For those who remember the Profumo Affair which almost brought down the Conservative Government of Harold Macmillan, the pivotal role was played by a prostitute, the stunning Christine Keeler. However her flatmate, Mandy Rice-Davies, who was not quite as stunning, also rose to prominence due to her lifestyle which was intertwined with that of Keeler. What would happen to each woman after this potentially life changing event?

Background

The fate of John Profumo, the philandering Secretary of State for War in the Harold Macmillan Conservative Government is well known. After initially denying any personal impropriety with a prostitute, the stunning Christine Keeler, in 1961, he eventually resigned some two weeks later.

How did this brief affair become public knowledge two years after its termination and why did an extra-marital affair cause such anguish at the time?

Lives intertwined

During the early 1960’s, the lives and lifestyles of Mandy & Christine who had both left home at an early age and settled in London became intertwined. Both had pretensions of becoming showgirls and both followed the same route to fame and fortune: sleeping with the boss or as the occasion arose with older more influential men who could keep them in the manner to which they aspired.

 

The affairs with these men resembled a ménage à trois as the same men were involved with the two women either simultaneously or serially.

Whilst working as a dancer at Murray’s Cabaret Club in Soho, Mandy Rice-Davies met Christine Keeler. Keeler introduced her to a friend and well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward and also to an ex-lover Peter Rachman, a slum landlord. Mandy became Rachman’s mistress and she was set up in the same house in Marylebone in which he had previously kept Christine.

Meanwhile Keeler was sharing a house with Stephen Ward also in Marylebone. In December 1963 while Keeler was visiting Mandy at Wimpole Mews in Marylebone, one of Keeler’s boyfriends by the name of John Edgecombe attempted to enter. On being refused entry, he fired several shots at the door.

At the ensuing trial at the Old Bailey, it brought to the fore the fact that Christine and Mandy were involved with Ward’s social set and were being intimate with many powerful people. The venue for these illicit liaisons was the stately home of Viscount Astor, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire.
It was here that Christine Keeler met the Secretary for War, John Profumo in 1961. By all accounts, this was a brief affair which Profumo ended after being warned by the security services of the possible dangers of mixing with the Ward circle. Be that as it may, but what we also know is that Ward introduced Profumo to the Russian naval attaché & GRU Officer, Yevgeni Ivanov with whom Christine was simultaneously enjoying a short sexual relationship.

After her relationship with Profumo ended, Keeler was sexually involved with several partners, including one by the name of Johnny Edgecombe. After Keeler broke up with him and sought refuge in Wimpole Mews that he arrived unannounced and fired five shots at the building.

It was Edgecombe’s subsequent trial in 1963 which brought Keeler to public attention and provided the impetus for what became known as the Profumo Affair.

Even though Mandy Rice-Davies had not been involved with Profumo, due to her relationship with Keeler and the Ward set, and her close relationship with Christine Keeler, her name became inextricably linked with the episode.

At the height of the scandal, the Prime Minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman, arrived in Britain for a State Visit. On being questioned at Heathrow what he wanted to do first, he innocently replied, “I want Mandi.” What the shocked reception party did not know was that he was referring to Mandi which in Malay means “to take a bath.”

It was not only the bedroom antics of these two females who titillated the citizens of the UK that winter but a reply by Mandy Rice-Davies’ to James Burge during Edgecombe’s Trial that Lord Astor denied having an affair or having even met her, she replied, “He would, wouldn’t he?” In 1979, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations included this memorable saying in its book.

Mandy’s life after Profumo

Due to bad luck and even worse decisions in life, both women had reached a nadir in their lives. How would each woman reclaim their ideals and achieve their goals in life?

Initially Mandy Rice-Davies traded on the notoriety that the trial had brought her. She compared herself with Lord Nelson’s mistress, Lady Hamilton. She converted to Judaism and married an Israeli businessman who opening nightclubs and restaurants in Tel Aviv with the word Mandy in the name. In May 1964 Mandy released a 45 EP record entitled Introducing Mandy,

Together with Shirley Flack, Mandy wrote her autobiography in 1980 entitled eponymously Mandy. In 1989, Mandy tried her hand as a novelist and wrote The Scarlet Thread.

