The Scandalous Woman Who Descended Into Respectability

“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

As a witness at the 1963 trial of osteopath Stephen Ward on charges of “living off immoral earnings,” Mandy Rice-Davies, a nightclub dancer and model, had just been told that the 3rd Viscount Astor, William (known as Bill), had denied sleeping with her. All at once, it seems, centuries of privilege had finally been checkmated with her saucy response.

Ms. Rice-Davies was not the principal figure in the Profumo sex scandal that rocked British politics, society and culture to their foundations, but she was the one who made the definitive remark about the case. The age of deference had collapsed in America with the election of Andrew Jackson to the Presidency; now, in the U.K., 135 years later, it had been given the insolent, funny jolt it deserved with her crack.

Ms. Rice-Davies, who died last week at age 70 after a short battle with cancer, might have been the most fascinating figure associated with what Sunday Herald reporter Barry Didcock called "the yardstick against which all other political scandals are measured." She did not experience a vertiginous fall from power like John Profumo, the government minister who had shared a mistress with a Soviet naval attache (i.e., KGB intelligence officer); she did not die in disgrace and legal jeopardy, as did Stephen Ward, who used his connection to attractive young women to cement his ties with high government officials and celebrities; and, by living abroad, away from incessant media attention, she did not flounder in confusion, dismay, penury and alienation after her life came under scrutiny, as did her more vulnerable fellow cabaret dancer, Christine Keeler, Profumo’s mistress.

Instead, she is reported to have said, cheekily, in later years, “My life has been one long descent into respectability.”

The former teenaged goodtime girl achieved, after three husbands and countless headlines, something like the life she wanted. Successively, after the first feeding frenzy of the scandal abated, she became a cabaret singer; founder of a string of nightclubs and restaurants; and an actress and writer. Her last spouse, observed columnist Mark Steyn, was a businessman friend of Margaret Thatcher’s husband Denis. Thus, in the 1980s, was this woman who helped upend one Conservative government in the curious position of entertaining the Prime Minister of another. People who met her reported surprise that this high-school dropout and onetime department store clerk could speak knowledgeably about subjects as diverse as Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, and the artist Lucian Freud.

In one sense, she was a tabloid forebear of Monica Lewinsky—first the plaything of a powerful man, then the scapegoat for that man’s hypocrisy and lies. Unlike “that woman” (Bill Clinton’s phrase) who inadvertently instigated the 1998 impeachment drama, however, Ms. Rice-Davies remained proudly defiant, noting, “In those days, there were good girls and there were bad girls. Good girls didn’t have any sex at all, and bad girls had a bit.” 

For a long while, I’ve been interested in how the scandal erupted and its disastrous fallout for the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, as seen in this prior post of mine. But the death of Rice-Davies led me to review and re-think the case, which continues to fascinate me.

For instance, Ms. Rice-Davies had not heard from Ms. Keeler in three decades before her death. It might have been because the latter was already psychologically damaged goods even before the scandal, having been molested by several older men (including her stepfather) and aborted a baby. Perhaps, as a result, she resented Ms. Rice-Davies’ ability to distance herself, psychically and even physically (living in Spain, Germany, Israel, Florida and the Caribbean at various times), from her notoriety.

Second, though Rice-Davies was involved with Astor, she never met Profumo himself.

Third, though I saw the 1989 cinema account of the affair, Scandal, starring Bridget Fonda as Ms. Rice-Davies and Joanne Whalley as Ms. Keeler, the last quarter-century softened in my memory some of the details of the affair. I was taken aback all over again, then, when I read that the imbroglio grew out of a chance 1961 meeting at Cliveden, the country estate of Lord Astor, between Keeler, Profumo and Astor.

What brought me up short in re-reading all this was that location, a cushy estate that played host to every British sovereign since George I. Nearly a quarter-century before Profumo and Astor laid eyes on Keeler, Cliveden had been the epicenter of a group of aristocrats who wanted to appease Adolf Hitler, a cadre that gave rise to the derisive nickname “Cliveden Set.” You would think that someone like Lord Astor would have thought twice about allowing his landed estate to become an object of national scorn all over again.

But once Profumo—as lucky in marriage (his spouse was actress Valerie Hobson) as in politics—absorbed the charms of Ms. Keeler, emerging topless from Lord Astor’s pool, it was too late. He and Lord Astor promptly chased the young woman around the pool; Profumo embarked on a three-month affair that Keeler would expose in a newspaper interview in early 1963; and Astor took up with Rice-Davies. Profumo would be forced to resign his office and Astor would die several years later, largely, it was agreed, due to the stress created by his appearance in the tabloids.

Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott cites the Profumo imbroglio as an example of the superiority of British over American political sex scandals. While both are “often rooted in a dolor of middle-aged malaise,” he observed eight years ago after the Mark Foley (remember him?) scandal, those on the other side of the Atlantic are “also animated by spite, spicy details, vanity, revenge, bitter comedy, and bawdy excess—the complete Jacobean pantry.”

The Profumo scandal was more than the biggest sensation to hit Fleet Street in the 1960s. Its repercussions extended beyond the political into the cultural sphere, and beyond its own moment into our time.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Macmillan government’s disastrous fall from the electorate’s favor registered with an Irish-American U.S. President with anglophile tendencies and considerable affection for the Prime Minister. As I discussed in this post, John F. Kennedy had his own version of the Profumo scandal in the form of Ellen Rometsch, wife of an West German soldier—and, the FBI informed him, a likely spy for East Germany. JFK and brother Robert, immediately recognizing the peril of impeachment, had her deported immediately afterward—then let it be known to Congressional leaders that they needed to be careful about disclosure of their own peccadilloes, lest they be tempted to make political hay out of anything further that might come out about this woman.

Nearly a quarter century before Presidential candidate Gary Hart’s mad fling with Donna Rice opened the floodgates to greater scrutiny of U.S. candidates’ sex lives by the press, Britain’s Fleet Street had gotten there first—and then some. In a retrospective on the Profumo scandal published on its 50^th anniversary a year ago in the British publication The Guardian, Richard Davenport-Hines noted that the real offense in the affair lay in how British police intimidated witnesses and suborned perjury in their attempt to get Ward; and that the British press was in no mood to complain about such slippery investigatory methods because they themselves paid for stories.

On the culture front, those with comparatively short memories will recall that the saga of Rice-Davies, Astor, Keeler and Profumo gave birth not only to the 1989 film Scandal directed by Michael Caton-Jones, but also, a couple of years ago, to an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Stephen Ward, whose run in London’s West End lasted only a few months. But this whole affair also made its presence felt in another subtler, but longer lasting, manner.

In his 2011 biography, Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, NPR critic Tim Riley underscored just how prepared the scandal left the British public for the Beatles: “The hypocrisy of the ruling class had reached such heights that the Beatles seemed not just a necessary tonic but an all-conquering elixir. With their winning comic charisma and clear disdain for show business as usual, it was almost as if the Beatles led the way out of a public crisis, relegating Profumo to the tawdry clichés of political potboilers, with an unmistakable subtext: ‘What do you expect from a bunch of…stuffed shirts?’"

Quote of the Day (Anthony Weiner, on His First Disastrous Date With His Wife)

“So, we went out for a drink.., which is when I found out she doesn’t drink, and she orders tea and excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, and when she gets up, this cabal of four or five of her friends come over to the table and say: ‘Stay away. She wants no part of you.’ And this part of the story Huma disputes, but it’s true. She never came back. She ditched me.”—Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, on his first, failed attempt to pick up future wife Huma Abedin, quoted in Jonathan Van Meter, “The Post-Scandal Playbook,” The New York Times Magazine, April 14, 2013

Huma, Huma, didn’t anyone ever tell you that first impressions are not to be taken lightly—especially when it comes to work and love? Why didn't you walk and keep on walking, until you had put thousands of miles between yourself and this creep?

Look what you got yourself into—the father of your child not only had to give up his safe Congressional seat because of his by-now-infamous tweet, but also wants to pick up where he left off—i.e., plan a mayoral campaign where his past transgressions will become the subject of endless media fodder. After he bragged to your old boss Hillary Clinton that he had “teed up” a crowd for her, you were right to think, as you recalled to Jonathan Van Meter, “My God, he’s such a jerk.” Now he's proving it by opening himself--and you--to a whole new line of embarrassing questions mercifully cut off by his resignation. (For instance: Were any of the recipients of his sexting messages underage?)

I normally reserve Mondays for humor in my “Quote of the Day.” I thought seriously a few days ago of including Anthony Weiner’s explanation to Van Meter of the original impulses that led to his fall from grace. I’ve never read a more long-winded, more unintentionally humorous explanation of what, reduced to its essence, simply means, “I was a hopeless narcissist.”

And now, this hopeless narcissist wants to re-enter public life. It’s not unlike former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, ready to hop back into the arena not long after being hooted out of office for “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” Or Newt Gingrich, telling GOP primary voters last year about how he had to beg forgiveness from God for his past affair(s).

How much you want to bet that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a run for the U.S. Senate—maybe even governor again—out in California? (I mean, in another life, as The Terminator, he did tell us, “I’ll be back.”) And do you think John Edwards regards it now—with his wife no longer a visible reminder of his past disgrace, and his campaign-finance trial behind him—as such a completely wild dream to return to politics, and even at a high level?

