The Stud (1978)
"You're nothing but a working class bum in Gucci shoes..."
Wednesday’s dip into the WEEKEND FLICKS. archive continues with The Stud (1978), where Disco meets Debrett’s: Shagpile, Sex Tapes and Social Climbing.
Fontaine: I’ve got fifteen minutes, Tony. I’m late for the hairdressers.
Tony: Christ, I’m not a machine you know.
And now for something different. In the interest of academic research, you understand — oh, the things I do for WEEKEND FLICKS.! — I spent a hot and languid afternoon lying on the sofa, watching The Stud (1978), Britain’s answer to Saturday Night Fever (1977), directed by Quentin Masters. 1977 was the year disco went mainstream. And by 1978, the Last Days of Disco were already upon us, or at least in The Stud, before it had even begun. Joan’s in it. As Fontaine Khaled, forty-something owner of Hobo’s discothèque (based on Tramp in Jermyn Street), and Oliver Tobias is Tony Blake, her plaything, a ‘working class bum in Gucci shoes’. Ms. Collins’ naughty little sister, Jackie, Queen of the Airport Bonkbuster, contributed to the screenplay, and it’s amusingly pithy with an endless stream of terrific one-liners, a masterclass in the script writer’s art:
“Darling, before I met Tony he thought a 69 was a bottle of whisky.”
We need to go back in time, to the Knightsbridge of 1978, or to Saudi Kensington, when the punters spoke proper and aspired to urbane, jetset sophistication, fuelled by the rise of the petrodollar: to penthouses, St. Moritz menthol cigarettes, Concorde & Cartier, shagpile carpets and Chinese antiques (Made in Hong Kong). Connoisseur heaven: “Don’t drop it, darling, it’s 5th century.” Note to self: Was London really like that?
And the plot goes something like this: Tone’s the manager of Hobo’s, and Fontaine’s using him as a plaything, which means lurid assignations in the lift of her bijou Knightsbridge flat. Filmed in secret. By Fontaine. Who then shows the tape to her bored friend, Vanessa, played by sexy Sue Lloyd. So far, so good. But then Fontaine’s stepdaughter, nubile, nineteen-year-old Sloaney Alexandra, fresh from Swiss finishing school, “She bores me to death with her sixth form brain” (played by Emma Jacobs, daughter of David Jacobs, the television presenter), turns up in a Laura Ashley dress and steals Tony away. In the meantime, Fontaine and Vanessa plan an orgy in Paris: “Darling, you must bring Tony to Paris. Then we can all have him”; actually filmed at The Sanctuary, Covent Garden — which has a sort of tropical swimming pool complex (with swings) in the manner of Victor Lownes’ country pad, Stocks, in Hertfordshire.
The discothèque scenes were filmed in the hallowed environs of Tramp, in Jermyn Street, with Sue Menhenick and Legs & Co. strutting their stuff to Roxy Music, Odyssey (Native New Yorker (1977) aka New York City Girl), Baccara, and The Real Thing, or smooching to 10cc’s I’m Not in Love (1975) in glittery boob-tubes. The owner of Tramp, Johnny Gold, has, I gather, a cameo appearance alongside boxer John Conteh. And Tramp, just like the original Annabel’s, in the basement of 44, Berkeley Square, was a little bit Country House. Panelled walls, chandeliers and louche Old Master paintings à la Watteau ‘n’ Boucher under picture lights.
There’s a nice blend of Old Etonian ties and Mockney accents in The Stud. Toffs mixing with the criminal classes; Old Money vs New Money. Disco meets Debrett’s. When class barriers were beginning to break down. When the power was beginning to shift from the Hooray Henry Upper Class Establishment to the monied parvenus, the street traders and the barrow boys. Like the proto-yuppies in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977), Tony’s on the make, prepared to shaft Fontaine in more ways than one, goin’ places — Mrs T and Loads of Money were just around the corner. Yet, by the Nineties, by the era of Cool Britannia, when ‘street’ ruled the waves, aspirational connoisseurship — to the finer things in life, to cognac, antiques, leather-lined libraries and all that came with it — had Gone with the Wind. Of course, The Stud is all very class-conscious in the English way of the time: when Bits o’ Blow-Dried Rough dated posh dollybirds: RADA-educated, mews-dwelling, Stag-driving Tory MP’s daughters à la Professionals, “That’s Bodie”, jerk of a thumb, “And I’m Doyle.”
