Film / Al Read
Rare Sixties Film Found
See that bloke in the embarrassing white blouse? Yes kids, people really did dress like that back in the sixties. His name is Al Read. He was the DJ at Bristol’s late lamented temple of rock, The Granary Club and is the author of the rather fine book The Granary Club: The Rock Years 1969-1988. Al’s other claim to fame is that he was the singer with Bristolian prog-rockers East of Eden, whose only top ten chart hit was an atypical instrumental – 1971’s fiddletastic Jig-a-Jig.
So what’s this got to do with film? Well, for years Al has been banging on to anyone who’ll listen that he and the band were once in a major motion picture. And not just some shonky old pop movie, either, but a proper art flick. The film in question was 1969’s Laughter in the Dark. It’s an adaptation of Vladimir Nabakov‘s Lolita-anticipating 1933 novel about an affair between a middle-aged art critic and a 16-year-old girl. The director was Tony Richardson, of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and The Charge of the Light Brigade fame. Although Richard Burton was sacked and replaced by Nicol Williamson in the lead role, the rest of the cast were none too shabby. The woman with her back to the camera in front of Al is nouvelle vague star Anna Karina, who modelled for Coco Chanel, married Jean-Luc Godard and had a musical written for her by Serge Gainsbourg.
Anyhoo, the story of Laughter in the Dark is rather a sad one. It opened in London to damning reviews. An enraged Tony Richardson withdrew his film and destroyed all the copies. Or so it was thought. But Al recently received an email from a Polish prog rock enthusiast who has a copy, which has been dodgily transferred to DVD from VHS. Hence the rather grainy still, which proves that the aging progger hadn’t been telling porkies all along.
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So come on, Al, what was your brief brush with movie stardom like? “It was shot in London in a big house in Hammersmith,” he recalls, “and then transferred to the Mediterranean for the major part of the film. The London party scenes that included East of Eden were actually filmed during a three-day party for an invited crowd that included members of the Coronation Street cast, members of the Gateway Club (a lesbian club) and circus dwarves. Only champagne was available to drink. I cannot remember sleeping. That was the hippy sixties.” (Robin Askew)
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