Ebony Magazine, March 1963
Shirley Bassey
British Bombshell wins new acclaim
while on fifth visit to United States
"A
musical high priestess of soul and sex," "a colored spark of electricity," "the hottest thing
to hit London since the German blitz." Thus, traditionally staid Britons throw conservatism to the winds when
describing British-born Shirley Bassey, a torch singer who parlayed on-stage "wickedness" into wealth
and international acclaim.
Recently, while on a whirlwind U.S. visit - the fifth in her 10-year career – the slender, clarion-voiced entertainer of Welsh and African extraction added new laurels to the fame she had built abroad and at home. Immediately upon opening in New York, she had Gotham critics raving like their English counterparts, "A delight to the ear as well as the eye," wrote one. "The best British supper club entertainer that England has sent us in years," wrote another. "A tawny tigress . . . exciting and intense." Added a third. "The Plaza’s Persian room (where she appeared last December) has struck it rich again," proclaimed another. "Shirley Bassey, the dynamic little British Import with her stereophonic vocalizing, is a delight to the ear as well as the eye . . ."
An explosive
mixture of Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Judy Garland, Shirley belted her way to international fame with a string
of suggestive songs that sent eyebrows upward throughout the British Isles. Only a saucy adolescent of 18 seven
years ago, she exploded with Who Wants To Help Me Burn My Candle At Both Ends? When Britons blushingly accepted
the challenge, her fortune was made. "It’s hard for me to be bigger in England than I am now," she cockily
sixes up her success.
Although she has toned down her repertoire since hitting it big, there are many who feel she is still "burning
her candle at both ends." Their opinions are fueled by rumors of a sizzling romance with Frank Sinatra (denied
by both), and her admitted passion for fast, white Jaguars, high-fashion clothes and mink. Yet, beneath the scintillating
facade that keeps the gossip columnists in high gear is a serious, often lonely person, who sorrowfully confides:
"I’ve collected more grief in the few short years I’ve been in show business than most people in a lifetime".
SHIRLEY
Bassey’s meteoric rise from a $9-a-week factory worker in the Tiger Bay dockside section of Cardiff, Wales,
to Britain’s highest-paid entertainer at $350,000-a-year has often been likened to that of France’s Edith Piaf.
But during her relatively brief career, she has engendered more controversies, criticism and conflict than any
half dozen comparable personalities in the entertainment field.
In 1956, she was reported missing, but later showed up and confessed that it was all a publicity stunt. When she
was 20, a jilted, gun-toting suitor held her prisoner in a London hotel until 30 Bobbies flushed him out and sent
him to jail. At one time, she knocked a filling out of the mouth of a nightclub owner during a squabble over a
bill. On another occasion, two men outside a London nightclub shot it out with pistols, presumably over her. In
1958 she made headlines again when the story of a secret daughter, born out of wedlock when she was 18 years old,
was leaked to the press.
When she married English TV producer Kenneth Hume in 1961, the press had a field day again, but even more so when
17 months later she announced that her marriage was on the rocks. "I have old-fashioned notions about love,"
she explained. "That’s why I’ve been hurt so often . . . marriage isn’t easy – not for someone like me."