Bit o’ Blow-Dried Rough (chatting up Sloane girl): ‘ello darlin’. You a virgin?
Sloane girl at Hobo’s: Oh, I should have worn my flats! I’m so fed up looking like a cute little dumpling! I want to be a crumpet!
Anyway. Things hot up when Alex’s dumpy little sister discovers the sex tape and plays it back to her on a veneered television set. The script’s priceless. I mean, you couldn’t make it up:
“I heard it all in the loo. And then when we left with Peter, I couldn’t tell you in front of him, could I? They were talking. She and that blonde tart friend of hers. They’re going to Paris. With him. For an orgy.”
Tony then makes a cardinal mistake and falls for Alex after a one-night stand. Not done in polite Society, that. I mean, the falling bit. That’s very working class. And then he’s invited down to the country (Binfield Manor, Berkshire) to face his final humiliation. Poor Tony, with his brown polyester shirts, Cecil Gee suits and his “horrid little car” (actually, a rather nice Austin-Healey 3000 in red, now worth a pretty penny, but then a rusting ten-year-old wreck) is up against the dark forces of the Establishment who use him for their own amusement, in the same way, as another commentator has pointed out, the Herberts use Mr. Neville in The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) — for their own dastardly ends. Tony’s on a losing wicket: the denouement, when Tony escapes from the basement into the polluted air of Jermyn Street, and then the Piccadilly Arcade, to face a new beginning, in a strange way, is not unlike the final scene in Lindsay Anderson’s public school saga, If..... (1968). You’re on his side.
What else? There’s a loving, arty-farty close-up of Alex’s left nipple. And can some clever person identify the brand of coffee can (dead smart, dark blue and gold porcelain, probably Limoges?) at 29:50?
If you ain’t, as yet, seen The Stud (1978), you ain’t lived. Even though I’m not really a fan of the ‘so bad, it’s good’ interpretation. Yet, despite everything, it still has something about it, a je ne sais quoi. And The Stud did rather well at the box office, taking over £1 million in the UK by May 1978. This was a mainstream film at the time. The Brits flocked to the cinema to watch it in their droves — which says quite a bit about the Britain of 1978. And despite the soft porno connotations and the infamous orgy scene, actually, there’s a rather goodish, respectable cast, including Mark Burns (Death in Venice [1970]), Sir Coles John Jeremy Child Bt. aka Jeremy Child (Quadrophenia [1979], Sarah Lawson (The Browning Version [1951] and Walter Gotell (The Spy Who Loved Me [1977]). Emma Jacobs went on to greater things. The official soundtrack, which features twenty tracks, including material from Rose Royce, David Soul, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and The Real Thing, reached No. 2 in the UK Album Charts, pipped to the No. 1 spot by Saturday Night Fever.
I rented The Stud (1978) from Amazon Prime Video for under five quid, and my finger’s hovering around the ‘rent it now’ button for The Stud’s sequel, The Bitch (1979) aka Lady Diamond — altho’, from memory, it ain’t half as good. If you must, both are available on DVD, altho’ I doubt you’ll be buying The Stud on Blu-ray. Or maybe you will? There’s a connoisseur’s Limited Edition Blu-ray box set. And somebody’s stuck up the disco soundtrack (‘20 Smash Hits from the Original Film Soundtrack’) as a playlist on Spotify.
Right. That was Film no. 160. Checking the archive, I’m reminded that the very first post on WEEKEND FLICKS. Cinema for Grown Ups dates from December 2023. The great idea (which, like Archimedes, came to me in the bath) was to create a feel-good film newsletter for subscribers to enjoy, and hopefully use, over the weekend — inspired by the old LWT ident — when, at Friday teatime, earnest Thames Television handed over to the racier London Weekend. So here’s a quick word about the paid subscription, which costs £5 a month or £50 a year. Paid subscribers receive their own special post on Friday mornings, special additional posts (when I can, and please bear with me on that), and access to the entire archive. The Sunday morning posts are free and can be read by anybody and everybody.
I’m back on Friday, and in the meantime, enjoy The Stud (1968). Champagne cocktails for this one. Ciao…
Excellent, and convincing, recontextualization. Sounds like not only a British "Saturday Night Fever" but also a "British Gigolo" for the price of one.