Mike Sarne | |
---|---|
Born | Michael Scheuer 6 August 1940 Paddington, London, England |
Alma mater | University College London |
Occupation(s) | Actor, writer, film director, singer |
Years active | 1960– |
Notable work | Come Outside Joanna (director) Myra Breckinridge (director) |
Michael Sarne (born Michael Scheuer; 6 August 1940) is a British actor, singer, writer, producer and director, who also had a brief career as a pop singer in the 1960s. Sarne directed the films Joanna (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970). He has appeared as an actor in several films including A Place to Go (1965), Two Weeks in September (1967), and Moonlighting (1982).
Sarne was born Michael Scheuer at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. He is of Czechoslovakian descent. [1] Active in the 1960s as singer, he is best known for his 1962 UK novelty chart topper, "Come Outside" (produced by Charles Blackwell), which featured vocal interjections by Wendy Richard. [2] He had three more releases which made the UK Singles chart: "Will I What?", in 1962, which featured Billie Davis; "Just for Kicks", in 1963; and "Code of Love", also in 1963. [3]
In the mid-1960s Sarne introduced the ITV children's quiz series Junior Criss Cross Quiz .
As an actor, he has appeared on television, in British series including The Avengers , Man in a Suitcase , Jonathan Creek and The Bill . Sarne also appeared in an episode of Minder as Billy Beesley, an amateur safe blower. His film credits include a starring role in the 1963 film A Place to Go with Rita Tushingham, directed by Basil Dearden, and he also appeared in Invasion Quartet (1961), Every Day's a Holiday (1965), Two Weeks in September (1967), Moonlighting (1982) and Success Is the Best Revenge (1984) for Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski and the Hercule Poirot film Appointment with Death (1988). He also played an SS captain in the TV miniseries War and Remembrance (1988). He later appeared in The Fourth Angel (2001), as Valery in the crime thriller Eastern Promises (2007), as a stage manager in Telstar: The Joe Meek Story (2008), and in 2011 he was the voice of Karla in the spy film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . In 2012, he played Father Mabeuf in the film of Les Misérables . [4] In 2013, he was 'Publican No 5' in the British comedy film The World's End .
Films he has directed include Joanna (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970), an adaptation of Gore Vidal's book of the same name, starring Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Mae West, with Farrah Fawcett and Tom Selleck in roles early in their careers. Joanna broke even at the box office, but Myra Breckinridge was a major box-office flop and drew such critical hostility that his career never recovered. A more recent film is The Punk and the Princess (1994), an adaptation of Gideon Sams' young adult novel The Punk, about the romance between a teenage punk rocker and a Sloane Ranger girl. He also directed a documentary about the Glastonbury Music Festival in 1995.
He attended the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, earning a BA. [5] Sarne had a relationship with Brigitte Bardot only a few days after her honeymoon with Gunter Sachs. [6] He has five children – two from his 1969–1978 marriage to Tanya Sarne, founder of the designer label Ghost; and three with second wife Anne Musso, whom he married in 2004 in Chelsea, London. [7]
Sarne had an affair with Geneviève Waïte, while directing her in his 1968 film Joanna. He was physically violent towards her during filming; in a 1968 interview with New York Magazine he said of hitting Waïte that it was "the only way to direct this girl, otherwise she's very cheeky. She has to be shown. I mean she knew that unless she behaved herself she'd get slapped down. One is polite to girls so long as they behave themselves" and that he "didn't punch her around as corrective punishment. Only when she annoyed me". [8]
Myra Breckinridge is a 1968 satirical novel by Gore Vidal written in the form of a diary. Described by the critic Dennis Altman as "part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality which swept the western world in the late 1960s and early 1970s", the book's major themes are feminism, transsexuality, American expressions of machismo and patriarchy, and deviant sexual practices, as filtered through an aggressively camp sensibility. The controversial book is also "the first instance of a novel in which the main character undergoes a clinical sex-change". Set in Hollywood in the 1960s, the novel also contains candid and irreverent glimpses into the machinations within the film industry.
Blue-eyed soul is rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul music performed by White artists. The term was coined in the mid-1960s, to describe white artists whose sound was similar to that of the predominantly black Motown and Stax record labels. Though many R&B radio stations in the United States in that period would only play music by Black musicians, some began to play music by white acts considered to have "soul feeling"; their music was then described as "blue-eyed soul".
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Moonlighting is a 1982 British drama film written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. It is set in the early 1980s at the time of the Solidarity protests in Poland. It stars Jeremy Irons as Nowak, a Polish builder leading a team working illegally in London.
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Myra Breckinridge is a 1970 American comedy film based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Michael Sarne, and featured Raquel Welch in the title role. It also starred John Huston as Buck Loner, Mae West as Leticia Van Allen, Farrah Fawcett, Rex Reed, Roger Herren, and Roger C. Carmel. Tom Selleck made his film debut in a small role as one of Leticia's "studs." Theadora Van Runkle was costume designer for the film, though Edith Head designed West's costumes.
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"Come Outside" is a song written by Charles Blackwell. A recording credited to Mike Sarne with accompaniment directed by Charles Blackwell featuring Wendy Richard reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in 1962. The track stayed at number one for a fortnight during the weeks commencing 28 June and 5 July 1962. The song was placed twelfth on the chart of overall single sales for the calendar year 1962 in the UK.
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Joanna is a 1968 British comedy-drama film directed and written by Michael Sarne, and starring Geneviève Waïte, Christian Doermer, Calvin Lockhart and Donald Sutherland.
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