Kenneth Williams’ memorable performances on radio, television and film made him one of the best loved comedians of his generation. Reputations s5e4: Kenneth Williams: Seriously Outrageous, BBC 1998
‘He was a melancholic depressed man shot through with moments of delight.’ ibid. Miriam Margoyles
One of the more unlikely soldiers in the British army. ibid.
Round the Horne was the most popular radio show of the day. ibid.
Williams was in big demand … A master at controlling an audience. ibid.
Williams’ comic persona was now a form of self protection. ibid.
By the mid-1960s Kenneth Williams’ flared nostrils, elastic vocal chords and distinct brand of comic hysteria had made him a unique performer. Nowhere more so than in the Carry On films. Reputations s5e5: Kenneth Williams: Desperately Funny
He became his own material. ibid.
He [Orton] urged Kenneth to shed his inhibitions. ibid.
He could be appalled by his own behaviour but the reaction it generated filled an emotional gap in his life. ibid.
Just a Minute was more than just a game show to Williams. ibid.
But in real life Williams could be far ruder and far angrier. ibid.
The television chat show and Williams became its king. ibid.
He had mused on suicide since his earliest days. ibid.
In a 60-year career that began with hand-cranked cameras and silent movie stars and ended with wide-screen technicolour and method actors Hitchcock would taste both success and failure. Reputations s6e4: Hitch: Alfred the Great, BBC 1999
The Hitchcocks were devout Catholics. ibid.
By the end of the 1930s he was ready for the biggest move of his career: Hollywood. ibid.
Under Capricorn … died at the box office and Transatlantic died with it driven into bankruptcy. ibid.
Fresh from the triumph of Psycho, nothing seems impossible. Reputations s6e5: Hitch: Alfred the Auteur
The successes of the past would prove elusive, and the man who valued order above all else would court chaos in his emotional life … The storm clouds were gathering. ibid.
Rear Window [1954] managed to be both experimental and crowd-pleasing. ibid.
Vertigo received a mauling. ibid.
Marnie bombed at the box office. His next film, Torn Curtain, his 50th feature, fared even worse. ibid.
He never wished to be king nor dreamed he would be. He was desperately shy, highly strung and prone to outbursts of uncontrollable rage ... Churchill called him a simpleton. Reputations: George VI: The Reluctant King, BBC 1999
When Edward gave up the throne for love and became Duke of Windsor a rift followed that was never healed. ibid.
He was bullied ... His time in the Navy was made retched by mental depression and physical pain. ibid.
The Prince of Wales, eighteen months older, was everything his brother was not: raffish, charming when he wanted to be, a follower of fashion, a man who loved the life of glamour and the adulation of the public. ibid.
In 1935 King George V and Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee. ibid.
Relations between the brothers and their partners were strained. There were in effect two royal courts. ibid.
The monarchy had survived its worst crisis since 1688. ibid.
The fact that the Duke of Windsor had lied about money broke the tie between the two brothers. ibid.
Palace officials were so concerned about the fits of rage that in 1947 they consulted the royal doctor. He advised that nothing could be done. ibid.
First, as they toured the bomb-damaged East End, they were not always welcomed ... ‘Now we can look the East End in the face’. ibid.
He also suffered from phobias. ibid.
The King’s relationship with his prime minister was not always harmonious. ibid.
The King was happiest when out of the limelight. ibid.
He was diagnosed as suffering from lung cancer but not told of the disease. ibid.
The King was found dead in his bed at Sandringham. ibid.
It was the very ordinariness of George VI, the reluctant king. ibid.
1987: A hearse is escorted by police helicopter from Los Angeles toward the desert town of Palm Springs. Inside is the body of a man who w as once the highest grossing entertainer in America. The body has been seized by the authorities: against the wishes of his family they are going to conduct an autopsy. What they find will finally destroy his public image and expose the carefully constructed lie that has sustained his career; it is the body of Liberace. Reputations s7e2: Liberace: Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful, BBC 2000
Hiding his sexuality became his lifelong battle. ibid.
