FAREWELL, FEN FATALE
Fenella Fielding’s bizarre life from a suicide bid by spaghetti, parallel lovers and lesbian rumours
RECLINING on a chaise longue, in a figure-hugging red dress, Fenella Fielding fluttered her heavy lashes and purred huskily: “Do you mind if I smoke?”
But rather than light up a cigarette, she famously began emitting plumes of smoke in Carry On Screaming as sexy vampire Valeria, the ultimate Sixties femme fatale, mistress of the double entendre.
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But Fenella, who died on Tuesday aged 90 after suffering a stroke, was just as saucy off-screen, enjoying relationships with two lovers for 20 years, who never found out about each other.
“I loved them both,” she wrote in her memoirs. “Never having a marriage that could have gone awful.”
Yet behind her independence and brilliant comic acting lay an abusive childhood, two suicide bids — including “death by spaghetti” — and a desire to be known for her serious roles.
Her friend and biographer Simon McKay, who was at her side when she died, said yesterday: “She was amazing; funny, charming and very good to her fans. She wanted to be taken seriously and was concerned she was only seen as a larky, knock-about actress.
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“She was gracious though, and she would always say of Carry On that it was good to be known for something. She never tired of people coming up to her saying, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’”
Growing up in Clapton, East London, Fenella’s childhood was a strange mixture of being handed middle-class opportunities, such as elocution lessons, on the one hand, and being punished for her ambition on the other.
She said she shared a bedroom with a “nanny-type-person,” and was encouraged to perform in ballet shows.
Yet as other parents turned up with bouquets of fresh flowers for their little darlings, Fenella received the same artificial bunch of blooms every year.
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Fenella — who would go on to rub shoulders with the likes of artist Andy Warhol — described her Lithuanian-born father, Philip, who managed a cinema then a lingerie factory, as a “street angel and house devil”.
“Home life was horrid,” she wrote in her autobiography, Do You Mind If I Smoke? “Daddy used to knock me about with his fists.”
Her mother, Romanian-born Tilly “would egg him on”, she added.
Despite this, before her father died aged 92, Fenella heard him speak of her with great pride, and she was “glad in the end he lived so long”.
I mainly dodged marriage. I once tried to commit suicide by eating a giant bowl of spaghetti
Fenella Fielding in her biography, Do You Mind If I Smoke?
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Her domineering parents did everything they could to stop their talented daughter becoming an actress.
They forced her to drop out of St Martin’s School of Art, London, after a year because they feared the consequences of her seeing naked male models. Then when Fenella secured a two-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her mother would turn up at lunchtimes and cause a scene, referring to the students as “these common people”.
When the funding at Rada abruptly stopped, Fenella was forced to leave. Instead, she endured secretarial school, at her parents’ insistence.
She appeared in several amateur productions, including one with Ron Moody — Fagin in the film Oliver! — who convinced her to chase her dream.
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LADY AND THE VAMP
FENELLA’S most memorable movie role was as voluptuous vampire Valeria in 1966’s Carry On Screaming, pictured.
More than 50 years on, it’s still a firm favourite with comedy fans.
Along with her screen brother, Kenneth Williams’ Dr Watt, Valeria is seen turning people into mannequins to sell. A cop probing the disappearances calls at their spooky Bide-A-Wee Rest Home – and falls for the sexy siren.
Set in Edwardian times and shot at Pinewood Studios as well as on location in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, the film is the twelfth in the Carry On series.
Having changed her surname from Feldman and shaved seven years off her age, she landed her big break in the musical version of Valmouth in 1958. It sparked more stage and TV work.
Even then, there was trouble behind the scenes with a manipulative boyfriend she was keen to dump, who told her: “You’ll have to stay with me now or everyone will think you’ve dropped me because of this show, that you’re too big for your boots.”
She was dogged throughout life by rumours she was a lesbian, or pitied for being a lonely spinster.
In fact nearly every encounter with men was “something horrid”. After Valmouth, she appeared with her future Carry On co-star, Kenneth Williams, in Harold Pinter and Peter Cook’s comedy revue, Pieces Of Eight.
