Scandalous goings-on at the National Portrait Gallery

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A small exhibit commemorates a 50-year-old political scandal that gave rise to one of the most memorable images of the 1960s.

This don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it display at London’s National Portrait Gallery commemorates a political scandal that anyone much under 60 years of age (i.e. most of the population) will be unlikely to remember at all. This year is the 50th anniversary of the political crisis triggered when a junior Tory minister, Jack Profumo, admitted that he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler. The latter might best be described as a ‘demi-mondaine’ – she danced topless at a cabaret venue, lived (apparently platonically) with a society osteopath called Stephen Ward, had various affairs, and seems to have been a general ‘good-time girl’.

Stephen Ward’s skill as an osteopath allowed him to meet people, such as Lord Astor, whom he would probably not otherwise have known. It was at a party on Lord Astor’s estate, Cliveden, that Ward introduced Profumo to Keeler and the two began a brief affair. Profumo apparently did not know that Keeler was also involved with a drug dealer and with a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. The latter, Yevgeni Ivanov, was using his position to spy for Russia. The implication was that Keeler might have passed secrets gleaned from Profumo to Ivanov. Once the press latched on to the story, an orgy of moralizing, political jousting and scandal-mongering ensued.

Various trials followed: of one of Keeler’s lovers for murder, of Keeler herself for perjury, and of Ward on the probably trumped-up charge of living on immoral earnings, i.e. the proceeds of prostitution. Ward committed suicide on the last day of his own trial. The scandal not only caused the loss of Profumo’s political career (he devoted the rest of his life to charity work) but also ensured the downfall of the Macmillan administration, which lost the next general election to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.

The NPG’s small display features photographs of the main participants. Profumo is seen leaving church after marrying the actress Valerie Hobson in 1954, and dancing ‘the twist’ with Hobson in the early ’60s. Keeler, her friend Mandy Rice-Davies, Ward, and Profumo are shown arriving at and departing from the various trials. Mostly they beam at the cameras – presumably somewhat forced grins for some, though other participants may have enjoyed the spotlight, at least until they got burned.

While Ward’s trial was in progress, the Museum Street Galleries ran an exhibition of his drawings and paintings, depicting all the main characters in the drama. Ward’s image of Keeler was not among them but is the only one included here, having been purchased by the NPG from Keeler herself in 1984. For the others, we have a copy of the front page of the Sunday Mirror, 28 July 1963, showing small monochrome reproductions of the various portraits.

Also displayed, of course, is Lewis Morley’s photograph of Keeler, nude, sitting astride an imitation Arne Jacobsen chair (the real chair had a cut out at the base of the backrest, which would have undermined its use as a ‘fig leaf’). A film had been made – titled The Christine Keeler Affair – and Keeler had signed a contract to appear nude in publicity shots. As she was unwilling to pose nude when it came to the point, Morley proposed the use of the chair, thus creating one of the most striking images of its period.

Nearby, a cartoon shows a naked Macmillan coyly perched sideways on a similar chair. The photograph was also used as the basis of Pauline Boty’s 1963 painting of the main participants in the affair. There are photographs of Boty (1938–66), then a rising star of the Pop art movement, working on the painting, which is now sadly lost.

The Christine Keeler Affair was never shown in the UK, but publicity posters for it are shown here, and we are told that it was remade as Scandal, in 1989, with Joanne Whalley as Keeler and Bridget Fonda as Rice-Davies. Keeler has written no fewer than four autobiographical books about the affair and, as one of panels on the display says, ‘The events of 1963 have been retold through art, satire, theatre, music and film’. Morley’s shot of Keeler on ‘that’ chair will probably remain one of the best-known visual images of its era and may long ensure that the scandal never quite dies down.