Cultural References To The Scandal
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In the 1963 comedy LP record "Fool Britannia", subsequently re-released on CD, there are many references, direct and oblique, to the Profumo Scandal which is the integrating theme of the set of comedy sketches. The recording includes skits by Peter Sellers, Anthony Newley & Joan Collins. As the Lord Chamberlain's office would not allow references to the Stephen Ward trial or the resignation of Profumo on the last track on the record a voice says (apropos of nothing): "There's no smoke without fire" or as my old Latin master would put it "Non Combusto Profumo".
The book The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) mentions the scandal in the chapter "Hustler".
The film Sweeney! (1977), a movie spin-off of the popular police drama The Sweeney, involved a plot loosely based on the Profumo Affair. British actor Barry Foster guest-starred as an Americanised, and more deadly, version of Stephen Ward.
The Alan Moore-scribed comic book Miracleman has a character mention Profumo in issue #2. The main character's newspaper editor is irritated that the government has stepped in to suppress a story, and the editor replies, "It's bloody Profumo all over a-bloody-gain."
The TV comedy-drama film Blore M.P. (made in 1989) starred Timothy West as a cabinet minister who also gets involved with a prostitute and faces blackmail from the Russians.
In Mad Men Season 3 Episode 6, "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency," (broadcast September 2009) Joan Holloway comments that the British Prime Minister loves prostitutes and is corrected, being told "actually it was the Secretary of War."
Harriet Evans's 2011 novel Love Always, partially set in 1963, discusses the Profumo affair, and the character Cecily is fascinated by it.
Read more about this topic: Profumo Affair
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