Christine Margaret Keeler (22 February 1942 – 4 December 2017) was an English model and showgirl. Meeting at a dance club with society osteopath Stephen Ward drew her into fashionable circles. At the height of the Cold War, she became sexually involved with a married Cabinet minister, John Profumo, as well as with a Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. A shooting incident involving a third lover caused the press to investigate her, revealing that her affairs could be threatening national security. In the House of Commons, Profumo denied improper conduct but later admitted that he had lied.
This incident discredited the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1963 in what became known as the Profumo affair. Keeler was alleged to have been a prostitute, which was not a criminal offence. Ward was, however, found guilty of being her pimp; a trial was instigated after the embarrassment caused to the government. The trial has since been considered a miscarriage of justice and a charade by the establishment to protect itself.
Morley portrait
At the height of the Profumo affair in 1963, Keeler sat for a photographic portrait by Lewis Morley. The photoshoot, at a studio on the first floor of Peter Cook’s Establishment Club, with Morley was to promote a proposed film, The Keeler Affair, that was never released in the United Kingdom. Keeler was reluctant to pose in the nude, but the film producers insisted. Morley persuaded Keeler to sit astride a plywood chair so that, whilst technically nude, the back of the chair would obscure most of her body. Keeler told cartoon historian Tim Benson 2007 that she was not nude and wearing knickers during the photoshoot.
The photo propelled Arne Jacobsen’s Model 3107 chair to prominence, even though the chair used was an imitation of the Model 3107, with a hand-hold aperture crudely cut out of the back to avoid copyright infringement. The chair used is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The differences in the chairs’ designs are readily apparent in a side-by-side photograph.
In popular culture
Yvonne Buckingham portrayed Keeler in a 1963 film titled The Christine Keeler Story, The Keeler Affair, and The Christine Keeler Affair. Keeler herself introduced the film in its opening sequence and read the cast list in a voiceover at the end.
In the 1989 film about the Profumo affair, Scandal, actress Joanne Whalley portrayed Keeler.
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical Stephen Ward, which opened at the Aldwych Theatre in 2013, Keeler was portrayed by Charlotte Spencer.
Gala Gordon portrays Keeler during the second season of the Netflix drama series The Crown in 2017.
Sophie Cookson portrays Christine Keeler in The Trial of Christine Keeler, a six-part television series that aired on BBC One from 2019 to 2020.
Funded by the Arts Council England and Arts Council of Wales, a touring exhibition called Dear Christine opened in Newcastle upon Tyne in June 2019 and toured to Swansea in October 2019, finishing at Arthouse1 in London in February 2020. The culmination of a four-year project by artist/curator Fionn Wilson to reclaim and re-frame Keeler features work from twenty women artists “to put a female perspective on a narrative that has mostly been led by men”. Journalist and writer Julie Burchill has described the exhibition as “a thing of beauty without cruelty”.[41] Critic and writer Ian McKay wrote: “In several important ways, Dear Christine, the exhibition, seeks with some noble intent to … rescue Christine’s image and experience and reprocess it, rescuing it from the newspaper front-page-Keeler that is etched into the collective consciousness”.[ The exhibition also featured in the Morning Star, The Daily Telegraph and the International Times.
In Wales Arts Review, writer Craig Austin interviewed Fionn Wilson, who says:
Christine Keeler has always fascinated me, since I first became aware of her story via the 1989 film Scandal. When I started painting, I decided to do a series of paintings of her, and as I researched Christine’s life story, it struck me that, even though she is a culturally significant figure in British history, there is very little recent artistic reference to her. I decided that I would try to rectify this and add to the visual narrative around her. And so the project was born. It’s also a very personal project. I have great sympathy for Christine Keeler.
The exhibition catalogue includes writing by Amanda Coe, screenwriter and executive producer of The Trial of Christine Keeler; Keeler’s son Seymour Platt; art historian Kalliopi Minioudaki; and artist and art critic Bo Gorzelak Pedersen.
In the summer of 1963, Joyce Blair’s pop single “Christine” (released under the pseudonym “Miss X”), which parodied Keeler’s involvement with Profumo, reached No. 37 in the UK Singles Chart despite being banned from airplay by the BBC due to its subject matter. Radio Luxembourg had also banned the single.
In 1964, the Jamaican ska band The Skatalites released the song “Christine Keeler” on the album Ska Authentic.
Keeler is mentioned in the song “Piano Lessons” from the 1999 album Stupid Dream by Porcupine Tree. Her affair with Profumo is referenced obliquely as “British politician sex” in Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” from the 1989 album Storm Front. Keeler is referenced in the song “Post World War Two Blues” from the 1973 album Past, Present and Future by Al Stewart.
The “Celebrities’ Nightmares” article in MAD #84 features President John F. Kennedy in terror of Keeler settling in Washington, DC, and attracted to Kennedy’s Cabinet.
