The main leisure agent and producer Peter Charlesworth, who has died aged 93, was each an aide to, and confidant of, among the largest names in British present enterprise because the second world battle: Shirley Bassey, Barbara Windsor, Joan Collins, Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd, to call however a number of.
All the time impeccably groomed and suited, with an innate twinkle about him and a pronounced south London accent that he tried to disguise (however by no means did), Charlesworth belonged to that misplaced breed of gents brokers who all appeared one way or the other associated to David Niven, stuffed with allure and savoir faire, and steadying rocks for his or her shoppers.
However in contrast to, say, others in the identical line akin to Laurie Evans, James Sharkey or Julian Belfrage, whose backgrounds had been decidedly “posh” theatrical, Charlesworth was a streetwise operator from a lowly background who benefited from creating a full of life, inventive rapport with such Londoners as Max Bygraves and the multi-talented Anthony Newley.
His passport to their world was via his ability at what was once identified within the music enterprise as a “document plugger” and his love of jazz, which led to an early affiliation with the jazz drummer, producer and agent Jock Jacobsen in the beginning of the Sixties.
By the tip of that decade, he was shepherding Judy Garland via her closing, chaotic appearances in London on the Discuss of the City. In Rupert Goold’s nice 2019 film Judy, starring Renée Zellweger, his position was integrated into the character of Garland’s good friend and amanuensis, Rosalyn Wilder, performed by Jessie Buckley.
Garland cherished to eat fish and chips when in London and Charlesworth typically accompanied her, and her two kids, Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft, to a chippie in Holland Park, the place they ate from the newspaper wrapping on a park bench.
Two years earlier he had been extra instantly portrayed by the actor Alex Macqueen within the BBC tv movie Babs, primarily based on Windsor’s autobiography; Macqueen received Charlesworth’s suavity, voice and baldness right down to a T, whereas Babs appeared as herself, backed up by an amazing Samantha Spiro, and Zoë Wanamaker because the director Joan Littlewood.
Windsor was keen on Charlesworth and requested him to accompany her to Broadway for a premiere there within the late Sixties. She was then married to the nightclub proprietor Ronnie Knight, who promised to interrupt Charlesworth’s legs if Babs went off the rails within the US. She did in truth have a brief fling with Warren Beatty, however saved schtum – no one ever knew, and Charlesworth averted the punishment.
He was born in south-west London, the one little one of Margaret (nee Jupp) and Thomas Charlesworth, an architectural blacksmith at T Crowther & Sons, an architectural antiques enterprise on the Fulham Highway. Peter attended St Mark’s secondary faculty, just some blocks away from the household residence in Inglethorpe Road, very close to the Thames and Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage floor.
He left faculty aged 15 and was employed first as a web page boy at Claridge’s resort after which as a waiter in one of many famend theatrical haunts of the day – Verrey’s in Regent Road, or Isow’s in Berwick market, it’s not clear which. He made contacts there that led to his employment as a document plugger and junior companion with Jacobsen.
When Jacobsen died, Charlesworth was well-known and assured sufficient to launch his personal firm, Peter Charlesworth Ltd, in 1979 in South Kensington, and purchased a home in Notting Hill. Lots of the huge names adopted him, however not Bygraves, who complained that Charlesworth “seemed an excessive amount of like a second-hand automobile salesman”, regardless of the grooming.
He had many girlfriends, solely one in every of whom, Lynne Frederick, was a consumer; they dated on the peak of her early, short-lived stardom and earlier than her transient marriages to first Peter Sellers after which David Frost.
Early on, Charlesworth and Jacobsen had a spectacular West Finish flop after they introduced over an all-American solid, together with an unknown Elliott Gould, in Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Inexperienced’s On the City in 1963. It closed on the Prince of Wales after simply 63 performances. Charlesworth disliked the manufacturing, and Gould’s efficiency, bemoaning his dangerous luck and massive monetary loss.
On the first night time dinner, Gould requested Charlesworth if he would tackle the London illustration of his girlfriend, soon-to-be spouse; Charlesworth grumpily turned him down flat, saying his books had been full. The title Barbra Streisand, then embarking on her breakthrough 12 months in New York, meant nothing to him. However she was again on the identical Prince of Wales stage in 1966, pregnant along with her son Jason with Gould, knocking ’em useless in Humorous Lady.
Charlesworth and Jacobsen had extra success with an ebullient manufacturing of Woman Be Good by Man Bolton and the Gershwin brothers on the outdated Saville theatre in 1968, starring Lionel Blair, Aimi MacDonald and Joe Baker.
His monumental checklist of colleagues and shoppers included the entertainers Anita Harris and Avril Angers, singers Denis Lotis and Jess Conrad, the comic Jimmy James, and the genteel drag act Hinge and Bracket.
Though nobody he knew, in response to his good friend and publicity agent Peter Benda, ever met his dad and mom, Charlesworth remained true to his father’s vocation by often taking a stall on the Battersea ornamental antiques honest, the place he was typically to be seen chatting and evaluating notes on vintage weapons of the Napoleonic period with the actor Michael Gambon, a fellow professional in that area.
