Category: Prue Bury and Swinging London

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.

Prue Bury and the O’Neal’s

Prue Bury and I met in person Monday evening, at the Apthorp Building apartment of Michael and Christine O’Neal. The post before this one has a link to a New York Times article about the O’Neal’s and the Apthorp that includes an audio slide show with Christine, who is a delightful lady, and whose company I enjoyed very, very much.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/05/garden/apthorp-interactive/index.html

Prue and the O’Neal’s go back 45 years, to her arrival from London in New York, where Prue lived for five years with her first husband. The friendship with the O’Neal’s stuck, as most friendships seem to do with Michael and Christine. I had a great time listening to Mike, who has many great stories and knows how to tell them.

Prue Bury with Mike O’Neal

Mike’s brother was the late actor Patrick O’Neal, who I remember very well from many TV shows in the 60’s and 70’s. O’Neal died in 1994, and it was not an easy death, as his wife Cynthia recounts in painful detail in her heartfelt memoir, Talk Softly.

As I told Prue, Cynthia’s book left a deep and lasting impression on me. Extremely honest in her portrayal of her family and the struggles of offering support services for terminally ill AIDS and cancer patients, Cynthia presents just enough glamour and show biz glitz to provide contrast to the realities of life and death. Talk Softly is touching and filled with sorrow, yet it is not a sad book, and I recommend it highly. (Yes, Prue and I have discussed the possibility of writing her own memoir, and I offered to stop the blog to concentrate on helping her, but for now this is just lunch chat.)

Patrick O’Neal’s credits included Night of the Iguana on stage, and The Way We Were on film. But being a sci-fi fan, what I remember him for is The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and The Night Gallery.

In 1963, Patrick and Mike opened a restaurant that became a New York landmark, called The Ginger Man, named after a play that Patrick was in that had the misfortune of opening when JFK was assassinated. Later, after renovations, Mike renamed it O’Neals’. Unfortunately, after 46 years, the restaurant closed this past June.

Michael O’Neal owns another restaurant, just down the hill from the Apthorp. It’s a three-season, open-air operation called the Boat Basin Cafe, and that was where Prue and I had lunch on Tuesday, compliments of Mike, before we set off in search of headphones, of all things, as told in the next post.

Homeward bound

I’m on a Boston-bound Amtrak Acela train that was two hours late leaving Penn Station in NYC. Before I say anything about meeting Prue Bury, read this, because it’s about Prue’s dear, old friends the O’Neals, who Prue is staying with right now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/garden/05apthorp.html

I have been in unit 11L of the Apthorp, and unit 11K appears to be undergoing renovations, so presumably it will soon have occupants. [To see who moved in, click here.]

Prue in the tub with a hat

“Prue, in the tub, with a hat” sounds like a solution to the board game ‘Clue’, but I couldn’t think of what else to call this post other than what it is — a picture of Prue Bury (when she was Prue Hooper) wearing a Halston straw Derby hat, while sitting in a bathtub full of water!

Prue says of this unusual pose,

I have the photo in my scrap book. That was an uncomfortable shoot. A bath full of water and a suit which grew to be very heavy and cold! The hat looked great!

Thanks go to Martha B. at Nibs for having this scan from a 1968 issue of Look magazine.

She’s a Prunette


George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Prue Bury, Wilfrid Brambell, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney

Prue Bury was joking this week about something that I’ll be featuring later, and she said, “Spike Milligan had “I told them I was ill” put on his tombstone. Mine will be “I told them I was not a blond!” (Prue has kept her hair lightened for some years now.) Spike Milligan, along with Peter Sellers, was one of the Goon Show goons, a BBC radio program that was a favorite of the Beatles, and was one of the inspirations for the Monty Python troupe.

[audio:http://www.thegoonshow.net/downloads/mp3/54-09-28~s05e01~the_whistling_spy_enigma.mp3|titles=The Goon Show: The Whistling Spy]

As someone else on the Net says, commenting on Prue, “Real class tells. And this brunette is REAL class.” Indeed she is.


Prue Bury, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd

The pictures are courtesy of Lynn at Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style on Yahoo!