Joan Rhodes, 89, Stage strongwoman, variety legend with world famous specialist act
Hoodoo
Tuesday 1 June 2010 at 19:13
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/28432/joan-rhodes-dies-aged-89
http://www.thestage.co.uk/images/pics/28432.jpg
Joan Rhodes in Portugal 1956
Stage strongwoman Joan Rhodes, who became a variety legend and one of
the world’s most famous specialist acts, has died aged 89.
In her heydays the petite Rhodes was famous for her ability to bend iron
bars and tear telephone directories into quarters. Her most popular
stunt involved lifting the largest man in the audience and on one
celebrated occasion caught on film, the comedian Bob Hope.
Her success as an entertainer in the fifties brought her international
fame and admirers including King Farouk of Egypt and saw her performing
alongside the likes of Marlene Dietrich.
Rhodes’ renowned act developed however out of dire necessity. Born into
poverty in London on April 13, 1921, her parents deserted her and her
siblings and after unhappy spells in the workhouse and with an aunt she
left home at 14.
After working briefly as a waitress she collected money for a strongman
performing on the streets before setting up on her own. Like so many
entertainers, it was an advert in The Stage that gained her an entry
into professional entertainment.
The ad, which read ‘freaks wanted’, saw her performing at Hackney Empire
alongside other speciality acts. Later, Rhodes secured the country’s
leading agent, Joe Collins - father of Joan and Jackie Collins - who
made her an international star.
Despite her impoverished background, Rhodes had an early introduction to
the Soho cultural world. She posed at the Chelsea College of Art and
Design, sitting for Henry Moore and befriending Quentin Crisp. A keen
artist herself, she was also the sister-in-law of the ballet sculptor
Tom Merrifield.
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Hoodoo
Joan Rhodes, who has died aged 89, was a music hall artiste who tore up
telephone directories and performed other feats of strength on stage;
for several decades she also maintained a remarkable correspondence with
her friend Quentin Crisp, the writer and raconteur.
7:10PM BST 02 Jun 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/7798678/Joan-Rhodes.html
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01649/joan-rhodes_1649076f.jpg
Joan Rhodes: she tore up 20,000 telephone directories
During the mid-1950s, she appeared on television and in variety, tearing
up phone books, lifting a steel table in her teeth, bending and breaking
iron bars and nails and throwing obese men over her shoulder. Billed as
"The Mighty Mannequin", she showed no outward sign of her considerable
muscle power: with her 22in waist, she described herself as "an iron
girl in a velvet glove", dressing like a showgirl and interspersing her
feats with a slightly fey rhyming patter about the drawbacks of being so
strong.
At the height of her fame Joan Rhodes was viewed by the British public
with a kind of stupefied fascination. She became the object of music
hall jokes and cartoons in Punch, and her bending of iron bars at a
Christmas concert in Maidstone jail in December 1954 was the inspiration
for a light-hearted leading article in The Times.
Her portrait by Dame Laura Knight was the talk of the Royal Academy
Summer Exhibition in 1955, and she also modelled for Henry Moore and
Jacob Epstein. While working at the Medrano Circus in Paris, she caught
the attention of the Surrealist Max Ernst, who dedicated a painting to her.
In the course of her career she appeared on the same bill as Bob Hope,
Fred Astaire and Marlene Dietrich. But perhaps her most unlikely
acquaintance was Quentin Crisp, the self-styled "stately homo of
England", whom she first met in Soho in the 1950s. The pair remained
friends for decades.
"In private, Quentin was always calm and peaceful," she said. "Often on
a Sunday, he'd come to my home and I'd always make a roast lunch, which
he loved. If it was summer we'd sit in the garden and drink gallons of
home-made lemonade, and in winter he used to sit in front of the fire.
If I won at Scrabble – which wasn't often – he'd say: 'You've achieved
greatness today, Miss Rhodes.'"
The pair stayed in touch After Crisp began to spend more time in New
York, with him addressing his letters to "Dear Miss Rhodes". To her he
dispensed his thoughts on Diana, Princess of Wales ("Trash. I can't
think how dying made her into a saint. Her behaviour was disgraceful –
traipsing around Paris with an Arab! Whatever next?!!!"); ambition ("I
receive a small pension so I might be able to live forever without ever
getting out of bed – which, as you know, was my aim from birth"); and
homophobia ("What a contrast with England where never a day went by
without someone screaming through the telephone that he would kill me!
If I am killed here, it will be for money which is sacred. In Britain
murder is an act of social criticism"). The last letter came seven weeks
before his death in 1999. It was signed: "Yours miserably, Quentin".
