Carmen

Iconic drag queen Carmen has died aged 75.

The one-time stripper, gay rights advocate and former Wellington mayoral candidate had suffered months of poor heath and finally succumbed to kidney failure.

Stuff

When I was writing some posts about March, 1973 I came across ads for Carmen’s niteclub The Balcony which was located at 57a Victoria Street in Wellington.  57a Victoria Street is now the Wellington Public Library where I went today to read about Carmen.  I have read Carmen’s autobiography before (Having a Ball), but for some reason I never got around to posting about this book, and the woman who wrote it (or, to be more honest, who had it written up for her).  It was a frustrating time at the library.  The copy of the Listener that has a review of her Red Mole Revue was missing, and the microfiche reel for the Dominion during the month Bob Jones orchestrated Carmen’s run at the mayoralty in 1977 had also disappeared.

Born into a family of 13 children in 1935 on a Taumarunui farm as Trevor Rupe, Carmen-to-be was dressing in his mother’s clothing at age 11. As soon as he could leave school Rupe headed to Auckland and Wellington and experimented with drag performances while doing compulsory military training and working as a nurse and waiter, before everything changed when she arrived in Sydney’s Kings Cross in the late 50s.

Gaynz

Driving home after my failed trip to the library I filmed this clip.  Victoria, Vivian and Cuba Street were Carmen’s stomping grounds in Wellington in the 60s and 70s.  She set up and closed down numerous businesses.  The most famous were The Balcony and her International Coffee Lounge.  None of these places exist anymore.  Even the buildings are gone in most cases.  The Egyptian, Carmen’s Down Town, Cleopatra’s Coffee Lounge, The Peacock.

I went chasing ghosts.

Here is an obituary from a friend of Carmen’s which made me sad, and here is a clip taken very recently.

So long, Carmen.

I hope they raise a glass for you on Vivian Street tonight.

Islington comes to New Zealand

An Odd Walking Tour of Early Radio in New Zealand

Part Three

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of what happened in World War One will find the following appreciation of Lord Islington and his class darkly humourous.

He is a fine example of that kind of ability – all round ability – which has always been displayed by the British governing class…. His instinct is to be a man first and last, a man for a man’s work, and New Zealand will be a good field for it.

Evening Post, 24 May 1910

It is a little unclear from this “appreciation” if (a) Islington’s second instinct was to be a woman, or (b) if New Zealand was enthused about Islington’s desire to prove his manhood willy nilly all over our country.  Nevertheless, it was certainly a belief in the ruling class’ all round ability that led to such corking decisions as having old Winnie Churchill plan the Gallipoli campaign.  And it was certainly a totally naive attitude to manhood that led the first waves of soldiers over the top into a withering machine gun welcome from Germany.

As it happens, Islington was friends with Winston Churchill, and with a chap who was always called Colonel Seely (who wrote a book called Fear and be Slain, and a biography of his horse).  Of the three, Islington had the least glittering career.  In fact there are enough hints among the glowing tributes to suggest that Izzy was a bit dull.  Aside from being told that he was not eloquent, the readers in New Zealand eager for news of their new Governor General could glean that he was “eager and interested, hard-working, and a glutton for detail”; that his personal motto was to be “thorough”; and that he liked to dig down for detail (that word again) ”and always his digging is solidly good.”

At the farewell his tenantry arranged at the Angel Hotel in Chippenham (in which Islington was admired and appreciated by his loyal tenants), the Lord explained how much he had enjoyed his work on the Royal Commisions, and how much he looked forward to witnessing New Zealand’s “experiments” (women voting, old people having some money, etc).  His real duty as Governor, he felt, was to strengthen “the ties which bind that distant Dominion to the Mother Country”; Dominions which must “increasingly support” Britain (Evening Post, 15 June 1910).  Apparently he was also a good speaker on agricultural reform; a field that has contributed much to the annals of great oratory.

The prospect of a dull toff arriving galvanised the New Zealand of 1910.  Two things needed to be got ready.  The new Governor General’s residence, and a welcoming parade.

How to Welcome a Governor General: (1) Organise a parade

When you organise a parade in an egalitarian country like New Zealand it is very important that you get the marching order right: non-entities at the front, and VIPs clustered about his Lordship at the climax of the parade (think of his Lordship as being like Santa at the Santa Parade).  Let’s see then who the unimportant and important were in 1910.

