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Here’s looking at you, FCC
Mark Erder’s classic doco Of All the Gin Joints – filmed in and around the club in 1998/9 – packed out the Dining Room on two nights in May, and with very good reason.
The most gripping viewing was provided by the cameos from legends like Hollingworth, Van Es, Farkas, et al; but the running narrative also homed in on the beleaguered president, Philip Segal, whose plans to shake up the club (which was in financial straits at the time) were ruffling feathers among journalists and associates alike, particularly with his vision for a renovated Dining Room.
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In the Q&A after the credits had rolled, Elaine Pickering added a telling postscript, concerning the renovation of the Main Bar which was undertaken at the instigation of the then President, Thomas Crampton, at the turn of the century. “Before the renovation, the one thing that everyone agreed on was that they wanted to keep the Canton floor tiles in the Main Bar,” she noted.
“Once the renovation was complete, the only thing that everyone agreed on was that the original tiles which had been unearthed – and retained – in the Main Bar during the works were the best thing about it.”
Mark Erder adds: “I was inspired to make Gin Joints by the stories that Marvin Farkas told me in the 1980s. It was a long-held passion project that took over 15 years to produce and was finally made possible because it coincided with the club’s 50th anniversary.
“My thanks to Keith Richburg and Zela Chin for getting the committee to finally show the film after almost 25 years!”
PS Search YouTube for BBC Documentary “Of All the Gin Joints” December 1999 to see the film in its entirety; and there are plans afoot to get the surviving cast members together on Zoom.
Excellent Excellencies
Will Rogers’ public profile is slimmer than it was when his syndicated newspaper column reached 40 million readers roughly a century ago, but his pithy aphorism about diplomacy (“it’s the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock”) still holds good. David Frost – one of the two protagonists in Ron Howard’s gripping biopic Frost/Nixon – put it even more subtly: “Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way.”
Bearing all this in mind, it was heartening to welcome more than 70 consuls general, honorary consuls and diplomats from scores of countries for a cocktail party in May, giving them a chance to get to know the club better and driving home the point – just to indulge in a mild trumpet solo – that there are few places better suited to mixing and shooting the breeze than No 2 Lower Albert Road.
