Mandy Rice-Davies

Mandy Rice-Davies (born 21 October 1944) is known for her role in the Profumo affair which discredited the Conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963.

Background and link to Stephen Ward & Christine Keeler

She was born Marilyn Rice-Davies in Pontyates near Llanelli, Wales, and moved to Shirley in Solihull, England. As a teenager, she appeared older than her age and at 15 got a job as a clothes model at Marshall & Snelgrove, a department store in Birmingham. At 16 she came to London and appeared as 'Miss Austin' at the Earls Court Motor Show.^[1] She then got a job as a dancer at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho where she met Christine Keeler who introduced her to her friend, the well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward, and to an ex-lover, the slum landlord Peter Rachman.^[2] Rice-Davies became Rachman's mistress and was set up in the same house where he had previously kept Keeler, 1 Bryanston Mews West, Marylebone.

Rice-Davies often visited Keeler at the house she shared with Ward at Wimpole Mews, Marylebone, and, after Keeler had moved elsewhere, lived there herself, between September and December 1962. On 14 December 1962 while Keeler was visiting Rice-Davies at Wimpole Mews, one of Keeler's boyfriends, John Edgecombe, attempted to enter and fired several times at the door with a gun.^[3] His trial brought attention to the girls' involvement with Ward's social set, and intimacy with many powerful people, including the then Viscount Astor at whose stately home of Cliveden Keeler met the War Minister John Profumo. Profumo's brief relationship with Keeler was at the centre of the affair that caused him to resign from the government in June 1963, though Rice-Davies, herself, never met him.^[4]

"Well he would, wouldn't he?"

While giving evidence at the trial of Stephen Ward, charged with living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and Rice-Davies, the latter made a quip for which she is now best remembered. When the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?".^[5]

She traded on the notoriety the trial brought her, comparing herself to Nelson's mistress, Lady Hamilton.^[6] She converted to Judaism^[7] and married an Israeli businessman, Rafi Shauli, opening nightclubs and restaurants in Tel Aviv. They were called Mandy's, Mandy's Candies and Mandy's Singing Bamboo. Rice-Davies made a series of unsuccessful pop singles for the Ember label in the mid-'60s, including Close Your Eyes and You Got What It Takes.

In 1980, with Shirley Flack, she wrote her autobiography, Mandy. In 1989, she wrote a novel titled Communism and You.

In the 1989 film about the Profumo affair titled Scandal, actress Bridget Fonda portrayed Rice-Davies.

She once described her life as "one slow descent into respectability".^{[citation needed]}

"I want Mandi"

At the height of the Profumo scandal, the first prime minister of independent Malaya (now Malaysia) Tunku Abdul Rahman arrived in London for a visit. At a reception at Heathrow Airport when asked what he wanted to do first, he replied "I want Mandi" which shocked the reception party because they did not know that "Mandi" means "take a bath" in Malay.^[8]

References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Mandy Rice-Davies

External links

• Mandy Rice-Davies at the Internet Movie Database