THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1959.
CHIO
FROM THE EAST END TO HOLLYWOOD-THAT'S THE SHEILAN GRAHAM STORY
THE ORPHAN GIRL WHO FOUND FAME
By DEE WELLS
THE orphanage door clanged shut. Six-year-old Lily Sheil undressed and watched her shabby clothes carried away-at arm's length on tongs. Clippers sheared her ash blonde hair, and she peeped fearfully at the steaming bath being readied and sniffed the strong carbolic soap.
This was pre-World War 1 toothbrushes. From behind her London at its rawest. Lily counter she had spotted Major Shell was an East End wait John Graham Gillam, whose washerwoman mother
was no longer able to keep
her,
Whose heart wouldn't go out in sympathy to this child?
Yet 45 years later-after
Major Glem was class, He had the D.S.0. His voice was cultured, And class, Shellah very much admired. She oc- cepted the job he offered-and is occasional kisses and free
dinners.
Monte
Major
Collins
Almost cut dak. Because That he
there would be many helping It my middle-aged honds. husband came along, nobody would want to help me."
So, of course, the loving Major Gillam was ditched too.
Almost
Inevitably Shelloh Graham gravitated to Holly- wood To her that tinsel, cily with its Unsel people was Life, A life of movie stars..........ex. travagant parties. High Life, Real Lite. Such as Old England
meeting the woman that he was a millionaire. Lily Shell has become--I was yet another boy friend's could never provide. And money, take back my heart. And re sultor didn't matter, too. Lots of lt.
Shelial snaggled him easily.
she acquired dia.
ат sorry ever to have From him offered it. Sorry, mainly monds, weekends in Brighton, to have wasted sympathy and a proposal of marriage. on someone who ao ob- But middle-aged, self-made viously has always had an Monte Collins was ditched too. abundant self-generated sup- Because Major Gillam now pro- posed himself. And was ply. And sorry to see the accepted. person that little Lily Shell ja today.
In her place
•
Major Gilloin sounds a good and kindly man. He financed his pretty, ambitious wife's act- ing lessons. He had her pre- sented at Court, He obligingly alone while she stayed home went on
to bigger and better fish frys,
For pathetic Lily Shell no longer exists. In hor place in a stout,
thrice married, faced Soon she was a dazzlingly blonde named Sheilah Graham. popular chorus girl. One, who guest of honour at In Hollywood she ranks as was often the No. 3 gossip columnist, In
bachelor midnight champagne the book world her life story, ney nocent, invented a respect portler. She tomed her cock. (Cassell
able middle-class boekground,
BELOVED INFIDEL
211.), will soon rank as a No. and launched herself in society. best-seller-or cat my last year's straw hat.
Palatable
In her element, she thrived. So did her gossip column and her romance with the Marquis of Donegall. He proposed. She accepted. But he, too, was to be ditched. And soon.
Because 1 very curious, uncharacteristic thing happened. Sheilah Graham fell in love, With
Americon writer Scolt somewhat Fitzgerald, then reformed alcoholic, turning out film scripts 10 support hie insane, institutionalised "wife.
Shelish Graham's description of her two years with Scott portion of her book. Fitzgerald is the only palatable
They were happy. But even with him her lifelong habit of using people soon takes over. She used him to tutor her and provide her with the ecreation she never had.
In 1940 Scott Fitzgerald died tragically and suddenly in Sheilah Graham's Hollywood flat. They hadn't had very long
The indder's Fungs now Yet in my opinion this book multiplied rapidly. Her social ranks as the
life now included Top Feople. ebabblcat, most shaming soul-baring in many a Sir John Corew-Pole, Guards- YOLT. Not since Flaubert's man baronet....Sir Richard Madame Bovary have I road it North. Impresario C. B. equal for man-hunting, lolly, Cochran......Captain the Hon. grabbing egotistic greed, -And Bruce Ogilvy. equery to the say what you Ilke of fictitious Prince of Wales....sociellte together. Not long enough for Emma Bovory--at least she Tom Mitford... Randolph Sheilah Graham's late-acquired wasn't real, Shelloh Groham Is. Churchill,.......writer A. P. Her education in the Humanities to All too real.
bert....the Marquis of Done stick. She drifted back to her gall. Just to name a few, old way of life.
