One of the first Mary Quant models, Prudence Bury was part of Swinging London at its beginning. Prue appeared with the Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night” before Mary sent her to New York to introduce the miniskirt to America.
A couple of my friends have birthdays coming up in April. One of them is Prue, who by now should be relocated in France. I’m waiting for her reply to a message I sent.
Here’s Prue’s first husband in an offbeat episode of Danger Man, reprising his croupier role from A Hard Day’s Night. If only Prue had been cast as the lovely lady with Patrick McGoohan. Note the presence of Desmond Llewelyn, the original Q in the James Bond films.
Prue gets her hair done by Betty Glasow, six minutes into this.
Defunded PBS is fundraising with ‘Deconstructing the Beatles’.
Cambridge Dictionary
CRAY-CRAY meaning: 1. stupid or not reasonable 2. things that someone says or does that seem stupid, without meaning
I first heard Monty Python’s very funny ‘Ethel the Frog’ in high school, on WBCN-FM, the station that broke the Pythons in America. The mockumentary told the story of the criminal Piranha Brothers.
What I didn’t know at the time was, the Piranha Brothers were based on the all-too-real Kray brothers of London. In Boston there was Whitey Bulger, and Cape Cod had Melvin Reine. They were violent and, in a word, crazy. Compared to the Krays, the notorious Whitey was a misunderstood businessman.
Tom Hardy, perhaps the finest actor of this or almost any generation, portrayed both of the insanely dangerous Kray twins in 2015’s Legend.
After watching that, listen to this story, as told to me by Prue.
Twin Peaks pushed the limits of network television beyond anything ever seen before. Co-created by David Lynch, who directed a half-dozen episodes, the series’ premise was shocking and it would never have aired if the subject matter hadn’t been presented in the surreal way that it was.
Jules Feiffer started in Will Eisner’s cartooning studio. His essay “The Great Comic Book Heroes” for Playboy in 1965 was well-timed for the Pop Art era. It was expanded into a popular and groundbreaking book.
Feiffer wrote the screenplay for the Mike Nichols movie Carnal Knowledge. Nichols talked Prue’s bestie friend, Cynthia O’Neal, into accepting a role.
My eldest sister occasionally likes to remind me that she attended both of the Beatles shows at Shea Stadium. The legendary 1965 concert was held two weeks before Mary Quant’s New York fashion show, where Prue introduced miniskirts to America.
The unprecedented success of the Beatles at Shea Stadium gave promoters the idea that the venue would be good for other acts, as seen in this 1966 poster.
Here’s the batty tale of how Batman followed the Beatles to Shea Stadium, and why Bob Dylan didn’t.
