(Image courtesy of the BBC and their
website)
Marsha Hunt had a
very fine leg,
Two very fine legs had she,
She tucked them all around her front
And sideways just to see,
If being photographed like that
Would make some history,
Which it did, my little squid,
It did most definitely,
And if you google her I'm sure,
You'll see and then agree...
Andy Morley April
21st 2007
This poem
was prompted by another one called My Lost Keys - I came across this image
of Marsha Hunt and thought I might use it to illustrate
that one.
Marsha
Hunt's claim to fame was exposing her body in the musical
Hair, at a time when nudity was
controversial, but also very topical. There was a theater
called the Windmill in London which until the early 1960s
displayed nude models in between acts - the acts themselves
were hired purely as a front. Some great people played
there, but they weren't who the punters went to see. In
between the acts were nude tableaux - the models were not
allowed to move due to the censorship laws then
prevailing.
By that
time Hair came along, that was history, but those prurient
interests still prevailed. The famous pose was clearly meant
to conceal Marsha's breasts and genitalia, and yet despite
the tacky reasons for the position, it's an iconic image of
the 1960s and in its way, great art.
"Show a
leg" they say, so it's perfectly justifiable to talk about
Marsha's very fine leg, and it's mainly one of them that you
see in the photo. However, the decision to refer to the
singular was down to a need to make the poem work. That led
to an unintentional irony. I didn't realise it when I wrote
the pome but the 'then and now' format of the twin pictures
was because of a radio broadcast Marsha had done about
breast cancer and her decision not to have her missing
breast 'remodelled' after a mastectomy.
So - you
can't accuse her of shallowness. This famous photo may have
had, at it's root, the desire of repressed people to look at
the body of a young, fit girl, and the restraint of a
morality from which those same people could not free
themselves. But great art can arise from the most unlikely
of things, and often does arise from tortured love,
including that kind of tortured love. And Marsha, who was
part of that, had the courage to admit and understand it and
make a great and poetic gesture in response.
Andy Morley 21st April 2007