In the 1980’s Mandy finally made her entrance into the world of movies in which she appeared in a number of television and film productions including Absolutely Fabulous and an episode of Chance in a Million. Her film career included roles in Nana, The True Key of Pleasure, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators and Absolute Beginners.

Rice-Davies was closely involved in the development of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Stephen Ward the Musical about society osteopath Ward’s involvement in the Profumo affair which will be staged shortly.

Prophetically she once described her life as “one slow descent into respectability”

After finally raising herself into respectability as she is quoted as saying, Mandy Rice-Davies finally died at aged 70 from cancer on the 18th December 2014.

From a troubled sordid start in life, Mandy Rice-Davies had overcome the negative impressions of being a former prostitute, albeit a high society one, to being accepted in high society for her acting ability which is all that she ultimately desired when she relocated to London at the age of 17.

 

Christine’s life after Profumo

Of the two, Christine Keeler was definitely the more attractive. In fact most would classify her as a stunner. With her looks and charm, she should surely have been able to overcome a false start in life. Aside from beauty, life is about choices that one makes and paths that one follows. What would she do with her life?

In early 1963 Christine Keeler became involved simultaneously with two West Indians, Johnny Edgecomb and Aloysius “Lucky” Gordon. In April 1963, Christine Keeler was attacked at the home of a friend. She accused Gordon, who was arrested and charged. At his trial he maintained that his innocence would be established by two witnesses who, the police told the court, could not be found. Principally on Keeler’s evidence, Gordon was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.

Gordon’s assault conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal, when his missing witnesses were traced. They testified that the evidence given by Keeler was substantially false. Keeler later pleaded guilty to charges of perjury, and in December 1963 was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment.

 

Before Gordon’s conviction for assault, Stephen Ward was facing trial on vice charges. Again Keeler was a main prosecution witness. Ward was accused of living on Keeler’s immoral earnings, on the basis of the small contributions to household expenses or loan repayments she had made to Ward while living with him. Ward’s professional earnings at the time had been around £5,500 a year, a large income at that time. After a hostile summing-up from the trial judge, Ward was convicted, but before the jury returned their verdict he had taken an overdose of barbiturates, and died before sentence could be passed.

Since her release from prison in 1964, after two brief failed marriages which produced two children, Keeler has largely lived alone. Most of the considerable amount she made from newspaper stories was dissipated by lawyers.

 

She has published several accounts of her life, in one of which she claims that Profumo impregnated her and that she subsequently underwent a painful abortion.

Although she revelled in her notoriety at the time and sold her story to newspapers all over the world, Keeler now lives in a sheltered accommodation block in South London, and is estranged from her two sons. In an interview last year to publicise her latest book about the affair that rocked the British Establishment, she said: ‘My children don’t want to be associated with that bloody whore Christine Keeler. It’s awful but that’s the way it is.’

Unlike Mandy Rice-Davies who managed to salvage her reputation over the years and contrived to be accepted by the Establishment albeit grudgingly in certain circles, Keeler was not so fortunate.

Most of her subsequent misfortune can be attributed to her own destructive personality. Instead of making amends, she displayed her vindictive streak both in the case of the Gordon Trial in which her false testimony resulted in Gordon being sentenced to jail and then in Ward’s case to committing suicide.

My verdict

Christine Keeler might have been the stunner about whom most men would have fantasised, but on the path of life when both clearly had to make a life changing decision on whether to continue with their destructive ways or to make amends and take a different direction, only Mandy Rice-Davies possessed that moral fortitude and strength of character to make the necessary change.

 

What has the decision by Christine Keeler to continue on her allocated path done for her? She is now a physically unattractive frumpy old woman but more importantly she has no family or friends to comfort her.

Like the one trick pony, the best that she has been able to do is to produce a series of six books – if the latest unpublished one is included. Only the public’s unbridled fascination in a brief sexual encounter with a grey unassuming almost mousey Cabinet Minister has afforded Christine some form of income and self-respect.

In Christine’s case, by not veering from the wrong path of life, it has culminated in loneliness and sadness to be endured in isolation. Shortly she too will be dead, unloved and unmourned.

A wasted life.

Christine Keeler was yet another example of a life so promising and full of potential which has been wasted on the altar of hedonism and vindictiveness.