Harsh words? Yes. But hers is a harsh, repellent story...
Spotted
L
Solidly “In,” the switched professions, Overnight she be- came a journalist, And old elippings of her writings supply another key.
British business man Trever Westbrook became divorce No. 2. not regi- A lifeguard (beach, ment) became divorce No. 1.
Now at the top of her ladder, Shollah Graham is rich, success-.
Wit
At 14 she emerged from that "Marry for Money" is the orphanage. And went home to headline on one 1931 clipping, ful, and glossy as a plump eat. tend her destitute mother who Another advises young married Soon her depressing book was dying of cancer. Of this couples not to have a baby-but be a nim. Deborah Kerr has period, "when her mother lay to buy a car instead. Another already shouldered the doubtful recked with pain, ewrites is entitled "How to Manage honour of playing the lead. "I was consumed
with 4- Men," and in this she writes: patience and boretion.”
There is the key. That it fits
"
the best matrimontol prizes fall to women who are outwardly and inwardly ng hard as nails and as cold as ice."
is soon chillingly clear.
Mother buried, Sheilah started climbing up. Her story reads like a ladder. Мер are the Already shu wus eyeing rungs. Each one Ly Braly America and the fat salary a stepped on to get to the next Journalist could command there. First altched is Leslie, her Her husband wanted to accom- East End boy friend who put pany her. But she writes: ".... her on to a job demonstrating was young and pretty and
And I suppose in a way you have to hand it to this ex-Bast End orphan once named Lily Shell. Just what to hand her, I'd be hard pul to say.
But I do know it's nothing I'd touch with a 10ft. pole. With gloves on..
-(London Express Service),
The short, bizarre life of
a girl called Marianne
DANSE MACABRE. By Frederic Mullally. Seckor and Warburg. 15.
ON page 23, the hero, Bob Sullivan, makes
love to a model in Lon-
by.
HAROLD HARRIS
several attempla on his life by the French ogre's thugs who are hot on his trall.
He oven survives examples of Marianne's conversation, plously recorded by her friends.
"I had made a discovery, It was a truth so glaringly obvious at it Sullivan pn Irish that most of us just nod
don; on page 44, in Bob Paris, to a one-eyed journalist, is commissioned by and hurry on by. We live only Lesbian; -for several her wealthy, effeminate friend, once" And: "I realised that Brian Herper, to write a book we are what we are not because pages, in Rome, to a about her. He sets out on fils we are anything but because we Jamaican girl who mur grand tour of the gossip write are not something else."
world in search murs on the telephone: Marianne, After Romey Cannes, French ogre in his palace
At last, Sullivan beards the "Do you want to hit me? Barcelona, Ibiza, and, inevitably, Tangier. Surprise..
the real
Tangier.
I wouldn't mind
*Me Mullally may not have mi
his command the stuff of which
On the trail
literature is mode, but he quick-”
151
The arre turns out to be Brian Harper.
Marianne, it transpires, had been experimenting with, life at
ly shows himself, in his first She hit been quite a gil" his ovil instigation. It was, an novel to be a dab hand at Sales by her experiences, she the ellmax of her final expori- isolating the ingredients which suffered her first revulsion from ment that he killed her. make a best seller,
men before she was 10.*. But it
Beneath the.eudo-philo. sophical farrago which is de-
Marianne, the heroine is a 10 did not last long Jear-old. nymphomaniac. DURA she is dead before the book Sullivan tracks down some of Bigned to give this hotch-potch a vaneer of respectability, there openz, killed in 'pri milogy in the themes (and women) who Ceabati byr the · monbesious loved her. They tend to come are traces of a talent struggling French ogre with whom, also was to a bad end after telling him to be let out. MVIDET
their stories, “* but-her-mirvives. [={London, Harpryzo{{ervice};
THE CHANGING FACE OF SHEILAK GRAHAM: ABOVE as she was in 1981, when her fame amid the glitter of Hollywood was still to come. RIGHT--the successful columnist, her past littered with great
names.