Procession Order

Non-entities (to be a front of procession, out of sight Izzy)

• Boy Scouts
• Sons and Daughter of Temperance
• British Independent Order of Oddfellows
• Independent Order of Rachibites
• United Ancient Order of Druids
• Ancient Order of Foresters

Entities (can be seen but not spoken to by Izzy)

• People with proper jobs (judges, soldiers, politicians)

Celestial Bodies (may talk with Izzy)

• The Prime Minister

Hopefully the Prime Minister’s staff warned him to stay away from the topics of agricultural reform, imperialism, and trade in the West Indies.  Mind you, Sir Joseph Ward was a fairly dull man himself.

Getting the Governor General off his ship and into Parliament was essentially an exercise in fitting in as many speeches and reponses as possible so that important people could say how happy they were that Islington was here, and Islington could say how happy he was to be here.  The Prime Minister would get to do this a few times, the Mayor of Wellington a little bit.  The riff raff got to clap.  It was going to be marvellous.

The planned route was onto Post Office Square, up Panama Street, along Lambton Quay, up Molesworth Street and then into Parliament.  There was a great deal of planning around where people could park their carriages, and who they should leave their cards with, and what people should wear (members of Friendly Societies were to wear small streamers of red, white and blue).

Stands had to be erected, marching bands prepared, and everything along the route given a once over.  Wellington was to be looking its best.

How to Welcome a Governor General: (2) Build the Governor a House

I was delighted to discover that the current Governor General’s residence in New Zealand was built on the site of Wellington’s former lunatic asylum.

On 24 May 1910, the Marlborough Times reported on building progress,

There is a general belief “on the job” that the work will easily be completed by the middle of June, in ample time for the new Governor’s immediate occupation upon arrival.

Good to know that the builders in New Zealand were as reliable in 1910 as they are now.  The Governor’s new digs weren’t ready when he arrived, nor for two months afterwards.  In fact much of the reporting around this new house is pretty funny (more on that soon).

So, a bit of a let down about the house, but the parade was all ready for Lord Islington when he arrived on the 22 June, 1910.  Let’s imagine, then, that it is the 21st of June now, 1910, and we are going to bed in Wellington with our fingers crossed for good weather.  The Mayor has checked and rechecked his speech.  The Premier has made sure his best suit is pressed.  The stands at Post Office Square and Parliament have been swept clean and hung with bunting, and somewhere out at sea is a Lord, tucked up in his sheets, as the Ulimaroa steams through night towards an expectant city.

I remember you (2/2)

HOYTS is closing its Regent cinema in Manners Mall, making way for a new retail development.

The final reels will roll tomorrow and the site will be vacated by the end of the month.

Manager Kirsty Renwick has worked at the cinema for 12 years, “and I’m not even the longest”.

Ms Renwick said it had not quite sunk in that the cinema was closing yet, “but as I see it get stripped down it will probably get quite emotional”.

Dominion Post, 18 August 2009

I can’t really say why I have become fascinated with a building in Wellington that doesn’t even exist anymore.  Yesterday after school I raced down to the library for an hour to try and track down two old Evening Post articles about retiring usherettes who used to work in the Regent.  Looked at from any angle this is very odd behaviour.  Never mind.  They were a diverting read.

In 1987 the Evening Post carried a story about Diane Jones.

Ms Jones was retiring after 23 years as an usherette.  She had spent the last five years at the new Regent complex, and the previous 18 doing her job at the Majestic.

During 23 years as an usherette, Ms Diane Jones, of Kilbirnie, has seen standards slip.  There was too much bad language, sex and violence in today’s movies, she said on Saturday, her last day in the business.  “It astounds me what they can get away with,” she said the Censor was not doing his job well.

Ms Jones, let me assure you that we had a lot more slippage to come.

Ms Jones said she always enjoyed working at a good comedy when the theatre vibrated with laughter.  And the lovers in the back row of the movie theatres always provided a good laugh for the staff she said.  There were still young people who liked to cuddle up in the dark.

Curiously after 23 years Ms Jones was not retiring.

Ms Jones said she felt like a change.  She has taken a clerical job at Wellington Hospital.

