Omertà

Three blind spots that were never spoken about; one of whom died a year ago; are the deceased, though rumours persist otherwise, James ("Smoothy John") Bradish, and Kenneth ("Kenny") Frewin.

The anchor to those mentioned is a man born five months after the deceased in 1946. His history, especially from the late Sixties, through the Seventies, to the Eighties, is enmeshed in the above. He gave himself the nickname "Eggman," was mostly known as Tony in general circumstances, "Ants" to intimates, "Arturo" in past writings and correspondence, and now answers to the name "Antonio."

To those of us who knew him in the context of the studio where he was employed part-time in the afternoons (until 1968), he was Arthur. He remains Arthur, as far as I am concerned, but this tripartite association with Farrant, Frewin and Bradish (the latter two were unknown to me even though I knew them by sight), was always to be a disturbing fact. I would describe them as belonging to the criminal class because of their inherent moral degeneracy. Bradish has only one criminal conviction of which I am aware, while Farrant and Frewin received prison sentences for a raft of offences in the Seventies.

Every time I have attempted to broach him on these matters, as I did earlier today regarding Frewin, Arthur's response remains the same, evoking an uncomfortable feeling of historic collusion of silence.

Everything was fine between Arthur and I until he absconded with Mary (whom he called "Maura"), the wife of David Farrant, and quit with next to no warning his part-time-job at the studio. They ran off to Devon for six months. Mary became pregnant with her second child, and, upon returning to Highgate, prepared to join her parents in Southampton after giving birth. This she did in August 1969. Meanwhile, Farrant was that month evicted from their flat, suffered the ignominy of becoming bankrupt, and finding himself homeless, Arthur offered him the coal bunker beneath his own ground floor flat in Archway Road, not far from where he had met Mary, a barmaid, in The Woodman pub.

Astonishingly, Farrant accepted the offer from the man who had run off with his wife a few months earlier, and made the best of his new situation; occasionally popping up the cellar stairs to make a cup of tea. Their association, however, continued well into the Eighties. Farrant had been arrested in August 1970, and did not return to his coal bunker upon being released. Instead, he was accommodated by someone he knew (they had met in the Prince of Wales pub) who also had an eye for Mary. His name was James Bradish. Farrant loathed Bradish and sought to cause him maximum trouble because of the revelation Mary made to her husband of Bradish making a pass at her when they were alone together. Bradish, who liked Farrant, arranged for his friend's release from Brixton Prison by offering him lodgings at his home in Manor Road, Barnet, and organising employment (as a porter) at Barnet General Hospital. During this fairly brief period, Gillian Bradish received anonymous black magic telephone threats. Soon afterwards, Farrant found a bed-siting room over a chemist shop in Archway Road, almost opposite where Arthur, his wife and family resided at Priestwood Mansions.

Farrant by now had appointed his friend Frewin to be his personal "minder." Frewin happily obliged, and threatened anyone whom Farrant pointed the finger at. I was to receive a number these threats. Un-intimidated, I chose to ignore Frewin's unpleasant overtures. These reached a crescendo when I attended, along with a friend (Katrina Garforth-Bles), a supposed black magic duel between David Farrant and John Pope on the first Hallowe'en following Farrant's release from prison in 1976. This curious spectacle with press and public fully in attendance took place in Highgate Wood after dark.

Frewin came straight up to Katrina and I, snarling and spitting. I looked over at Farrant and indicated that he should call his baying hound off. He didn't. However, there was a large police presence that Frewin was not entirely oblivious to, and, as they approached, the "minder" moved into the shadows.

The concern I have always had is the Bradish and Frewin connection where Arthur Hill is concerned.

David Farrant with James and Gillian Bradish at Manor Road (above).

They Walk Among Us CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW TO ACCESS PODCAST

‎Show They Walk Among Us - UK True Crime, Ep Season 4 - Episode 11 - 6 Aug 2019

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‎Show They Walk Among Us - UK True Crime, Ep Season 4 - Episode 11 - 6 Aug 2019

Remembering Jean

Jean Simmons was born on 31 January 1929 in Islington, London, a place I was once very familiar with in my earlier years. It was where I had my studio, and where a myriad of memories are conjured.

Jean played the female lead opposite Richard Burton in The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope film and an enormous financial success. This exceptional film was broadcast by BBC2 over Easter 2020.

The 5' 4" tall actress was beautiful in so many ways; especially her softly spoken English voice that was every bit as alluring as the rest of her. Feminine tenderness and charm were her hall-mark.

She died from lung cancer at her home in Santa Monica on 22 January 2010, nine days before her eighty-first birthday. Jean's home was minutes away from my cousin (daughter of a maternal cousin) who works in the industry, and is the only remaining relative with whom I still have close contact.

Jean Simmons is interred in Highgate Cemetery, another place with which I am more than well acquainted and have spoken about. The place, not publicised, is probably difficult to locate by those without knowledge of it. Strangely, no published biography or autobiography of Jean Simmons exists.

        

Above is the front and rear of Jean Simmons' Santa Monica home in California, very close to my first cousin once removed. The Southern Colonial-style house, built in 1950, opens to a swimming pool with a brick surround and a guesthouse. There are distressed wood floors, painted beams and a living room with a fireplace. The home, set behind gates on slightly more than a quarter-acre, hit the market in July 2019 for about $7 million and sold in roughly five weeks. The current owner is actor Jonah Hill.

Jean (1929-2010) had been placed on an Islington Council list for a possible blue plaque but, alas, there were insufficient public votes, which, frankly, I find incredible. Yet, perhaps, not really when one considers how, sadly, London has changed out of all recognition in every possible way imaginable.

