Early years

Keeler was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex. Her father, Colin Sean Keeler (later known as Colin King, 1921–1976),^[3] abandoned the family in 1945. She was brought up by her mother, Julie Ellen (née Payne, 1923–2012),^[4][5] and stepfather, Edward Huish, in a house made from two converted railway carriages in the Berkshire village of Wraysbury. In 1951, at the age of 9, Keeler was sent to a holiday home in Littlehampton because the school health inspector said that she was suffering from malnutrition.^[6] She was sexually abused as a teenager both by her stepfather and his friends, for whom she babysat.^[7] At the age of 15, she found work as a model at a dress shop in London's Soho. At age 17, she gave birth to a son after an affair with a United States Air Force sergeant; the child was born prematurely on 17 April 1959 and survived just six days.^[4]

That summer, Keeler left Wraysbury, staying briefly in Slough with a friend before heading for London. She initially worked as a waitress at a restaurant on Baker Street, where she met Maureen O'Connor, who worked at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho. She introduced Keeler to the owner, Percy Murray, who hired her almost immediately as a topless showgirl.^[8]

At Murray's, she met Stephen Ward, an osteopath and artist. His practice and art brought considerable social success, and he made many influential friends. The two soon lived together with the outward appearance of being a couple, but, according to her, it was a platonic, non-sexual relationship. In her autobiography, Secrets and Lies, Keeler maintained that Ward was working as a double agent, having contact with both senior members of MI5 and the KGB, and was passing UK state secrets to the latter.

Profumo affair

On the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, at a pool party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by the 3rd Viscount Astor. Profumo began a brief affair with Keeler, the exact length of which is disputed. It either ended in August 1961, after the security services warned Profumo of the possible dangers of mixing with the Ward circle, or it continued with decreasing fervour until December 1961.^[9] Among Ward's other friends, whom Profumo briefly met, was the Soviet naval attaché and GRU officer, Yevgeny Ivanov. According to Keeler, she and Ivanov had a short sexual relationship.^[10]

After her relationship with Profumo ended, Keeler was sexually involved with several partners, including jazz singer Lucky Gordon and jazz promoter Johnny Edgecombe. There was considerable jealousy between the two men; in one quarrel on 27 October 1962, Edgecombe slashed Gordon's face with a knife.^[11] When Keeler ended the relationship with Edgecombe in December 1962, Edgecombe turned up at Ward's house in Wimpole Mews on 14 December, where she was temporarily seeking refuge, and fired five shots at the building.^[12] His arrest and subsequent trial brought Keeler to public attention and provided the impetus for a national scandal to develop.^[13] After initially denying any impropriety with Keeler, Profumo eventually confessed and resigned from the government and Parliament, causing great embarrassment to his government colleagues, who had previously supported him.^[14] These events, in the summer of 1963, brought Keeler notoriety; The Economist gave the headline "The Prime Minister's Crisis" alongside a picture of Keeler, with no further explanation.^[15]

Morley portrait

Lewis Morley's photographic portrait of Keeler astride a copy of an Arne Jacobsen chair, 1963

At the height of the Profumo affair in 1963, Keeler sat for a photographic portrait by Lewis Morley. The photoshoot, at a studio on the first floor of Peter Cook's Establishment Club, with Morley was to promote a proposed film, The Keeler Affair, that was never released in the United Kingdom. Keeler was reluctant to pose in the nude, but the film producers insisted. Morley persuaded Keeler to sit astride a plywood chair so that, whilst technically nude, the back of the chair would obscure most of her body. Keeler told cartoon historian Tim Benson in 2007 that she was not nude and was wearing knickers during the entire photoshoot.^[16][17]

The photo propelled Arne Jacobsen's Model 3107 chair to prominence, even though the chair used was an imitation of the Model 3107, with a hand-hold aperture crudely cut out of the back to avoid copyright infringement. The chair used is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.^[16] The differences in the designs of the chairs are readily apparent in a side-by-side photograph.^[16]

Trials

Keeler going to court in September 1963

On 18 April 1963, Keeler was attacked at a friend's home. She accused Gordon, who was arrested and charged. At his trial, which began on 5 June, he maintained that his innocence would be established by two witnesses who, the police told the court, could not be found. On 7 June, principally on the evidence of Keeler, Gordon was found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment.^[18] By this time, Ward was facing trial on vice charges, and Keeler was again a main prosecution witness.^[19]

Ward's trial, which ran 22–31 July 1963, has been characterised as "an act of political revenge" for the embarrassment caused to the government. He was accused of living off immoral earnings earned through Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies based on the small contributions to household expenses or loan repayments the two had made to Ward while living with him. Ward's professional earnings as an osteopath were a substantial £5,500 a year (£124,800 in 2021) at the time these small payments were made.^[20] After a hostile summing-up from the trial judge, Ward was convicted, but took an overdose of barbiturates and died before the jury returned its verdict and sentence could be passed.^[21] In the closing days of Ward's trial, Gordon's assault conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal when his missing witnesses were found and testified that the evidence given by Keeler was substantially false.^[22] In December 1963, Keeler pleaded guilty to charges of perjury before Sir Anthony Hawke, the Recorder of London, and was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, serving six months in prison.^[23] Her cellmate while in prison was Elizabeth Crowley, the wife of East End bank robber William Crowley, the maternal grandparents of Labour MP Wes Streeting.

Later life

Keeler (aged 46) discussing the Profumo affair on After Dark in 1988

After her release from prison in 1964, Keeler had two brief marriages, to James Edward Levermore (22 October 1965; dissolved 1966) and Anthony Sydney Platt (18 February 1971; separated 1972; divorced 27 May 1977).^[4][5] There was a child from each union, the elder being primarily raised by Keeler's mother, Julie. Keeler mainly lived alone in the last couple of decades of her life. Most of the considerable amount of money that she made from newspaper stories was dissipated by lawyers. She said that during the 1970s, "I was not living, I was surviving".^[24] She published several accounts of her life, in one of which she claimed that she became pregnant as a result of her relationship with Profumo and subsequently had an abortion.^[25] Her portrait by Ward was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1984.^[26]

In 1988, Keeler was featured in Bryan Ferry's promotional video for the single "Kiss and Tell" (originally released on Ferry's seventh solo album, Bête Noire, in 1987) with Mandy Rice-Davies; this was meant to draw more attention to the song's theme.^[27] In June 1988 she made an extended appearance on Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark.^[28]

Death

On 5 December 2017, Keeler's son, Seymour Platt, announced that she had died, aged 75, the previous night at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Farnborough, London.^[29] She had been ill for some months, suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).^[29] Her funeral took place on 16 December at the West London Crematorium in Kensal Green Cemetery.^[30]

Citations

Works cited