous breakdown and discharge on disability grounds. Post-war Stephen Ward got a job at the Osteopathic Association Clinic in Dorset Square, treating luminaries such as the American ambassador; and Winston Churchill. He later opened his own practice in Cavendish Square and, once he had established himself as highly successful society doctor, the same clientele who graced his therapy-couch found their way onto the pages of his sketchbook.
Having taken classes at the Slade, Ward was commissioned to do a series of society portraits for the Illustrated London News and footage from the period, deftly spliced into this documentary, amusingly shows him sketching the late Terry Thomas – a comedic actor who often played debonair lotharios. Ward’s sketches captured striking young women, ageing actors and successful novelists of the day such as Frederick Mullaly. Two of his finished works still hang on the walls of Cliveden and, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, Tom Mangold stands in front of a portrait of a young Duke of Edinburgh, coupled with one of Mandy Rice Davies, and warns viewers not to read anything into their placement.
Stephen Ward also made at least two erotic nudes studies of Mandy Rice Davies whilst they were lovers. In both she looks relaxed and happy. But then, brief research of her personal history reveals Rice Davies was once engaged to Peter Rachmann (the infamous Notting Hill slum lord) who was more than twice her age. More so, following his sudden heart attack, she was apparently ‘consoled in her grief’ by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Lord Astor.
England in 1963 is a long, long way from Britain in 2020. Neither Christine Keeler, nor Mandy Rice Davies were they led up Cliveden’s garden path into licentiousness and abuse.
Interweaving audio interviews with news footage, Mangold narrates events and ably creates a sense of the era; Archive film footage capturing the sheer magnitude of the scandal (and the public interest) most notably when we see the crowd surging and heaving outside the Old Bailey, as if waiting for The Beatles. Piece by piece Mangold makes his case and delivers his verdict on the establishment.
Yevgeny Ivanov, the Russian naval attache, was befriended by Stephen Ward who introduced him to Christine Keeler. She may well have been sleeping with him at the same time she was seeing John Profumo. Was Stephen Ward working a honey trap, with Keeler pretending to fish nuclear secrets from the then Minister for War? Was Ward a stringer for the security services? Was he coaxed to suicide? The latter theory exists, although it isn’t mentioned in this documentary. Instead Mangold simply raises the possibility that MI5 or MI6 could have stepped forward to save his life – but damned him by their inaction.
The regret Mangold undoubtedly still feels, more than twenty five years on, in having left a man whom he considered a friend alone on the last night of his life – having left him to make an attempt on his own life – is visceral.
The 1960s led to the decline of deference, the erosion of class barriers, and the sexual revolution. And, at the very start of that decade, the two glamorous young women at the heart of this scandal were both hounded, feted (and paid) by the press. Their story became the stuff of showbiz legend, re-told in film, television drama, musical theatre, and many a documentary whilst other political scandals have been neatly swept under the rug.
In contrast, Dr. Stephen Ward remains the villain of the piece. He was tried and convicted – whilst in a coma – primarily due to the judge’s famous and excoriating summation which, interestingly, now seems to be missing from the court files. Court documents and sealed secret service and police files, which might posthumously clear his name, do not become available for public viewing until 2046. Whatever his peccadilloes, Stephen Ward was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
It’s a scandal.