Joan Rhodes was born in London on April 13 1921 and spent some of her
early life in a workhouse. At the age of 15 she ran away from her
guardian with only eightpence in her pocket. After sleeping rough in
Brewer Street, Soho, she joined a travelling fair, where she got the
idea for her act after seeing a professional strong man at work.
In 1949 she gained national attention when she appeared in a freak show
entitled Would You Believe It? which toured the country. Considerable
success in the London music halls and tours of America followed, and she
appeared in a number of British summer shows.
At Christmas 1958 she performed before the Royal Family at Windsor
Castle, where she snapped a 10in nail which the Duke of Edinburgh had
been able only to dent. On her way to the Pier Theatre, Shanklin, in
1960, she was stopped by a policeman on the Isle of Wight ferry and
asked to explain the presence of several hundred telephone directories
in the back of her car.
In later life Joan Rhodes accepted various acting roles, including that
of a tramp in The Elephant Man and that of the pipe-smoking innkeeper's
wife in the ITV series Dick Turpin. She also ran a café at Crouch End,
North London, and preferred not to talk about her exotic past. "I've had
rather an odd life. I've always been rather a puritan and terribly shy,"
she said in 1969. She remained very fond of Scrabble.
Joan Rhodes, who died on May 30, was unmarried. Towards the end of her
life she estimated that she had left behind her more than 20,000 mangled
telephone directories.
Hoodoo
Joan Rhodes died on May 30, aged 89.
Published Friday 4 June 2010 at 12:52
by Richard Anthony Baker
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/obituaries/feature.php/28470/obituary-joan-rhodes
Joan Rhodes was a strongwoman, who became a star of the variety theatre
and who worked in more than 50 countries. She tore telephone directories
in half [or in quarters “if the applause warranted it”], bent steel
bars, broke six-inch nails and invited four beefy men on stage to have a
tug of war with her. She always won. The real attraction of her act was
that she did not look strong. A stunning blonde, she appeared in fishnet
stockings and high heels. She was billed as the Mighty Mannequin.
Joan, born Joan Taylor, in south London on 13 April 1921, she was
abandoned by her parents as a child and was brought up by an aunt, who
hated her. At the age of 14, she ran away from home with eight pence in
her pocket, about 70p in today’s currency. Outside the National Gallery,
she saw a strong man entertaining passers-by and offered to collect
money for him. Joan learned his tricks and, in 1949, she spotted an
advertisement from the impresario, Pete Collins, in The Stage that read:
Freaks Wanted. Joan applied. Pete told her she did not look like a
freak, whereupon she tore up his phone books and carried him round his
office. She got the job and found herself in a show called Would You
Believe It?
Joan, who by now had developed a 15-minute act, was a hit and was
immediately booked by Moss Empires to tour their leading theatres. Her
routine took her all over the world. She appeared with Marlene Dietrich,
Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis junior. In a Christmas show in Iceland, she
picked up Bob Hope, but fell backwards and broke her heel. Hope landed
on his head. Almost immediately, Joan received a telegram from Bing
Crosby saying: “It should have happened sooner and harder.”
Once famous, she found she was getting different reactions from
different men, as she told an interviewer from The Sunday Times: “the
more intelligent men tend to think ‘She’s stronger than I am’ and leave
it at that. For others, I become instantly not a woman, but someone
they’re in opposition to and they try to prove something. The obvious
thing is to try to get me into a bedroom� and I’m a sitting room girl!”
Joan became accustomed to all sorts of approaches by all sorts of men.
She was invited to tea by a fan, the notorious British Fascist, James
Larratt Battersby, who treated Hitler like a God. He told her she would
marry him and become the mother of the strongest Aryan children in the
world. She dropped her teacup and fled. Her most famous suitor was
ex-King Farouk of Egypt, who every night filled her dressing room in
Rome with flowers and perfume. He told her he had 29 beds: “Would you
like to break one for me?” Her riposte on this occasion was: “Not
tonight, Josephine.”
After travelling abroad, she always returned to her small flat in
Belsize Park, which was her base for more than 60 years. It was jammed
full of her costumes, pictures from her cabaret days, albums of
newspapers cuttings, many of her drawings [she was a talented artist],
figurines, collages and a portrait of her by Dame Laura Knight, painted
in 1957. On some afternoons, she played Scrabble with her lifelong
friend, another one-off, Quentin Crisp. In 2004, she was presented with
a Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Music Hall Society and in
2007 she wrote her memoirs, Coming On Strong, described by Roy Hudd as
“one of the very best show business autobiographies I have ever read.”