ACKYS DIARY
BY
WACKY MENDELSOHN
AGE 3/2
THIS morning Daddy & Me PULLED OUT The VegTABLES we planted in the SPRING, When was Little,
First & found We had Gruesome Spinach. SPINACH has Lots of Ron in it... BUT Even |So, it's very good for you
Zip!
Even Nelson Thought We'd Lose This War
THE SPANISH TOWN PAPERS, By E. Arnot Robertson,
Cresset. 21.
THE bundles of papers in the Old Armoury in Spanish Town, Jamaica, were treasure indeed. Treasure which time and decay rieglect and weather, had spared or partly spared.
Treasure which Arnet Robert-ly schse of excitement. This is son came upon with a delighted in perup book, illustrating - by surprise that communicates itself, flashes the lives of old 402- to her book
faring men and their women-
not
The papers, Wege, records of folk. forgotión trials before an almost "Since I have jest New York," forgotten tribunal, the Vico- valtes one man to his brother- Admiralty Court, dr Jemnica, in in-law in the early days of,' tho the years that followed the revolutionary war, "I have | revolt of the American colonies. hind a single Use from sny of my They were stained by damp, friends, which makes me very calen by termites, torn and uneasy. Should New York meet faded. But they whispered on with any disaster, which God overy sheet 'n tale of old wars forbid, you must with youre go and plunderings, deeds of her to my house in the country." ism and roguery.
Fixed fees
The Americans seem to have been pessimistle about. their chances in the war; "The King's men cut us to preser Eike wO AND Almost a thousand of the a parsel of snakes." documents are ships papers, But the British seen to have onch from some vessel captured been no 'more' 'hopeful. from the rebel Americans by heroic Nelson himself who con- the Brush Navy or some bury tributes letter to the Spanish privateer Beensed by King Town hoard shook his head over George III.
Britain's prospecta in n war
The
and
The Vice Admiralty Court had against both Americans to decide whether a captured French: ship was lawful prize, or not. "You must not be surprised to The worshipful court set about hear of my learning to speak the tank with more enthusiasm French," He writes dolefully.*. than impartiality. Its fees were fixed by a percentage of the value of vessels and cargoes judged forfeit.
·
Amot Robertson's account of what she found in these trail old papers has a romenlie if scholar-
Then à Looked Where We Planted Some Polly Seeds, but there was- not A Single Polly growing there. Just 2 BUNCH of Sun Flowers. ... WHAT & SYP!
Миник
Later on Pulled up Some RHUBArb, Which is CELERY that goT SUNBurnt, So You Got to Do it very gentle.
(Ouch!
©1959, Wiz Fortures Skicate, Inc, World rights Reserien.
Wow!.. also found a Pumpkin that grew
•UP WITHOUT any face. Think I'LL Send it into
a museum.
"Into the rough,' salty, adven- turous world of the old Yankee skippers Arnot Robertson sup plies a multitude of peepholes.
George Malcolm Thomson
---{London Erpewis Service).}
Also we gruesome Cute-Cumbers, which are REALLY BADY Pickles. On a count of THEY HAVEN'T GROWed up of turNED Sour Yet
Pickle
·Same
Pickle
YEARS
LATER,
Don't Like VegTABLES A LOT, but they re Very HEALTHY on A Count of THEY GOT LOTS of VITAMINS.. Which are Letters That You can't see because They're inside.
H
VERY
Regular Pumpkin
Rare Pumpkin
8-16
PS: EXCEPT When YOU MAKE Alphabet
SOUP, & THEN they COME OUT
Floating Vitamins