Joan Rhodes R.I.P.

[Euryale]

The British strongwoman and actress has died at the age of 89.







The Stage / News / Joan Rhodes dies aged 89





E.

[seeall]

What a woman!



Joan Rhodes Carbaret Act







http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...an-Rhodes.html

[julian_craster]

Obituary: Joan Rhodes

DAILY TELEGRAPH

02 Jun 2010

Joan Rhodes - Telegraph

Joan Rhodes: she tore up 20,000 telephone directories

Joan Rhodes, who has died aged 89, was a music hall artiste who tore up telephone directories and performed other feats of strength on stage; for several decades she also maintained a remarkable correspondence with her friend Quentin Crisp, the writer and raconteur.



During the mid-1950s, she appeared on television and in variety, tearing up phone books, lifting a steel table in her teeth, bending and breaking iron bars and nails and throwing obese men over her shoulder. Billed as "The Mighty Mannequin", she showed no outward sign of her considerable muscle power: with her 22in waist, she described herself as "an iron girl in a velvet glove", dressing like a showgirl and interspersing her feats with a slightly fey rhyming patter about the drawbacks of being so strong.



At the height of her fame Joan Rhodes was viewed by the British public with a kind of stupefied fascination. She became the object of music hall jokes and cartoons in Punch, and her bending of iron bars at a Christmas concert in Maidstone jail in December 1954 was the inspiration for a light-hearted leading article in The Times.



Her portrait by Dame Laura Knight was the talk of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1955, and she also modelled for Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein. While working at the Medrano Circus in Paris, she caught the attention of the Surrealist Max Ernst, who dedicated a painting to her.



In the course of her career she appeared on the same bill as Bob Hope, Fred Astaire and Marlene Dietrich. But perhaps her most unlikely acquaintance was Quentin Crisp, the self-styled "stately homo of England", whom she first met in Soho in the 1950s. The pair remained friends for decades.



"In private, Quentin was always calm and peaceful," she said. "Often on a Sunday, he'd come to my home and I'd always make a roast lunch, which he loved. If it was summer we'd sit in the garden and drink gallons of home-made lemonade, and in winter he used to sit in front of the fire. If I won at Scrabble – which wasn't often – he'd say: 'You've achieved greatness today, Miss Rhodes.'"



The pair stayed in touch After Crisp began to spend more time in New York, with him addressing his letters to "Dear Miss Rhodes". To her he dispensed his thoughts on Diana, Princess of Wales ("Trash. I can't think how dying made her into a saint. Her behaviour was disgraceful – traipsing around Paris with an Arab! Whatever next?!!!"); ambition ("I receive a small pension so I might be able to live forever without ever getting out of bed – which, as you know, was my aim from birth"); and homophobia ("What a contrast with England where never a day went by without someone screaming through the telephone that he would kill me! If I am killed here, it will be for money which is sacred. In Britain murder is an act of social criticism"). The last letter came seven weeks before his death in 1999. It was signed: "Yours miserably, Quentin".



Joan Rhodes was born in London on April 13 1921 and spent some of her early life in a workhouse. At the age of 15 she ran away from her guardian with only eightpence in her pocket. After sleeping rough in Brewer Street, Soho, she joined a travelling fair, where she got the idea for her act after seeing a professional strong man at work.



In 1949 she gained national attention when she appeared in a freak show entitled Would You Believe It? which toured the country. Considerable success in the London music halls and tours of America followed, and she appeared in a number of British summer shows.



At Christmas 1958 she performed before the Royal Family at Windsor Castle, where she snapped a 10in nail which the Duke of Edinburgh had been able only to dent. On her way to the Pier Theatre, Shanklin, in 1960, she was stopped by a policeman on the Isle of Wight ferry and asked to explain the presence of several hundred telephone directories in the back of her car.



In later life Joan Rhodes accepted various acting roles, including that of a tramp in The Elephant Man and that of the pipe-smoking innkeeper's wife in the ITV series Dick Turpin. She also ran a café at Crouch End, North London, and preferred not to talk about her exotic past. "I've had rather an odd life. I've always been rather a puritan and terribly shy," she said in 1969. She remained very fond of Scrabble.



Joan Rhodes, who died on May 30, was unmarried. Towards the end of her life she estimated that she had left behind her more than 20,000 mangled telephone directories.



Joan's film and tv credits:

Joan Rhodes

[chuffnobbler]

That obituary is just BRILLIANT. What an amazing story!

[Wee Sonny MacGregor]

She was a very well known act in the 1950s. I'm slightly surprised her 2007 biography "Coming on Strong" was not mentioned.

[Windthrop]

name='Wee Sonny MacGregor' date='03 June 2010 - 07:22 PM' timestamp='1275589368' post='435463']

She was a very well known act in the 1950s. I'm slightly surprised her 2007 biography "Coming on Strong" was not mentioned.

Am also surprised the Bob Hope incident where she dropped him wasn't mentioned.



