REALISM
Maureen was a romantic with a well-defined streak of realism running through her. She was never fooled by the falseness of celebrity, nor got carried away by the prospect of vast riches, and she kept her feet planted firmly on the ground throughout the chaotic Beatlemania years. In fact, Ringo and Maureen looked a very settled and stable pair in the Sixties, a down-to-earth team who would never forget or betray their working-class Liverpool roots, although they were ready and able to appreciate and make practical use of the material benefits of wealth. They struck those around them as a thoroughly compatible couple, who might be expected to live happily together for the rest of their lives.
Ringo fancied 16-year-old Maureen the very first time he saw her in a queue outside the Cavern before a lunchtime session. He chatted her up and asked her out - to see him play with the Beatles. She confessed that she had to be home before midnight or she’d be in trouble with her mum and dad. Before Ringo dated her in 1962, convent-educated Maureen had started her working life as a trainee manicurist.
ROMANCE
Until her romance with Ringo, Maureen had experienced few if any serious love affairs, although she was known to have gone out with another local musician, Johnny Guitar of Rory Storm’s Hurricanes, for a spell. She was a staunch Cavern fan and a close follower of the top Mersey Beat groups of the day, although later on she said that her musical favourites ranged from Frank Sinatra to the Beatles. She was aware of her sexuality and was quite fashion-conscious in a provincial sort of way. She found out what attracted Ringo and used to dress and groom herself very specifically for him from the time they first went out until their marriage broke down in the mid Seventies.
Soon after arriving in London in 1964, Maureen became engaged to Ringo. He proposed to her in traditional fashion on bended knee - in a West End night-club, the fashionable Ad Lib discotheque, which was a favourite hang-out of the Fab Four and their ‘in crowd’ of London showbiz friends that year. Like most of her friends in Liverpool, Maureen became pregnant before her wedding day. In one very frank conversation we had at the time, Maureen convinced me that she would have married Ringo whether or not there was a baby on the way. Ringo agreed with this but never sounded quite so convincing.
The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein acted as best man when Ringo and Maureen married at Caxton Hall Register Office in Westminister, just thirty years ago, on February 11th 1965. George was there and John came with Cynthia, but Paul was on holiday on Tunisia with Jane Asher.
Ringo took his bride to the outskirts of Brighton for a three-night honeymoon at the house of David Jacobs (the Beatles’ showbusiness lawyer, not the Radio 2 deejay), who lived just to the west of the resort at Hove. The honeymoon, like the couple’s small wedding breakfast, was organised by ‘Eppy’, who gave them a dinner service to mark the whole low-key but none-the-less happy occasion. Their first home as a married couple was a flat in central London just north of Oxford Street.
Before, during and after her marriage to Ringo, Maureen was very popular and well-liked by the other Beatles’ womenfolk. She had a chirpy personality and an irreverent sense of humour which fitted in well with the rest of the group. While John, Paul, George and Ringo circled the globe on tour, the women stayed at home and played their part in what Pattie once called "the big secret family". They gossiped together, protected one another’s interests against outside intrusion and set their own little close-knit world to rights over bottles of wine. It was a lifestyle which Maureen fell into very happily.
When their first flat was discovered by reporters and fans, Ringo followed the example of George and John by moving south of the capital. He and Maureen took a big mock Tudor house close to John and Cyn on St. George’s Hill estate at Weybridge, Surrey. She got used to household shopping with a credit card but said she’d prefer to use cash because it made her more aware of price rises. For the rest of their ten-year marriage, Maureen lived her life through Ringo, never feeling that it was out of place to be Mrs. Starkey, but sometimes feeling uneasy when she appeared in public as Mrs. Starr, the Beatles’s wife. She never called her husband Ringo: "Ringo just seems funny," she said, "his name is Richie." She very willingly answered much of his fan mail for him, unlike other Beatles’ wives and girlfriends.
CINEMA
Ringo installed a cinema and full-blown bar in his Weybridge mansion. His keen interest in imaginative cine-photography led him to make a twenty-minute colour film which focused on one of Maureen’s eyes - he used to say her eyes had hypnotic power and were one of his wife’s most compellingly attractive features.
In the early Seventies, stories started to circulate in showbusiness circles suggesting that the relationship between Ringo and Maureen was on the rocks, and that both had admitted that they were seeking comfort outside the partnership. But neither has ever spoken about it publicly.
When they divorced in 1975, Ringo admitted adultery with an American actress. The couple saw one another occasionally from then on, Maureen remaining close to their three children, daughter Lee, who is now 24 years old, Jason, now 27, and particularly their first born son, Zak, now 30 (sic).
Maureen married Isaac Tigrett of Hard Rock Cafe fame in Monte Carlo on May 1989 after a long and close friendship which already lasted almost fifteen years. Of her former friends from the Beatles’ circle, only Cynthia Lennon was a wedding guest. She and Isaac spent an increasing amount of time in California after they married and Maureen more or less lost contact with most of her London friends. But Ringo and their three children were at her bedside when she died.
by Tony Barrow
[many thanks to Lynn Mayes who typed this out and added it to my Maureen Starr Tribute Group at Yahoo]