Gary Hart must be kicking himself for being born too early. After leaving the 1988 Presidential race because of the disclosure of his fling with Donna Rice, he not only couldn’t get traction again when he tried to get back into the primaries, but he was even laughed out of town for even thinking about it. (David Letterman was typical: “In, out, in, out—isn’t that how he got into trouble in the first place?”)

I blame the new state of affairs on Bill Clinton. “The Comeback Kid” made the political arena safe for taking a walk on the wild side by enduring an impeachment attempt. (Of course, as Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor pointed out in his anatomy of the Weiner scandal two years ago, Clinton endured because he was a powerful man who had built up a lifetime of political chits, while Weiner was a mere Congressman who had bruised one Capitol Hill colleague after another.) Ever since then, one politician after another has sought redemption of one sort or another. I mean redemption on their terms, not anyone else’s, let alone God’s.

Would that they all could have taken a page from John Profumo. Fifty years ago, after the British Secretary of State for War resigned for misleading Parliament about his affair with a call girl (who was also bedding a Russian spy), he didn’t write memoirs, go on talk shows, or, especially, plot political comebacks. Instead, he went to the British charity Toynbee Hall, a London soup kitchen and settlement house, and volunteered for the most menial duties, starting with mop duty.

When he was knighted 12 years after leaving the Cabinet, it wasn’t for his government work, but for his tireless, unselfish philanthropy—work he maintained until his death seven years ago.

For Profumo in his final years, it was never about him, but all about the work. "Never explain, never complain" could have been his watchword. Too bad our politicians have forgotten that today.

This Day in British History (Sex-Espionage Scandal Figure Profumo Resigns)

June 5, 1963—With Fleet Street baying like wolves and Labour Party M.P.’s turning up the heat, Britain’s Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigned under pressure when statements about his role in a sex scandal involving a call girl and a Soviet naval attaché proved to be less than honest.

The resignation did not end the fallout from what remains the most consequential English sex scandal, however: Four months later, his boss, Harold Macmillan, resigned because of ill health, a condition only worsened by the crisis besieging his government; within a year, the Conservative Party had lost its grip on power; and the osteopath Stephen Ward, the man at the center of this sexual circus, had committed suicide on the last day of his trial for living off immoral earnings.

Americans who are not aging baby boomers (isn’t that last phrase redundant?) or students of British politics are most likely to know about Profumo, his topless dancer/party-girl/call-girl/ mistress Christine Keeler, and her showgirl/call-girl friend Mandy Rice-Davies from the 1989 film Scandal, starring Ian McKellan, Joanne Whalley, Bridget Fonda, and John Hurt.

Amid the welter of sex scandals that have burst out into the open on both sides of the Atlantic since then, it helps to remember why this one convulsed the British public: the possibility that Profumo engaged in pillow talk that might have divulged state secrets, all the time that Keeler was sleeping with Soviet intelligence officer Yevgeny Ivanov. (Such a connection was never proven, though by the turn of the century Keeler—with two marriages behind her and a flood of bills needing to be taken care of—claimed in an autobiography that Ward was a Soviet spy and had asked her to elicit information from Profumo about nuclear warheads in West Germany.)

Like Hugh Grant two decades later, Profumo occasioned considerable astonishment by consorting with a prostitute when he was already involved with a glamorous actress. The minister’s marriage to Valerie Hobson (remembered fondly for movie lovers as the adult Estella in David Lean’s magnificent adaptation of Great Expectations), along with his own talents and charm, made him a rising star within his party, making his fall all the more stunning.

Despite my longstanding reverence for his genius, I don’t hold with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum that “there are no second acts in American lives.” Our political history alone is filled with examples to the contrary, encompassing, while not being limited to, the following who made unlikely comebacks after their careers were considered over: John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard Taft, and Jimmy Carter. In Europe, the parliamentary system enables leaders to rise from the electoral dead again and again.

Profumo’s second act, different in kind in not degree from most of such cases, fills me with a kind of awe. Never returning to electoral politics, he began devoting himself unstintingly, quietly, and with who knows how much self-abnegation for someone of his class and ambitions, to Toynbee Hall, a charity in East London.

The news of Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer has led to the publication of a number of retrospectives that read, in essence, like obituaries in the making. Generally, Chappaquiddick has been mentioned, but pretty far into the pieces, and 99% of the time with the statement that the Massachusetts senator has spent much of the rest of his life atoning for the accident.

Without denying Kennedy’s considerable legislative acumen nor a humor, warmth and personal kindness that has won him friends on both sides of the isle, I don’t think that the his post-Chappaquiddick history compares with Profumo’s post-Keeler philanthropy. Not only did Kennedy never go to jail for leaving the scene of an accident, but he never had to give up electoral office and even his statements about the event didn't exhibit truth. In other words, the penance was incomplete.