Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.
Friday, 2nd April, 1993.
Confessions of Felicity, the Jason King bimbo
The starlets who found fame in the 70s harem of a TV style icon.
It was the decade that style forgot. The one that dared to flare. Now it’s back in favour in a major way as the kitsch excesses of the 70s revival are shrewdly aimed at the under 30s, who never wore tatty old Afghan coats the first time around. Last weekend, massed ranks of Mexican moustaches, platoons of Noddy Holder platform boots and white satin Abba-esque loon pants were on the march. The faithful fans who light candles to such seminal 70s TV series as Jason King and Sapphire and Steel made a pilgrimage to the to the Shepperton Moat House in Middlesex to celebrate the video releases of their screen heroes and heroines from the vaults of Lord Lew Grade’s former company, ITC.
And the man behind the grooviest Mexican moustache of them all is thriller writer and amateur sleuth, Jason King – flamboyantly played by Peter Wyngarde, whose dashing adventures ran to four years of 60 minute episodes from September 1971. At the same time, these hit action-adventure shows introduced to our TV screens a new kind of young woman. While the 60s invented the dollybird, the glam rock era of the early 70s refined the concept with the making of the Bimbo. She was paid to look vacant, but gorgeous.
A Jason King Girl was, after all, the television equivalent of being a Bond girl. And for some of our top actresses, these early days are embarrassingly coming back to haunt them. As the award-winning Felicity Kendal prepares to open in friend Tom Stoppard’s long-awaited new play, ‘Arcadia’, on April 13th at the National Theatre, her past playfully returns to spook her. Hush, hush, whisper, whisper, who dares… yes demure Felicity Kendal’s was once a Jason King Girl.
But Felicity is in good company, for among her sisters in the court of the heavily medallion King are Stephanie Beacham, star of The Colbys and Dynasty. Edward Woodward’s actress wife Michelle Dotrice and the ever-smouldering Kate O’Mara (who was just beginning to ignite seriously), all served their apprenticeship in the adventures of super sleuth, Jason King.
Felicity was completely unaware of the show’s relaunch on video this month. She roared with laughter and said, “What a hoot! I think I wore lots of hippy clothes. Peter Wyngarde was a scream and great fun”. Felicity was only 22, look like the Princess of the Pixies with her long honey-coloured hair and bat wing sleeves in the role of Toki, an adorable but unattainable girl pursued by King in Paris. The elfing image stayed with her for years and influenced all her TV roles until she matured from the caring, self-sufficient neighbour Barbara in The Good Life into the serious award-winning classical actress who is now playwright Tom Stoppard’s favourite leading lady.
Women were Jason King’s fashion accessories. His ever-changing harem wore tarantula eyelashes, bovine expressions and even wore bikini’s to do the housework for him. He well remembers Felicity’s first day on the set to play ‘A girl for whom a king would abdicate’.
“My lovely Felicity – I fell in love with her. I found she was madly attractive,” recalls Wyngarde, in his deep, well-spoken tones, whose elegant style won him the Best Dressed TV Star of the 70s around the world.
“She is an was one of the most attractive things around. I was in love with her and so were 50 million viewers. The whole crew fell for her. She was quite unique, because it was rare to find intelligence and beauty. Everyone loved the ladies on the set, because they were young and glamorous with long legs, which were quite appealing. I endorsed all the ladies they were getting. They were one of the perks of the game. It’s lovely to have beauty around, whatever kind.”
Stephanie Beacham was obviously not thrilled to hear that her days as a Jason King decoration were being revisited in the 90s, even though she went onto even camper glories in The Colbys. She was crowned with a glittering diadem as an upmarket Madam. And she has kept the same glamorous image ever since. “Oh my God, that’s ancient history,” screeched her representative. No you can’t talk to her because she’s filming in Los Angeles”.
Wyngarde added, “Stephanie had a unique quality – sophistication, coolness and intelligence”. It helped out the series to have women with such qualities. “Everyone was supposed to look like a bimbo but Felicity and Stephanie certainly weren’t. We did have a lot of bimbos to fill some of the scenes as extras.
“Kate O’Mara vibrated sex around the studio. Sex sex, and sex again – you could sense it coming down the stairs,” said Wyngarde. “She had a wonderful face and figure and she’s a terribly sweet girl. Although she had these gorgeous looks, green eyes with black hair, she had this hockey school captain manner. But she could suddenly change it and become a sultry sex kitten. She could be a chameleon and after all that’s what acting is all about”.
Another of his leading ladies was Michelle Dotrice. “She had a wonderful sense of comedy”, said Wyngarde, explaining: “Comedy is nothing to do with the person who says the lines it’s to do with listening and reacting. She had a kind of innocence and yet intelligence”. So why was almost every woman on TV made to look so dumb? “It was all to do with fashion. They didn’t want girls looking as if they had a brain. A man had to have the brains. Remember, it was pre-yuppie time. A man had to have the brains and to be dominant, while the woman were just extra-terrestrial bits hanging around,” he explains. “It was pre-macho days. Men were dominating in a suit. Now they have to be dominating in their boxer shorts”.
King’s elegant wardrobe frequently competed with the costumes of his ladies. His personally tailored single-breasted suits cost £500 a time and had to be figure hugging, apart from the slight flair covering platform heeled boots. But not so tight that he couldn’t karate his way out of trouble. His shirt cuffs were always turned back without cufflinks. He never carried a gun, only smoked his own brand of Russian cigarette’s, and drank champagne and whisky, but not together. Jason King was an all action, devilish ladykiller with large sideboards who inspired a million suburban imitators still lurking in Top Rank suits on Saturday nights. A spin off from another adventure series, Department S, it turned Wyngarde into a highly influential star. To prove it, Jason became the most popular choice of nomenclature for boys born in 1971. Despite becoming a TV hero, with his stylish clothes copied by men including pop stars like Barry Gibb and receiving hundreds of adoring fan letters a week from women, Wyngarde admitted he lost out on making a fortune.
“I’m not very good with business,” he said over breakfast at his Kensington hideaway. “I had a standard contract fee. They syndicated the shows in America and I didn’t get a penny extra. With my London tailor, I designed the Jason King suits based on an 18th Century riding jacket. When the series became successful around the world, everyone was trying to copy them. In Hamburg, it was terrible. I found there was seven shops advertising Jason King suits and I wasn’t earning anything from them”. Did it make him feel bitter? “Not bitter,” he replied. “I had a great deal of fun doing it. It brought me a great deal of fame at that time, and I enjoyed doing them. It was really a sendup of Ian Fleming and James Bond”.
At one time he had 56 Jason King suits in his wardrobe, but now there are only two left. “I’ve given them all away. After spending four years changing into about four suits every day of the week, the last thing I want to do now is put one on”.
Interview by David Wigg and Maureen Paton.
PETER WYNGARDE: The Official Website 