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Celebrity Openings. Commerce Good. Civic Bad.
Harry Selfridge was an early example of the symbiotic
relationship that exists between commerce and celebrity.
Celebrities are de rigueur for the opening of commercial
enterprises and related activities like switching on the
Christmas Lights. Celebrities are also popular for fetes
with a good old English custom being to ask a famous
local resident to do the honours, witness the lovely photo
above of the late, great Diana Dors at the Princess
Margaret Hospital in Swindon in 1982. The occasion
gave rise to an often told but possibly apocryphal
anecdote involving a star-struck vicar and a faux-pas
arising from his well meaning attempt to introduce the
local girl by her given name of Fluck.
For a civic project like a library, bridge or new form of
transport it is more customary to ask the mayor, although
he or she is instantly trumped by any aristocrat or royal
should they be an available option.
In 1959 when the Chiswick Flyover was completed
Mr JE. Dayton, the managing director of the principal
contractors, believed that this engineering triumph deserved
a ritzy opening ceremony. The council’s chief engineer,
a rather more old fashioned corporation chap, disagreed
strongly. He thought a modest unveiling would be more
appropriate - a conservative view supported by the then
Minister of Transport. Imagine their horror when, on the
morning of 30 September 1959 a limousine arrived bearing
the voluptuous Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield clad in a
skintight red dress and clutching a pair of gold plated
scissors. The American Diana Dors (!) was filming
‘Too
Hot to Handle’
with Christopher Lee at the MGM Studios
in Boreham Wood. The navvies were delighted and Dayton
insisted that homegrown stiff upper lipped candidates
Stirling Moss and Donald Campbell had turned the job
down. Writing to the local newspaper he said:
“We felt that 30 months work and the completion of
Britain’s first flyover deserved a little celebration. We could
see no reason why any politician or fuddy-duddy should be
invited. We feel that Miss Mansfield did a first-class job.”
Fifty years later civic opinion to Miss Mansfield had
softened. Alas the actress had died in a car accident in the
sixties but the Mayor of Hounslow asked her youngest
daughter Mariska Hargitay, the star of ‘
Law & Order’
to
come to the Chiswick Flyover to commemorate the event.
Sadly she declined so actress and local resident Imogen
Stubbs, in a lovely little ceremony of civic-celebrity
reconciliation joined the Mayor and Dayton’s daughter to
unveil a plaque that quotes Miss Mansfield’s 1959 words -
“It’s a sweet little flyover”.