It was the Regent that Ms Jones worked at that I remember.  In the 80s and early 90s I saw a few movies at Regent Cinemas.  It had three screens inside the space that the old cavernous Regent had previously filled with one, and it had a real 80s glamour to it.  Lots of red velvet curtains, and gold handrails, and mirrors.  Underneath the theatres was a shopping arcade.  As time went on this shopping arcade became totally deserted, and the street kids began tagging everything, and all the 80s glamour became run down and shabby.  I had a friend who was assaulted on the back stairs of this version of the Regent, and I had my brand new tape of Achtung Baby swiped from the spacies on the second floor.

I have two enduring memories from that Regent.  It was there that I learned that Kurt Cobain had killed himself.  A friend told me and I couldn’t believe it.  The news just seemed so ridiculous.  My other memory was of being totally blown away by the movie The Doors, and staggering out in a kind of daze and deciding I wanted to be Jim Morrison.  It took me a long, long time to recover from that movie.  Actually, I also remember that for an absolute age they had a poster up for Prince’s movie Graffiti Bridge and I don’t think they ever screened it.

Eventually things got so dire at the Regent that I think everyone stopped going.  I had a friend who worked at MindGames in the shopping arcade below.  They were about the last shop to flee the place after they were broken into and the robbers did a massive turd in the middle of the shop as a final insult.

When the theatres reopened as Hoyts 5 they were ghastly.

The Evening Post in 1979 carried an article on Alice Needham who was retiring after 43 years as an usherette.

Starting in Gisborne in the days “when we had tapestries on the walls and served coffee and biscuits at the interval,” Miss Needham looks back on nearly half a century of cinema as “a world of its own.  When I started out we were coming out of the Depression and about 200 girls queued up in Gisborne for a job as an usherette.  In those days Sir Robert [Kerridge] handpicked his usherettes – I was lucky to be one of the four chosen.”

Miss Needham declares Mutiny on the Bounty to be her all time favourite movie, and gives the prize for most popular to Hard Day’s Night.

She recalls Sir Bernard Fergusson as Governor General going to see a movie.  When he came in everyone in the theatre stood up.  When he popped out everyone stood up.  When he came back in everyone stood up.  Sir Fergusson was a little embarrassed and started running about flapping his arms and telling everyone to sit down.

“I never had any trouble in all those years – except with one man.  He was a very large, very drunk Norwegian seaman who had fallen asleep during the 5pm session.  I had to wake him up.  He apparently thought I was some other woman, and started to chase me all over the cinema yelling he was going to crucify me.”

Alice’s retirement coincided with the Regent Theatre’s last night.  When she left the job the Regent in its old form closed it’s doors for the last time and was demolished for the glam 80s Regent that I knew.

On the back page of the same edition of the Evening Post there is a picture of the theatre manager Bill Wander standing on the theatre steps with a small article below.

After the 8pm show a few words may be said and regular customers will be able to toast their goodbyes with a glass of wine.  Tomorrow people will begin removing the photographs, fittings and equipment which will go to other Kerridge Odeon theatres around the country.

After 43 years Alice was retiring to look after her mother.  She received a presentation clock and “substantial cheque” from Sir Robert.

“I started in the Regent in Gisborne and I finish in the Regent in Wellington,” she says, “and in between have had a life which I would gladly have over again.”

So, I am sad to see that what is being built on the site of the Regent now is not a theatre.  There has been a theatre of some kind or other on that piece of land since 1878.  Theatres are special places.  Like Ms Jones said, they could “vibrate with laughter” or be a place for lovers to meet.  130 years of laughter and tears has disappeared.  Of torches in the dark, and jaffas down the aisle, and Governor Generals, and standing for the anthem, and high wire acts, and orchestras, and Clara Bow.  All gone.

Here is the advertisement for the opening night of the first theatre on the site.  It comes  from the Evening Post, 20 May, 1878.  The first night of 130 years.

And what a night it was.

I remember you (1/2)

Stories about 22 December, 1927

This post was going to start differently.  It was going to start with two then and now photos of a famous landmark in Wellington, but when I went to take the now photo after work yesterday I discovered that the building I wanted to take a picture of had been knocked down.

Firstly, let me say that I had mixed feelings about this.  When I say famous landmark I am being a little bit cute because the Regent Theatre on Manners Street wasn’t really a famous landmark in Wellington.  I was going to argue, however, that it sort of should be.  Secondly, if I am honest, I should also say that I was going to mock the modern version of the movie theatre that used to stand there, because from the street the Regent movie complex sure looked ugly compared to what used to be there.