Recommend you listen to her obit on The Last Word - Roy Hudd does her sterling service



http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...rd_11_06_2010/

[Windthrop]

Her Times obit



From Times Online June 5, 2010



Joan Rhodes

Acclaimed entertainer known as the Strong Lady of Variety who bent iron bars and tore up phone books



Recommend? (1) In the heyday of the British variety stage few speciality acts were more glamorous and unusual than Joan Rhodes.



Billed as “The Mighty Mannequin�, 5ft 7in tall, gorgeous and spectacularly costumed, she was known as “the Strong Lady of Variety�. Her 15-minute act was built entirely around her strength — she could bend steel bars, break 6in nails and, most famously, rip copies of the 1,000-page London telephone directory in half and sometimes quarters. At the age of 15 she could lift a baby elephant, and the highlight of her act was getting a crowd of men up on to stage with her to have a tug of war. The men always lost.



It was an extraordinary act which brought Rhodes worldwide fame. An intelligent, well-read woman, she travelled on her own throughout Europe, the Far East and North America for more than three decades.



Fiercely independant, she shunned the showbusiness trappings of success, avoiding parties and small talk, preferring the company of close friends who included Lucien Freud, Quentin Crisp and Dame Laura Knight.



She was born Joan Louis Ada Taylor in London in 1920. She was abandoned by her parents when she was 3 and put into a workhouse after the police were called to find the neglected children — she had two sisters and a brother — drinking drainwater. Rescued by her grandparents, she was eventually sent to board at a convent in South London but was expelled for pulling off a nun’s veil.



She was then taken in by an aunt. “She hated me from the moment she saw me,� said Joan. After three difficult years, she ran away on her 14th birthday, with eightpence in her pocket.



Lying about her age, she ended up sleeping rough and living by her wits.She began to develop her considerable powers of physical strength and started performing feats on Tower Hill and Villiers Street and passing a hat among the spectators for her wages.



She changed her name to Josie Terena, and by her her late teens she was a familiar figure in Soho district where she mixed easily with the bohemian set. She began a lifelong friendship with Crisp, before he became famous, and in later life she was his weekly Scrabble partner. (“He would ring and say, ‘A game of Scrabble — and perhaps a meal?’ I couldn’t say no�).



Eventually she was offered a job as a dancer touring in Spain but in 1949 she answered an advertisment in The Stage which read “Freaks wanted�. The advertisment was for the famous Pete Collins’ Would You Believe It? show, a production noted for its performing oddities.



She got the job and, changing her name once again, became Joan Rhodes “the Mighty Mannequin�.



“One of the dates we played was the Hackney Empire,� she later recalled, “On the bill with me was Elroy the Armless Wonder, Mushie the Lion (who ate steak off a lady’s chest) and Johnny Vree, whose idea of fun was throwing a golliwog around on stage.�



Rhodes’s feats of strength were a hit with the audience, and she was quickly snapped up by the powerful Moss Empires circuit. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she played nearly every variety theatre in Britain and worked with many of the showbiz greats.



When variety was in decline she turned to international cabaret and toured the world, working on bills with Bob Hope, and, on many occasions, with Marlene Dietrich with whom she became great friends. In later years she confessed to being taken aback at Dietrich’s initial interest in her — the diva showered her with flowers and presents — but the two enjoyed a close correspondence that lasted until Dietrich’s death in 1992.



With her personality and looks Rhodes attracted attention wherever she appeared. In Rome King Farouk of Egypt sent her tiger lilies every night and asked her if she would like to break one of his beds.



She posed with the boxer Freddie Mills, and in 1958 played Maidstone prison and, when bending a steel bar, asked the audience if they would like to know how it was done. She had the inmates’ undivided attention until she told them it was done by “sheer strength�.



Nothing, however, could have been more bizarre than her meeting with James Battersby, the notorious British Fascist and supporter of Hitler known for his anti-Semitic publications. “He was a fan of mine,� she said, “and one day he invited me to tea after a matinée at Stockport. I had no idea of his views, and he suddenly blurted out, ‘You will marry me and be the mother of the strongest Aryan child in the world.’ I dropped my teacup and fled.�



She never married but had two long relationships with men — one a merchant seaman and the other an artist — which lasted 14 and 16 years respectively.



“I never wanted children and I never wanted to get married, probably because of my own childhood,� she said. “Marriage is about having children and keeping them, and I don’t think I could have been responsible for a child. Having been in a workhouse and been deserted was not a good start in life.�



An accident forced Rhodes to retire from the stage in the late 1970s although she did appear in small acting roles in several films including The Elephant Man. She entertained her friends regularly at her charming garden flat in North London, the walls of which were lined with books. She took up painting, writing poetry (“Rhodes Odes�) and became a regular columnist in The Oldie magazine. In 2006 she wrote an acclaimed autobiography, Coming On Strong.



Asked the secret of her success as a strongwoman she said: “I always made a point of being dainty. I used to go to a weightlifting club when I was 16 and I could deadlift a hell of a lot but I was careful not to build up muscle. A lot of my strength came from spirit. It’s like getting into a temper. If you are furious enough, you can tell yourself you will do something and then you can.�



Joan Rhodes, strongwoman, was born on April 13, 1920. She died on May 30, 2010, aged 90