On the Kindness of Strangers

There is another White House, an iconic apartment-house opened in  1936,and now a listed building, in bustling Marylebone, close to Regent's Park in the centre of London, and opposite the site of the Diorama, a fore-runner of cinema, which employed candle-light on huge paintings, with audiences literally moved around a flexible,arena-like space.Adjacent in Albany Street was another celebrated Victorian attraction, the Colosseum, constructed in the  1820s to house "The Panorama of London", the largest painting ever created.

Christina Rossetti was a nearby neighbour and other literary figures who lived in the area whose writings would much later inspire film-makers include Charles Dickens, and  Wilkie Collins who authored the first detective novel, while the two homes of the most famous fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, are a short walk away in opposite directions, his traditional Baker Street abode to the west, the newer haunt of BBC TV's latest incumbent in the role Benedict Cumberbatch to the east.Constant Lambert, who composed some film music,lived in Albany Street.The building itself is  of  striking design, in the shape of the crosses of St Andrew and St George as super-imposed on each other, and so forming the Union Jack, which  saved it  from being blitzed during the Second World War when Luftwaffe  pilots apparently used it as a compass.

The serviced apartments with restaurant and the latest  luxury facilities -  the juvenile Jane Asher recalls swimming in its indoor pool in the 1950s- became a magnet for celebrities. Trevor Howard told me that he  set out from his flat for the premiere of Brief Encounter in a cinema down Regent Street that subsequently became a religious hall, realised he had forgotten his cufflinks but was able to go back to retrieve them and make his appearance in time to introduce what became one of the British cinema's  best loved love stories. (That place  is now,I believe,ironically, an upmarket jewellery shop).There was a roof garden and The White House opened what became one of the capital's first smart clubs, for non-residents, to which countless film-makers, musicians and other artistes flocked.Appropriately, the building was acquired by the Rank Organisation in 1972,(probably Britain's largest film-making and film-showing company) when partially transformed into a 4-star hotel,with the proviso that it always retain some private tenants,in a dedicated wing.Gradually residents associated with MI5(demobbed after the war)  gave way to BBC staff (Broadcasting House is a brisk walk down Great Portland Street) and press junkets for Gandhi  and other film releases. A neighbour on the first floor with his own grand piano en suite was the musical prodigy Shura Cherkassky, who is said to have had an affair with Greta Garbo, coming perilously close to marrying her.

Another  face famous from films belonged to Kenneth Williams, star of the Carry On series of British screen comedies, who actually lived opposite the White House but often hailed taxis from its imposing front door.His shade may still frequent the garden for smokers added on the corner onto which his own mansion flat looked.The hotel passed through various international hands until Spain's leading hotel company,Sol Melia, acquired it in the late 1990s, and transformed it during  a  year-long, 30-million pound refurbishment. One of its recent innovations, replacing part of a former shopping arcade, is an elegant showplace for contemporary artists , run by two elegant ladies, and accordingly called Le  Dame Art Gallery. (They also curate art-works throughout the 8 floors of the Melia White House and striking installations outside the rear entrance,and an annual Art Fair that fills rooms for a few days  throughout the first floor.Beneath this now permanent vitrine for new work,in the Albany Suite, was presented in 2015 The Table of Alliance, a very literally moveable feast, which first in Rome and then in other cities saw performance artist Daniela Papadia bring 36 mixed guests to a dinner eaten on a table covered by a tapestry embroidered with designs corresponding to the human genome. The huge cloth fascinatingly filled the underground hospitality suite and was accompanied by a half-hour documentary The Table of Alliance, directed by Francesco Micciche, son of the celebrated film critic and author Lino Micchiche, screening during the exhibition hours.When I was selected by the New Statesman as a Student Journalist of the Year,for a satiric essay on sex and violence on the screen,entitled  "The Rape of the Cinema" , the prize money bought me one of the first Inter-Rail Cards, and the  re-publishing of my article in the British Embassy's own magazine in Paris (in English, as the editorial introduction underlined,pour nos lecteurs qui sont en mesure d'en aprecier sa verve), with another modest fee, encouraged me to pause in Paris to collect a copy, see a matinee of Fellini-Roma, and take the Simplon-Orient Express overnight to Venice.

After making my way across the Lagoon to the Lido, I found the Press Office of the Venice Film Festival in the ballroom of the Hotel Excelsior and after showing these magazines to a busy but kindly Italian, I was promptly rewarded with a press pass for the entire festival.My tessera was signed by Lino Micciche, for it was the distinguished FIPRESCI member who flourished his ink pen on the cream-coloured card for me.That was the year Cabaret was screened in Venice, because Liza Minnelli refused to return to Cannes, having been badly received in an earlier film premiered on the Croisette. I was only a sixth-former.but my A-level Latin metamorphosed quickly into fluent Italian,and ensured a lasting fondness for the world's first film festival, that became my own first festival to attend.

The next night I almost literally bumped into Charlie Chaplin as he was being wheeled to an open-air screening of City Lights in the Piazza San Marco.So it was quite a moving experience for me  to come home,some years later, after Wardour Street previews, for BBC or other commisions, to find Francesco Micciche busy in the family business as a successful documentary(and feature) director, for  I  have his much-missed now father to thank for encouraging me into the festival circuit and the profession of film criticism. After graduating from Oxford  as a Sunday Times 'New Critic' I would eventually meet Lino at many festivals and rendez-vous of FIPRESCI, of which I became a member myself.

Last month another vernissage was well-fuelled by Le Dame's usual prosecco  for the first UK solo show of American artist Brian Huber,  who hails from New Orleans (further justifying  the reference to Tennessee Williams in the title to this piece), studied Art and Architecture at the University of Louisiana,   worked for television studios and corporations in San Francisco, and lived on a houseboat in Sausalito.A short film shows him creating his most  attractive abstract landscapes, inspired by rhythms of jazz and blues (and some very vivid blue colours),sculpting giant sheets of acrylic paint into Braided and Circle Back designs. The exhibition continues until  3rd June 2017 and is well worth the walk down Memory Lane.

Phillip Bergson                                   www.ledameartgallery.com                               www.melia.com