Amanda Nevill, CEO of the British Film Institute (who had attended Jean’s memorial service in London) was contacted in August 2018 to suggest a Jean Simmons retrospective and the unveiling of a plaque. Misss Nevill referred the matter to English Heritage Blue Plaques, but they declined as the subject had to be deceased for at least twenty years. In May 2019, radio DJ Mike Read of the British Plaque Trust was contacted, who initially expressed interest in the project. Unfortunately, he did not respond to subsequent e-mails. Consequently, the Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America were contacted and pledged a significant donation towards the cost of erecting a plaque.

Jean was born at 42 Hillmarton Road, Holloway, London, ten minutes' walk from my parents' home, in January 1929 to physical training instructor Charles Simmons and Winifred Ada Loveland.

In 1932, the Simmons family moved to 120 Cheviot Gardens, on the new Golders Green Estate in Cricklewood. The family was evacuated to Winscombe in Somerset for a period during the Blitz years of the Second World War. Jean Simmons attended Orange Hill School for Girls in Edgware for a time.

It was in 1943, a fortnight after she had begun to attend the Aida Foster school of dance and drama (my wife graduated in dance and drama) in nearby Golders Green, that she was chosen by producer and director Val Guest to appear in the film Give Us the Moon (1944), an auspicious year for me.

A brilliant “natural” actress, Jean went on to star along with most of the great actors and directors in Great Britain and Hollywood. In 1950, she had followed her future first husband, actor Stewart Granger, to Hollywood and they were married in Tucson, Arizona. Ten years later she married film director and producer Richard Brooks. Like her first marriage, this second one also ended in divorce.

This stunningly beautiful lady, much-loved and admired by fellow actors, directors, producers, and legions of adoring film fans world-wide, died at her home in Santa Monica aged eighty, on 22 January 2010. Her ashes were interred in the famous Highgate Cemetery West where many celebrated folk also rest in tombs. The western part, of course, became associated with the supernatural in the twentieth century about which I have written, and discussed in multifarious television programmes. 

One last fact that interestingly connects Jean Simmons to myself is that she died on Byron's birthday.

Proposal - Three and Thirty Years Ago

It sometimes happens that a man and a woman meet and instantly recognise the other half of themselves behind the eyes of each other. Such a meeting occurred between Sarah and I. From the first moment we met and gazed upon each other, our spirits rushed together joyfully, ignoring convention and custom, driven by an inner knowing ― too overwhelming to be denied. It is more than coincidence that, out of the whole world, Sarah and I should be drawn together at the appointed time. Through each other we found wholeness. For I did not know how empty was my life until it was filled with Sarah.

Exactly thirty-three years ago, on Passion Sunday, April 1987, whilst staying at her parents’ rambling Wiltshire home, I asked Sarah to marry me. She accepted and the following week, on her birthday, I presented her with a solitaire engagement ring. We had spent the entire day at Avebury where ancient stones stand tall. Four months later we were married in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, at 11.15am. 

Sarah arrived in a vintage 1930s Roche-Talbot. On this thirty-third anniversary of our engagement, which also falls on Passion Sunday, we recall that special day of promising ourselves to each other.

Sarah made a beautiful bride. On the last evening together as single people we had walked in the moonlight at twilight in a wooded area close to her parents’ house. Bats suddenly filled the darkening sky, some swooping to touch us as we stopped to look at them. It was somehow fitting, symbolic of a last brush with a world we had both encountered from completely different perspectives.

From Dampest, Darkest Highgate

"David had various framed images on the wall of the room where he spent the last weeks of his life, all of an occult nature – which Jamie helpfully  put up. Some of these you will all be familiar with from the many videos which were filmed at the flat David and I shared in Muswell Hill. It seems that a member of nursing staff (who had grown up in a part of the  world where spirits and witchdoctors are greatly feared) took exception to these images, and found out more than a little about his reputation.  So much so that within half an hour of David’s passing I came under an  extraordinary amount of pressure from her to arrange for him to be  ‘taken away’ – as soon as possible. Not when the sun rose – but  IMMEDIATELY! The member of staff’s fears were entirely supernatural in origin. It turned out that she was terrified of his living presence – but his mortal remains sent her paranoia through the roof." — "Della Farrant" (9 April 2020)

_________________________________________________________________________________

From Dampest, Darkest Highgate

From dampest, darkest Highgate I came

To seek out phantoms and fame,

Which led to my spell in jail,

And the telling of my tale.

From dampest, darkest Highgate I chose

A coal cellar bunker to put my clothes

And weary head out of which

I thought I'd be a witch.

From dampest, darkest Highgate I came not.

Instead Muswell Hill became my lot. 

Where from that bedsitting room I saw

Many a journo knock on my door.

From dampest, darkest Muswell Hill

It grew damper and darker until

Memories of the coal cellar

Did fill this fellow

From

Dusk

To

Dawn.

Yawn.

Mind if I smoke

And take a toke?

What

Was

That

You

Were

Asking

Me?

Sorry,

It's

My

Memory.

Thirteen Years Hence

Upon Hearing of the Anniversary of his Death

Is it really a whole year since you entered the tomb

Where worms lurk all night long, without song,

Without the flutter of a stutter from the womb

Whence came you from that darkened room?

It won't be long,

I hear you ask,

Where's the throng?

They're in The Flask!

Is it really twelve months since you gasped

Your last

In that frightful place? Rasped and rasped

So fast, so fast!

Or is it much longer since that door

Shut on your designer box? 

Half a century or more?

When a fox cried.

When a fox died.

Holy Week