Another iconic woman

That’s Christine Keeler in the photo. If you haven’t heard of her before, modern history credits (or discredits) her for bringing down the Conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963.

A woman brought down a government? It’s a matter of perspective, of course. Keeler had an affair with John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War, and the ensuing scandal was what did Macmillan’s government in. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t Keeler who brought down the government. Rather, it was the libido of a government official, his hypocrisy in refusing to admit the affair initially and his subsequent exposure as a liar and immoral public servant.

But that’s getting ahead of the story. I wasn’t even born yet when Keeler met Profumo. I was born after Macmillan’s government had already gone down so the Profumo Affair was not exactly a story that I heard repeated while growing up. By the time I could comprehend the meaning of adultery and scandal, the controversy over the Profumo Affair had long blown over.

But even 45 years after it happened, it is still a riveting story to tell. I first came across it when a reader sent a bunch of VCD movies about four years ago, one of which was “Scandal” starring Joanne Whalley (before she was Mrs. Kilmer), John Hurt, Ian McKellen (Magneto and Gandalf to today’s generation) and a very young Bridget Fonda. With the number of VCDs and DVDs in the house, it got buried and I didn’t have a chance to see it until we moved last July when we had to go through each and every disc to determine which we would bring and which we would discard.

Christine Keeler was a country girl who dreamed of making it big but ended up as a topless showgirl in a London night club. That was where she met the social-climbing osteopath and portrait painter Stephen Ward. Ward shared a rented apartment with her although they were not lovers (all accounts I’ve come across independently of the movie point to the same thing). It was a weird relationship by any traditional standard but Ward was not a traditional character by any standard.

Ward’s racket, if you can call it that, was to befriend pretty young girls and introduce them to his friends in the glamorous circles of London society. He wasn’t exactly a pimp for he received no payment for the introductions. His real intention was to inveigle himself with VIPs so that he continued to be welcome in their exclusive social circle.

So it came to be that Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo. If the reenactment of the incident in “Scandal” is accurate, the introduction would seem like an afterthought. Profumo caught sight of a naked Keeler emerging from a pool and was smitten. The introduction seemed more like a formality.

That an affair ensued is clear. When it came to public knowledge — quite accidentally after Keeler caught media attention when a jilted lover opened fire on the apartment she shared with Ward — Profumo denied it in a speech in Parliament. But a belated admission was inevitable and Profumo resigned.

But the real controversy was not the affair itself. The real controversy surrounded the fact that at the time Keeler was having an affair with Profumo, she was also sleeping with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the embassy of the Soviet Union in London. This was the early 60s and the Cold War pervaded everyone’s mind. There were some who suggested that Ivanov was a spy and Keeler was passing on to him government secrets that she learned during pillow talks with Profumo.

In the trial that followed, where Ward was charged for violation of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (‘That he, being a man, did on diverse dates between January 1961 and 8 June 1963, knowingly live wholly or in part on the earning of prostitution’ which, of course, conclusively presumed that Keeler was a prostitute), Ward and Keeler became the scapegoats in the scandal that rocked Britain. Keeler herself was not charged but was called on as a witness against Ward. Ward took an overdose of sleeping pills, was in coma when the guilty verdict was handed down, then died days afterward. Keeler spent nine months in prison for perjury.

Keeler later wrote an autobiography, “The Truth at Last: My Story”, and I am still looking around for a copy.

The photo is owned by its photographer, Lewis Morley, and is reproduced here based on fair use for purposes of the discussion of Christine Keeler, the Profumo Affair and the film “Scandal”.