What I end up with now is a completely different post because even though I was going to mock the Regent movie complex I now feel rather sad that it is gone, and I also feel that people in Wellington have been robbed of a little bit of history that we weren’t even really aware of.

So let’s start with the photos, and see where this post takes us.

Here is the “then” photo:

Regent Theatre, Manners Street, 1950s

And here is the “now” photo:

It turns out there has been a theatre of some sort on this spot in Wellington for over one hundred years.  As far as I can ascertain the first theatre here was called the Opera House, which had become Everybody’s Theatre by 1914, and then the Tivoli:

This was in April of 1924.  The Tivoli did not last long.  By July of 1926 there are ads in the Evening Post asking for carpenters and bricklayers at the Regent Theatre.  December saw considerable build up in the press for the grand opening on the 10th,

And here is the write up for the opening night.

Don’t you wish you had been there?  Boy, they really knew how to turn on a good show in 1926.  Orchestras on hydraulic stages, high-wire acts, soloists, speeches, anthems, and a jolly exciting movie with smartly-liveried usherettes in attendance.

It looked pretty swish inside too:

On 22 December, 1927 the Regent was playing Rough-house Rosie starring that year’s sensation Clara Bow.

Which is how this post started.  With me looking at the entertainment page of the Evening Post in 1927 and thinking “Clara Bow? Why does that ring a bell?” and only later realising that the Regent Theatre where her movie was playing must have been the Regent Theatre where I had been as a kid and a teenager.  Of course I never went to the swish looking Regent Theatre described above.  I went to the 80s and 90s version of the Regent Theatre which had a different type of glamour.

But more of that next time.

Cages

Stories about 2 March, 1981 (6/10)

One of the things that fascinated me about the old Kirkcaldie and Stains were the people who drove the lifts.  Everyone would pile in and stand there, and next to the control panel would be a person in a Kirk’s uniform with a little metal bracket kind of thing they would twist on the control panel to make the lift ascend or descend or stop.  At the time it struck me as an incredibly interesting job.  Looking back now I have to wonder about your mental health doing such a job five days a week all the year round.  I am also fascinated by the fact that people always had to tell the operator what floor they wanted when there were only two floors anyway.

In Japan most of the fancy, older department stores still have elevator girls (as they are called).  The fact that this has survived as a custom is extraordinary considering that lifts do not need to be driven anymore.  Nevertheless, it survives, mainly – I suspect – as an example of customer service in a country where customer service is king.  The elevator girls are young, and wear immaculate (pastel) uniforms with white  gloves and hats, and at each floor come slightly out of the lift to bow, make an announcement and gesture up or down.  These girls are hand-picked to look just right, and trained to bow at precisely the correct angle.  It is fascinating to behold and, once again, horrible to contemplate as a form of employment.

Probably my favourite article in the Evening Post for 2 March, 1981 is about Bill Richardson.  Bill operated the 1919 Otis lift in the old Parliament buildings.  It was his job to “wait patiently for eight hours a day in his cage lift at New Zealand’s centre of power.”  Bill was originally from Lancashire and had served in World War Two.  The Queen had once ridden in his lift and took the time to comment on his medals (presumably he was dressed up for the occasion of the regal lift ride).

Bill reflects that since the Beehive was built two years ago he no longer sees Mr. Muldoon at 7.45 every morning.  It must have felt a bit of a downgrade to be stuck with the Opposition.  Asked to reflect on his customers Bill offers the best political commentary of the day:

“There’s one MP who never uses the lift.  Mr Rowling never uses the lift.  Always runs up the stairs.  Mr Lange always uses the lift.”

Ouch.

However, the article ends sadly,

The only one of Parliament’s messengers who actually likes “being in a cage all day” Bill says the job keeps him younger.  He lost his wife last year and believes that without the friendly contact the lift gives him “I don’t know what would have happened to me”.

I wonder what did happen to Bill.

I am struck that Bill’s story makes for quite an interesting premise for a one man play.  There is certainly something to be said for the metaphor of a man in a cage performing the same task over and over again for his life, and surviving on human contact.  Not to mention the endless opportunities to be catty about dozens of politicians. 

Regardless of all that, I hope Bill was given the chance to retire, and not shoved out with Labour’s new broom in 1984.  He would have known the Labour politicians pretty well by then.  Let’s hope Mr Lange bore him no ill will.