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.
Leaving California had been a wrench for Kathy. She had thought of letting him go alone to start a new life in Florida but decided, upon reflection, that days spent breaking in a new man would be time-consuming, and possibly fruitless.
5 RELIEVING PATIENTS OF MANY POUNDS—ONE WAY OR THE OTHER
Anyone can be beautiful and loved: it’s just a matter of applying something, taking a course, buying a pot, denying yourself—or being operated upon, slightly. Trying to keep up in the Face Race the average woman, when last counted, spends five years fourteen weeks and six days of her lifetime in front of a mirror. It certainly feels that way when you’re waiting downstairs.
In view of all this I went to Texas at the birth of Spa Culture to observe the acolytes in The Greenhouse, the ultimate purpose-built fat farm or, if you prefer, health resort. This perfumed palace outside Arlington cost a million pounds to contrive and stands bathed in the soft glow of money, dedicated to the sale of dreams.
Women of a certain age (and some a little younger) were queuing to pay many hundreds of dollars a day for the possibility of rejuvenation. Some stayed months, refusing to give up. The ageing and wrinkled, the plump and the bored surrendered dollars and dignity in exchange for solace and repair, for the mirage of being lovelier and sexier—while outside in the harsh sunlight gardeners symbolically dyed parched Texas grass green.
In Britain, where we at least let grass decide its own colour, narcissism has also come to stay—observe the stately march of opulent health farms where the submissive can easily lose, along with avoirdupois, several hundred pounds a week. Only a couple of these country mansions were in operation when I filmed my first report in 1960; today scores of them are relieving patients of many pounds, one way or the other.
Even for Panorama it was hard to deal with the subject too seriously when the presenter was Richard Dimbleby, and not at all sylph-like. He came rolling up to me at the end of the programme, making predictably caustic comments about slimming. We also got a lot of irritable correspondence from enthusiasts after that, yet I have always held that for anyone with the money and the time such a regime can do nothing but good. It is like being lectured by Nanny and sent to bed without supper.
Establishments vary from earnest nature cure centres catering for those with little faith in orthodox medicine, to antiseptic Victorian mansions where society matrons tussle with the years and Show Biz straightens its elbow.
For anyone not really sick, one of the cheerier hydros full of tubbies expensively repenting excess is a more agreeable retreat than those chintzy halls where arthritic old ladies knit by the fireside and silently disapprove of the merely weak-willed. The Surrey hydro where we filmed was populated by jolly carboholics resisting the temptation, alcoholics drying out and executives escaping the telephone: “For a break my Chairman goes to the South of France and puts on a stone. I come here and lose one. He feels guilty; I feel great.” Both ways, it’s expensive satisfaction.
One night during my recce I was watching television amid a subdued group in dressing gowns. The Saturday night play was just reaching its climax when a man in the statutory white Kildare coat strode in and switched off the set, in mid-sentence! I leapt up in outrage. “Ten o’clock,” he said, reproachfully. “Time for bed.” I was about to dash him to the floor when it came to me that this was exactly what we were all paying heavily for: a return to the secure days of Nanny knows best.
Once you have accepted such discipline there is a certain consolation in surrendering to father-figures who know what is good for you, having your days planned down to the last half-grapefruit. The carrot cocktail bar, where you sit and boast about the number of pounds you’ve lost, exudes a dauntless Blitz spirit and a communal sense of self-satisfaction at growing, if not lovelier, at least a little lighter each day.
Whatever the economic charts indicate, we are in the middle of one expansionist trend; at least 10 million men and 12 million women are overweight. We spend some £50 million a year on slimming foods which usually taste like crushed cardboard, exotically packaged lotions, complicated massage and exercise equipment, and pills—yet we all lose weight best by practising one magic exercise performed sitting down, though still difficult: you shake your head from side to side when proffered a plateful.
Insurance companies say that any man of 45 who is 25 lb above his proper weight has lowered his expectation of life by 20 per cent. Put in a more daunting way, he will go at 64 when
