Thursday 27 March 2025 at 7.00pm (90 mins approx.). Doors open at 6.30pm.
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The Sohemian Society presents Soho’s Golden Age of Glamour
Step back onto the cobbled streets of 1950s Soho, where foreign-run restaurants, cafés and delicatessens gave Londoners an aromatic flavour of the continent, and where artists, writers, and musicians rubbed shoulders with gangsters, tarts, and spivs. From a studio on Gerrard Street – yet to morph into Chinatown – the photographer George Harrison Marks launched his groundbreaking Kamera magazine, which brought artistic flair to the world of glamour photography. As well as helping to run his office, Jean Sporle graced the pages of Kamera, alongside her close friend Pamela Green, these days best-known for her appearance in the film director Michael Powell’s final masterpiece, Peeping Tom. During this period, Jean dated Anthony Newley and landed a small role in Cliff Richard’s 1959 debut movie Serious Charge.
Soho’s Golden Age of Glamour offers a unique opportunity to hear about her brushes with 1950s showbiz and her life in Soho. There will also be a rare screening of Art for Art’s Sake – the first, charmingly innocent 8mm striptease film shot by Harrison Marks, who cast both Pamela Green and Jean in the starring roles.
After the talk and screening, Jean will be signing copies of The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks by Franklyn Wood, the pioneering Fleet Street diarist and former Art Editor of The Times.
