I can’t believe we’re spliced. I feel just the same. Working class London cockney teenagers Dot (Rita Tushingham) and biker Reggie (Colin Campbell) get married even though she lives freely under her mother’s (Betty Marsden) roof, encouraged to get together with him. Their marriage soon turns sour. During an unsuccessful honeymoon at a Butlins holiday camp in Bognor Regis, Reggie becomes alienated from the brassy, self-absorbed Dot who gets her hair dyed blonde and is far too vivacious in company. Afterward, they begin to live increasingly separate lives as Reggie becomes more involved with his biker friends, especially the eccentric Pete (Dudley Sutton). Reggie also loses interest in having sex with Dot who never cleans up their bedsit and can’t cook. When Reggie’s grandfather dies, Dot complains that Reggie’s support for his bereaved grandmother has stopped them visiting the cinema. Her boorish behaviour at the funeral and her refusal to move in with Reggie’s grandmother (Gladys Henson) leads to a big row. She leaves, while Reggie remains with his grandmother, who will not leave her own house. He brings in Pete, who has been forced to leave his lodgings, to stay as a lodger with her. The two share a bed. Meanwhile, Dot shows an interest in Brian (Johnny Briggs) another biker. The following day, Pete and Reggie drive to the seaside. Reggie wants them to chat up a couple of girls but Pete has no interest. Reggie now intends returning to Dot, who has hatched a plan to get him back by pretending to be pregnant. Dot is sitting with Brian when she tells Reggie of her supposed pregnancy. Believing he can’t possibly be the father, Reggie accuses Brian and the two men fight. Men? You look like a couple of queers. Dot visits Reggie’s grandmother’s house where she learns that he shares his bed with Pete and argues with the pair of them when she sees how they are living. … People don’t talk like that in real life. Adapted by Gillian Freeman from her 1961 novel (which she published pseudonymously as ‘Eliot George’!), this febrile drama speaks to a London of a certain era before the high rises destroyed communities but according to Tushingham the dialogue the cast were given was out of touch and didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, something they realised when they hung out with London’s real biker subculture. She, Campbell and Sutton improvised much of it in the company of Canadian director Sidney J. Furie who gave them all a couple of days off during the Cuban Missile Crisis (this was shot September-October 1962) because he was so depressed about what seemed like the end of the world. Speaking on Talking Pictures’ documentary Back to The Ace with Rita Tushingham, the leading lady, who was twenty during production, recalls the fun they had on set, the opportunity to visit Butlins in Bognor Regis (which she declares she would never ordinarily have done!) and how innovative Sutton was – he certainly has some fruity lines. When he takes advantage of his friend’s immature marriage it’s like a bomb going off. You look like a bunch of dead roses. He and Campbell died within 6 months of each other in 2018 while Briggs, another TV stalwart, died in 2021. Freeman was on set for several days and according to Tushingham she can be seen in a couple of shots. The Ace Cafe in London’s Wembley suburb on the North Circular, off Beresford Avenue between the Grand Union Canal and Stonebridge Park Depot, is still going strong today as a centre for bikers and rockers, after closing for a period after 1969 and being used as a tyre salesroom. The source novel had been suggested to Freeman by agent/publisher Anthony Blond as a Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs and it starts out as a story of an incompatible marriage but with that exploitation title you know it’s heading somewhere more interesting, going beyond the so-called kitchen sink realism tropes to an intersection of sex, class and gay life. Part of the attraction is of course the biking sequences, particularly the road trip to Edinburgh. It’s extraordinary to see how normal the treatment of two young working class men in a relationship could be at this point, given that homosexuality wouldn’t be decriminalised in the UK until 1967. The concluding sequence, when Reggie is finally exposed to the fact of Pete’s gay life at the Tidal Basin Tavern in Silvertown, provides a sharp shock for his character and forces a decision. Up to this point it’s really all subtext and insinuation. It’s certainly notable that it took writing by women to address the topic of homosexuality in the era with Victim (co-written by Janet Green) appearing a couple of years earlier but broaching the issue far more directly. By the time this was released Kenneth Anger’s legendary short film Scorpio Rising would explicitly link bikers with gay sex, receiving its premiered 29 October 1963 at the Gramercy Arts Theater in NYC. Locations for The Leather Boys include: Beresford Aveneue, Park Royal; Haydons Road and the Bethel Church on Kohat Road, Wimbledon; Harbut Road and Southolme Road (now demolished) in Wandsworth; and St Luke’s C of E School (now demolished) in Kingston Upon Thames, as well of course as Bognor Regis where the fresh cinematography of Gerald Gibbs is at its best. That sequence between the lads and Brenda (Valerie Varnam) and June (Jill Mai Meredith) is among the most flavourful in the film. This is beloved cult cinema, both familiar and groundbreaking, fascinating in terms of its position within British screen history, filled with contrasting performance styles and full of the distinctive visual flair of director Furie, still going strong in his ninetieth year. Freeman died in 2019 and aside from some clever novels, ballets and a pioneering study of pornographic literature, is also known for the Robert Altman thriller, That Cold Day in the Park. Her daughters Harriet and Matilda Thorpe are actresses. The Smiths’ 1987 song Girlfriend in a Coma is an homage to the film. Morrissey’s decision to put a Cilla Black cover on the B-side reportedly caused Johnny Marr to leave the band which is why they’re not in the video. We don’t have to live and die together – do we?
At the Ace Cafe in 2007.
The single’s cover featuring playwright Shelagh Delaney
Rita Tushingham today (The Guardian)
mondomovies 