In 1954 The Liberace Show could be found on 179 channels across the USA … Now he was performing with the top stars of the day. ibid.
Mom did not approve of Liberace’s habit of bringing home hillbillies. ibid.
In 1953 he came up with a fiancee. ibid.
Low-brow high-octane cocktail of syrupy banter, cutdown classics and tinkling pop. ibid.
Costumes cost up to $300,000. ibid.
The critics detested Liberace. ibid.
He began to dwell on how he would be remembered after his death. ibid.
He decided his teenage lover too could be remade in his image: all it took was vision and a plastic surgeon. ibid.
1986: At that time AIDS was still a new disease. ibid.
May 1916: As the Great War shook Europe a knot of dishevelled prisoners were led from their cells in Dublin’s Kilmainham jail into a prison yard. A firing squad readied itself … De Valera had his death sentence commuted to imprisonment. Reputations: Eamon de Valera: Ireland’s Hated Hero, BBC 1999
At every turn he was has admired and hated with equal intensity. ibid.
He took over leadership of the nationalist party, Sinn Fein. ibid.
What followed was infighting, and a squalid war of Irishmen against Irishmen that wrecked the economy and blew apart his own political career. ibid.
In the flush of victory Churchill vented his pent-up disdain. ibid.
The most powerful individual on Earth is the president of the United States. During President Nixon’s final year in office long-standing concerns about his mental balance became widespread in Washington. Reputations: The Secret World of Richard Nixon I, BBC 2000
His wife Pat bore the brunt of his disappointment. ibid.
Dilantin … Nixon was already taking sleeping tablets. ibid.
Day by day revelation followed revelation. ibid.
He promised the American people peace in Vietnam. It is now clear that Richard Nixon and close aides conspired to sabotage peace talks to get him elected in 1968. Reputations: The Secret World of Richard Nixon II
Nixon favoured the use of tactical nuclear weapons. ibid.
Johnson decided he could not blow the whistle on Nixon by going public with the secret wiretaps. ibid.
‘Our aim is to transform American society. In the next five or ten years we expect between twenty and thirty million Americans will be using LSD regularly in their spiritual development and psychological growth.’ Reputations s8e7: Timothy Leary: The Man Who Turned America On
In the 1960s Timothy Leary brought psychedelic drugs out of the laboratories and on to the campuses of America. ibid.
Leary’s affairs and Marianne’s suicide were two more sorry episodes in the Leary family history. ibid.
Leary won [Harvard] approval for a research project exploring the potential benefits of the active ingredients in magic mushrooms … popular with undergraduate students. ibid.
Leary revelled in his role as psychedelic spokesman. ibid.
Frankie Howerd was one of Britain’s most instantly recognisable comedians. But behind the titters Frankie Howerd struggled with private secrets, things he wanted to keep from the public, things he wanted to hide even from himself. Reputations s9e1: Frankie Howerd, BBC 2002
‘The public want sincerity from an artist. And if you can fake that, you’re made.’ ibid. Frankie
‘He knew early on he was homosexual.’ ibid. historian
Frank was in a state of near complete emotional collapse. ibid.
Next up was a spot on the BBC’s new late-night satire show That Was the Week that Was. ibid.
‘When he’d had a couple of drinks he used to get more verbose.’ ibid. scriptwriter
Frank was invited to join the Carry On team for a couple of outings. ibid.
‘Why would you have Michael Jackson as your best man?’ Reputations s9e3: Uri Geller, critic
It’s 30 years since Uri Geller captured the attention of the media by bending a fork on British television … He claimed to do it using the power of his mind. ibid.
He walked out of the studio during his first ever television appearance when his supernatural powers failed him. ibid.
By 1971 Geller’s showbiz career in Israel had collapsed. ibid.
James Randi: [He] duplicated everything that Geller had done. ibid.
‘He was so bad that I was embarrassed for him … Everything that he tried failed.’ ibid. witness of Geller’s appearance on Carson’s TV show
‘A simple bent key changed the world.’ ibid. Geller