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Rita Tushingham

Jools welcomes actor Rita Tushingham to the studio to pick some favourite records.

Rita Tushingham made her film debut as a teenager in Tony Richardson's adaption of Shelagh Delaney's kitchen sink drama, A Taste of Honey (1961).

In the first half of the Sixties, Tushingham became a symbol of the kitchen sink school of theater, which told stories about working class folk, people who had been ignored previously in class conscious England. It was a decade that saw the rise of a generation of actors born and raised outside Metropolitan London who refused to let go of their accents or adopt posh manners. She became one of the faces of the English New Wave. In 1964, Tushingham starred in Girl with Green Eyes (1964), an adaptation of an Edna O'Brien novel about a young Irish woman's affair with an older man, co-starring Peter Finch and Lynn Redgrave. She next starred as a working class woman married to a biker in Sidney J. Furie's cult classic The Leather Boys (1964), a film released at a time where Marlon Brando's biker opus The Wild One (1953) was still banned in Britain. She originated the role of Nancy in Ann Jellicoe's "The Knack...and How to Get It" at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962. The Royal Court was ground zero for the revolution in the British theater that started there in 1956 with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1959).

She reached her high-water mark in 1965 when she reprised her stage role in the film version of The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) and played Omar Sharif (Yuri) and Julie Christie (Lara)'s love child in Doctor Zhivago (1965) . While The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) was a box office hit, Doctor Zhivago (1965) was an international it, one of cinema's all-time blockbusters.

57 minutes

Last on

Mon 25 Apr 2016 23:00
BBC Radio 2

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Music Played

  • Fats Domino

    Don't You Know I Love You

    • Heavy Sugar.
    • Fantastic Voyage.
    • 7.

  • Johnny “Guitar” Watson

    Motorhead Baby

    • Lonesome Highway.
    • Proper Box.
    • 14.

  • Lowell Fulson

    Let Me Ride Your Automobile

    • Lonesome Highway.
    • Proper Box.
    • 4.

  • Jools Holland & his Rhythm & Blues Band

    Reconsider Baby

  • Mary Lou Williams - All Girl Group

    Harmony Grits

    • Jazz Greats -Jazz Guitar Hot Fingers.
    • Jazz Greats.
    • 16.

  • David Gilmour

    Girl In A Yellow Dress

    • Rattle That Lock.
    • Columbia.
    • 8.

  • The Beatles

    Help!

    • The Beatles - 1.
    • Apple.
    • 010.

  • Procol Harum

    A Whiter Shade Of Pale

    • Procol Harum.
    • Esoteric Recordings.
    • 011.

  • Jools Holland & his Rhythm & Blues Band

    Everytime We Say Goodbye

  • Gerry and the Pacemakers

    You'll Never Walk Alone

    • The Greatest Hits Of 1963.
    • Premier.

Broadcast

  • Mon 25 Apr 2016 23:00
    BBC Radio 2