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Tuesday 29 March 2016

The gold-painted corpse

Step One: Actress Shirley Eaton is cast as a gold-painted corpse in Goldfinger.

Step Two: Miss Eaton is assured that death from “skin suffocation”, (although probably not entirely certain about it in 1964), is not a likely outcome.

Step Three: Just in case, a doctor is hired to be on set at all times in fear of possible skin suffocation and her stomach is left bare for the same reason.

Step Four: Miss Eaton spends two hours in make-up … (two hours that the painter will never forget as long as he lives).

Step Five: Although the myth of skin suffocation is based mainly on the incorrect belief that ‘respiration occurs, at least in part, through the skin’, there is the worry that skin is the main surface for temperature exchange, and if heat accumulates for too long, locked under the skin, death is a very real possibility. The crew films Miss Eaton’s scenes very, very quickly. It’s a wrap in a morning’s work.

Step Six: After filming, Miss Eaton is scrubbed down by the wardrobe mistress and the make-up girl, and sweated off the remaining gold in a number of Turkish baths…

Step Seven: Presumably for good publicity, a rumor is spread that Shirley Eaton tragically died on set from asphyxiation due to the gold paint, (just like in the movie plot).


(www.messynessychic.com/photographs by David Hurn / trivia from IMDB via Imgur)

Sunday 6 March 2016

Lost Movies: The Shadow of Siam


Rare publicity shot of Henry Rome. In long-lost The Shadow of Siam he played gritty merchant seaman Bert Bulger who jumps ship in pursuit of necrophilic elephant hunter Adolf Kublewagon. Ethel White played Ginger, the idealistic Brighton waitress with a club foot and severe hearing impediment Bert saves from a life of white slavery. Ethel claimed she based her character on Anna May Wong in the classic British movie Piccadilly. Local actor Tongchai Tong was badly miscast as Bert’s plucky cross-eyed sidekick Chalky.  
    



A silent movie with expressionist pretensions, The Shadow of Siam was made some time in the late twenties. It was never released. Empire Gryphon Films collapsed shortly after the cast returned to England and the owner mysteriously vanished. When interviewed by the Daily Standard about his experience filming in Siam Rome simply said: “I never want to see another bloody mango again.”   
Anna May Wong

Shadow remains the only British silent movie to have been made in Siam (now called Thailand) and was apparently mired in scandal. Originally called the Metropol, the hotel used in the production of the movie might still exist in Bangkok – check out the Pulp Zen blog: 


Both The Shadow of Siam and the Metropol feature in the dystopian crime novel Zen City, Iso.
The infamous mango incident 
For more on Henry Rome and The Shadow of Siam see my British Babylon blog.