My mother had a lot of cousins, most of whom we weren’t close with, but there were 3 brothers that my mum and her brother Harry had a close relationship with. The brothers were Len, Sam & Vic Gurvitz. Their last names were generally referred to as Gee. Lennie Gee or Sammy Gee. I don’t know if I knew their real last names until I was in my 20’s.
Sammy Gee worked as the road manager for the Kinks & Cliff Richard and The Shadows and had a great Levy (our family last name) sense of humour. He and I got on well. He separated from his wife, Marie, in the 60’s and had a succession of wives and girlfriends who got younger as he got older. Must have had the Curse of the Levy Twinkle.
Lennie & Vic owned a store on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly directly across from Piccadilly Circus. It was a store that catered to tourists. Shirts, mugs, postcards and all the paraphernalia associated with tourism. They also sold film & movie film, both blank and recorded. The recorded movie film was mainly tourist type stuff, views and movies of the sights around London and the U.K. But there was also film that was risqué. We spent a lot of time socializing with Lennie and Beryl, Lennie’s wife, who also had a great sense of humour. At one time I had a part-time job in a confectionary booth that Lennie had leased at the entrance to the Tottenham Court Road tube station in the West End. That is another story.
In those days there were a lot of Japanese tourists who enjoyed the gifts found in the store especially the risqué stuff. Lennie did a deal of some sort with one of the Japanese tourists and in gratitude the tourist dropped by and gave Lennie a small gift. Two reels of movies. Turns out that the Japanese business man was so grateful that he had given Lennie two reels of risqué blue movies.
Lennie and Beryl decided to invite the family to a movie night. We all knew the story of the blue movies and all assembled with much anticipation in their Sloane St flat at the appointed time. Sloan St is in the heart of Knightsbridge and runs for 3/4 of a mile from Knightsbridge, which is just south of Hyde Park, down to Sloane Square. The heart of a fancy shmancy residential and shopping area.
Lennie set up the projector and screen in the living room and the women were the first in to the viewing. The women included my mother and my aunt Ruby, Harry’s wife. The men were assembled in the kitchen and dining room giggling like kids. I was about 24 at the time so this was around 1967. I had seen blue movies before as I have mentioned in The Gestetner Era. But some of the guests, mainly the women, had never seen one so it was to going to be quite the experience for some of them. We couldn’t hear what the comments were from the ladies but we could hear a lot of laughter.
The first viewing came to an end and the ladies filed out wiping the tears of laughter from their eyes. It seems that my mum had recognized one of the women in the movies as a customer. They also recognized Elke Sommer, the Swedish actress who had recently been in a Peter Sellers movie. All rightee then us men were ready, more than ready in fact.
We filed into the living room and waited impatiently as Lennie rewound the movies. I heard a lot of commotion coming from the street below. Car horns were blaring. I took a look through the window at the street below. The first thing I noticed was all the traffic. Sloane Street was a busy thoroughfare at most times of the day but at 9:30pm you wouldn’t expect it to be this busy. Wonder what was causing the traffic jam, I thought? I looked up and noticed that many of the windows of the flats in the building opposite were open. People were standing at their windows looking out and down at the traffic jam. The jam seemed to stretch both ways from Knightsbridge down to Sloane Square. The honking made quite a din. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Hesitating for a moment, Lennie gingerly opened the door and standing in the doorway were two London bobbies (policemen). “Excuse me sir, but whatever movie you are showing seems to be causing a lot of commotion outside.”, they said. Lennie scratched his head in amazement. I was still at the window and as I turned to see what was happening at the front door I realized that I was standing behind the movie screen. It then dawned on me what had happened. I had my own projector and screen so I knew immediately that the movie had been watched in the street below in reverse. In fact the whole of the blue movie had been watched by everyone on Sloane Street. Cars had come to a complete stop so the drivers could watch and the flat owners across the road had been hanging out of their windows watching. Fortunately the movies weren’t playing when the police were at the door. The projector and screen were turned around and the movie fest continued. I think my mum pee’d herself at the news of the traffic jam and what had caused it.