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When she received a glowing review, a critic dubbing her a “beautiful butterfly of comedy”, Williams flew into a fit of jealousy.
“He had the most terrible temper about it,” she later recalled.
On another occasion, Fenella ad-libbed the line “the last one dead’s a sissy,” and Williams shrieked that she had branded him a homosexual.
“It was awful. I’d never been so frightened in all my life,” she said.
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She also worked with the late great comic Norman Wisdom, but claimed he subjected her to daily groping.
“Not a very pleasant man,” she said. “Always making a pass — hand up your skirt first thing in the morning. Not a lovely way to start a day’s filming.”
Apart from her two mystery lovers, there was one unnamed man who stole Fenella’s heart, but he died. “Mainly though, I’ve always dodged marriage,” she said.
Career-wise, there were highs and lows — the latter being desperate times.
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At 27, while struggling to get work and moving back with her family, who were then living in Edgware, North London, she took 70 aspirin.
“What’s the point if I can’t achieve anything and my family aren’t fond of me?” she thought.
But when the pills made her feel ill, she confessed to her mother, who told her to call the all-night Boots pharmacy in Piccadilly. They advised drinking mustard water to induce vomiting. Three years on, with her self- esteem once more at a low, her thoughts again turned to suicide — bizarrely by consuming a huge bowl of spaghetti.
Asked last year if she really thought over-eating could kill her, she replied: “No darling! But I thought it will make me fat and make me feel sick.”
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As it was, a friend called as she tucked in, offering her a part in a musical.
The Swinging Sixties brought success and frivolity. She socialised with the likes of artist Francis Bacon and had her raven locks sculpted by iconic hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.
Her signature glamorous look was partly thanks to Coronation Street creator Tony Warren, who recommended going big with the fake lashes.
When she watched 2016 movie La La Land she “cried so hard at the end that one fell right off” she recalled in her memoirs, which she wrote with Simon McKay and published last year.
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Carry On Regardless came along in 1961, then Carry On Screaming in 1966. After those she refused to do any more.
Later that decade, she had to turn down a part in a film by Italian director Federico Fellini as she was booked to appear on stage in Chichester.
She was a regular on TV’s Morecambe & Wise Show, and appeared in The Avengers and in the Doctor In... comedy films with stars such as James Robertson Justice and Leslie Phillips.
The late 1970s were less fruitful, and with the famously poorly paid Carry On stars receiving no royalties, the then middle-aged Fenella suffered money troubles.
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She said: “It’s rather awful sitting in a room waiting for benefits and everybody knows who you are. I had a terrible feeling I was finished.”
Although best known for Carry On, it was her wealth of theatre work that won her the most adulation.
There was an outstanding turn as playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in 1969 at Leicester’s Phoenix Theatre, but she could never escape her reputation as a comedy actress.
She said: “When I did Hedda people came to see it in Leicester, but it’s not like sitting in a theatre with 1,000 people in the West End. Then you’ve got to get people to let you do one after another after another, before it obliterates the comedy you’ve done.” In later life, she worked on Radio 4 dramas, translated Greek poetry on stage, and carried out an Irish tour of The Vagina Monologues in 2006.
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She even recorded an album in 2012 called The Savoy Sessions, covering Robbie Williams’ Angels and Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head.
“She moved the audience to tears, she never wanted to stop,” said psychotherapist Simon, who met her seven years ago through Pilates.
She continued working until the very end, with her final job doing a voice recording for LBC Radio on August 24, the day before she suffered a stroke.
She would meet Simon, 53, every week and regale him with stories from her life in showbiz, but she was initially reluctant to publish them. “No, darling, I wouldn’t want to write all the salacious details,” she protested.
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In June, she was awarded an OBE for services to drama and charity, and was due to receive it from the Queen in November. She was delighted she had the certificate and Simon gave her a replica medal last week.
In the end, it was down to Simon, who cared for her during her final days at Charing Cross Hospital, London, to write the statement announcing that she had died on Tuesday.
And he made sure Fenella’s fans knew she made a glamorous exit.
“She died with her eyelashes on!” he wrote.
- Do You Mind If I Smoke?, by Fenella Fielding and Simon McKay is published by Peter Owen publishers.
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