Alan Whicker - Journey of a Lifetime

Causing a minor car crash at a crossroads, she blamed everyone else. Confronted by photographic evidence, she smiled dismissively: “Just shows the camera can lie.”

We watched from the sidelines as her star dwindled. She shot herself in the foot on an Esther Rantzen programme, sneering at some poor housewife’s attempt to cook a banquet. She was crucified by unkind editing—though what could you expect? In a few moments she was transformed from likeable monster to cruel bully, and her television career was over. She was probably the first fatal victim of a reality show.

We saw her a few months after Johnnie’s death. Forlorn and broken, she was spending Christmas in a small Jersey hotel, doubtless one of those interesting little discoveries we had managed to avoid. She came to us for lunch and Valerie gave her a bulging Christmas stocking, full of delicious and caring goodies, but it hardly registered. The fire had gone out of her life.

Johnnie, hen-pecked and dominated all those years, had been her secret strength. Without him she let life go, and withered away. “Nothing separates us, except rugby and the lavatory,” she had said, but now she was just a shell. Her old pugnacious fury had evaporated.

Our sacred monsters are different now: more beautiful, less genuine, more confident, less intelligent. They are created by PR and by management, not driven ambition. We know more about them but there are fewer layers to explore and no surprises. Everyone needs to test his courage against a Fanny Cradock, that furious pink stripe in a grey world.

From a distance the contrast between life in California and life in Florida seems minimal—but close up these two golden states are a world apart. California, for all its self-conscious introspection, is a place to work; Florida is a place to retire, a sprawling mass of tidy housing and safe compounds, playgrounds for the like-minded old. Hard to imagine the far-out Wagners, Kurt and Kathy, a couple who had embraced every Seventies fad from Est to roller-skating, settling for life among golfers, bridge players and yoga.

Back in the Seventies Kurt would talk about an ageless society, a time when there would be no such thing as old age—as if the surgeon’s knife could be the answer to all ills. These communities for the Sprightly Old do not quite match his prophecy, but their gated estates with gyms, pools and libraries are safe, warm and welcoming. In a country where youth is all, Florida provides an all-enveloping lifestyle for a group who would be invisible in many other states. Here, grey power has real power and the financial clout to back it up. Yes, bright sunlit winters do invigorate.

Aldous Huxley called Los Angeles the City of Dreadful Joy…However, he never found it so dreadful that he was tempted to return to the damp discomfort of Britain. For Anita Loos, actress and screenwriter who wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, there was just no there …there.

For many journalists on the outside looking in, there was a sense of superiority, a thin-lipped disapproval of the Californian way of life that seems too easy, too relaxed, too open. Something rotten at the core, surely?

Old films show how our perception of America—particularly California—has changed. Now we all want a slice of that eternal sunshine, those excellent wines, the right to choose illusion before reality. In Beverly Hills, if it’s not adequately beautiful, you change it. This could be a house—or a chin. That state of mind slid stealthily into our own world, so if the amount of happiness in your life is inadequate, go out and buy some more.

In LA, ageing without cosmetic surgery is now hardly an option. I suppose there may be women on those brilliant shopping avenues around Rodeo Drive who are indifferent to their wrinkles, but they have to be tourists, or foreigners.

Californian priorities used to be the pool, the second car—and after that, well, there’s always something to remove, or tighten. Now it’s unlikely that the pool and those cars would be on offer without the perfecting knife.

Before the Seventies, cosmetic surgery was a dark secret, a frivolous, guilty indulgence to be hidden from all but your closest friends. Names would be whispered and shared between those in the know, like that once-upon-a-time passing around of the numbers of surgeons willing to perform an abortion.

Many women would travel from the other side of the world for treatment by the famous Dr Pittanguy of Brazil, or an exotic Frenchman with a surgery in Tahiti. In London there was a man well known for experimental penis enlargement, an enthusiasm which for some reason never caught on…

In England where youth—that revolution discovered in the Sixties—had only just begun to take over, all this was still seen as the territory of the rich and spoiled, of actresses and their spin-offs. So when in the Sixties and Seventies I chose to look at the life and work of the Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon Kurt Wagner, we inadvertently opened a window on a scene that was changing many lives.

I have filmed Kurt and his wife Kathy three times during these thirty-five years. They amused and irritated viewers in equal measure and drew mountains of mail from prospective patients. Outwardly content, living with the two daughters from his first marriage and an adopted son, they had all the trappings of Californian success—his Rolls, her Ferrari, their grateful patients, the perfect home in the Valley, a booming business in instant youth…what else was there?

Surgery aside, Kurt’s self-centred arrogance and Kathy’s breathy homilies on how to keep a husband happy were enough to keep a stoic British audience enthralled and appalled. With success came the usual California angst and the usual California panacea—therapy and infidelity, though not necessarily in that order.

I liked Kurt; he paraded his faults without concern—and Kathy was always instant joy. Piles of viewers’ mail stimulated the protests, and the scoffing always came down to: “Why can’t they act their age?” It was the Palm Beach syndrome, stimulating the constant jealous rejoinder: they’re too old to be having that much fun…

It wasn’t always fun, not even with a top cosmetic surgeon in the family. Over the years there was disquieting news: Kurt’s daughter had shot and killed herself on his bed with his gun. Kurt was arrested for receiving property stolen from the home of some renegade Saudi sheikh. He had been forced to sell his treasured collection of Toulouse-Lautrec posters. Their son had a drug habit. Kurt, bored with the beauty business, had invested their savings in Hollywood, of all places—and lost the lot. Chatty Kathy had taken to wearing exotic hats and wished to be known as Kathleen…yet to me she seemed, as always, uncomplicated and funny.

Filming Journey of a Lifetime , we found them living in Florida, miraculously still married after forty-one years. Kurt, in his fiftieth year as a surgeon, was back at work—this time in a sparkling glass building in Boca Raton full of the latest equipment for the war against ageing, into which he attempted to enlist me.

One particular machine was especially threatening. It could look into the future and show you what would happen to your skin should you choose not to take the expert’s treatment and advice—a brilliant marketing device. One look and, aghast, you’re calling your surgeon, any surgeon.

Kurt was heavier after another ten years, his face owing much to the latest techniques, the hair suspiciously thick and black. He had suffered two hip replacements and a brush with cancer. The old ebullient self-confidence was still there, but he was softer, kinder.

Kathy had not turned into prim Kathleen. Dressed in a leopard print turquoise top and three facelifts down the line, she was plump and giggly as ever. Furious with Kurt for losing all their money, she had forced him back to work and made it her business to be his living billboard. At clubs and parties she talked happily about her operations and encouraged friends to pay him a visit.