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Tangier

The Knitting Circle: History

Biography,bibliography,press cuttings.

In 1912 Morocco was given a special international status when it was divided into protectorates controlled by France and Spain. Tangier was a free port and governed by a commission representing nine nations, including Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and the USA. After the Second World War the city attracted smugglers, gun runners, and pirates. "e;Nylon Sid"e; Paley from New Jersey masterminded hijackings at sea. Financiers made fortunes in the city's international money market and war criminals were allowed to live without fear. Otto Skorzeny, the Gestapo agent who kidnapped Mussolini was a weapons supplier from Tangier with the help of former Nazi officers. The city also attracted many intellectuals and figures from the world of literature because of its tolerance of people with different lifestyles, including lesbians, gay men, and transgendered people.

On 2nd. March 1956 Morocco was formally granted its independence. During that summer local people began to take over the posts that had been held by European bureaucrats. Although it was announced that Tangier would temporarily keep its free port status masses of gold bullion was flown out to Europe. Bankers and diplomats left for new assignments and their villas were left empty. Property prices plummeted and many local people lost their jobs. The new government disliked the decadent European ways and started to impose some order. The press was censored. In 1958 there seemed to be a purge in Tangier with foreigners suspected of perverse practices being arrested if they had not managed to flee. However, after a few months the purge seemed to be abandoned, perhaps because the local ecomomy relied on the wealth of the foreigners.

Tangier has a walled fortress, called the Casbah, inside the ancient native quarter, or medina. Residents of European descent were called Tangerinos whereas the native people were called Tanjawis. The sandu hill around Tangier Bay formed a natural amphitheatre which was dotted by white buildings. Ville Nouvelle was the European quarter. The Arabic dialect spoken in Morocco is Maghrebi.

British and American exiles often frequented Dean's Bar which was on a little street just below the El Minzah Hotel. Its proprietor was the short, dark-skinned Joseph Dean who had been the barman at the Minzah prior to setting up his own business. It was a mystery where he was born or how he had arrived in Tangier. Visitors to the bar included Barbara Hutton, Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, Ian Flemming,Francis Bacon, andRupert Croft-Cooke. Francis Bacon's friend, Peter Lacey, played the piano at Dean's Bar.

Another popular venue was the Parade Bar, a restaurant on the Rue de Fez. It was first run by the two Americans, Jay Haselwood and Bill Chase, and the White Russian refugee Ira Belline. They had been set up in business by Countess Phyllis della Faille, an alcoholic Anglo-American married to a wealthy Belgian. Visitors included William S. Burroughs,Brion Gysin,Truman Capote,Rupert Croft-Cooke,John Haylock, and David Edge. The restaurant closed after a few years when the three partners fell out over the running of the business. Ira Belline opened a flower shop which turned out not to be successful, Bill Chase moved to the West Indies, and Jay Haselwood took the role of gigolo to Countess Phyllis della Faille although his preference was for young men. Six months later the Parade re-opened in the Rue des Vignes with Jay Haselwood in charge. Lily Wykeman, a French woman who was married to a Swede, became a great friend and partner. When Jay Haselwood died at the age of 48 on Christmas Day in 1965 Lily Wykeman inherited the Parade Bar and ran it until 1982.

The rich and famous were also attracted to the cosmopolitan life of Tangier. In 1945 the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton divorced her third husband Cary Grant. In September 1946 she bought a stone palace near the Casbah. She staged theatrical fêtes and parties to which she called in belly dancers, camel drivers, and nomadic tribesmen to entertain her friends. Visitors included Charlie Chaplin and Oona O'Neill, Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, Claudette Colbert, Aristotle Onassis, and Maria Callas. However, Barbara Hutton also noticed the poor living conditions of many of the local people and she set up a soup kitchen and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the charities minitering to Tangier's poor.

Another location that attracted foreigners was the Old Mountain, a lush promontory with white villas above the Straits of Gibralter. At the centre of the "e;Mountain Set"e; was the HonorableDavid Herbert, the second son of the Earl of Pembroke. He had first visited Tangier in 1933 and then made regular visits until he settled there in 1950 with his partner James Caffery.

The writerPaul Bowlesvisited Morocco in 1932 and made Tangier his home with his lesbian wife Jane Bowles in 1947. They were visited byTruman Capote,Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs,Brion Gysin,Allen Ginsberg, andJack Kerouac. Jane Bowles died in 1973 and Paul Bowles died in Tangier in 1999.

Brion Gysin created the restaurant 1001 Nights and ran it from 1954 to 1958 with Hamri, his boyfriend, as cook. The restaurant came to be owned by Tony David, husband of the cookery writer Elizabeth David. It was temporarily run by the Lincolnshireman John Torr.

Rupert Croft-Cookemoved with his partner Joseph Alexander to live in Tangier in 1954 and left in 1968. He wrote the autobiographies of his time in TangierThe Tangerine House, (1956) andThe Caves of Hercules, (1974).

The actor and lawyerPaul DanquahandPeter Pollockset up home in Tangier in the late 1970s, and Peter Pollock acquired the restaurant La Pergola. Peter Pollock died in Tangier in 2001.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were fewer ex-patriates being attracted to Tangier. The city was suffering from inflation and unemployment, and it was attracting tourists from Britain, Germany, Holland, and the USA.

• Iain Finlayson, (1992), "e;Tangier: City of the Dream"e;, HarperCollins, 372 pages, ISBN 0 00 217857 5 (hardback).
  Blurb:"e;No city in the world has quite the exotic allure of Tangier. From the seventeenth century, it has been a city on the edge, beyond the normal disciplines of government, a city of refuge and excitements out of bounds in Europe - a city where sex is cheap, drugs are plentiful, where 'CD' on a Rolls is as likely to stand for 'Contrabandier Distingue' as for 'Corps Diplomatique', where the outcasts of the world can at least breathe freely. This is the place and the state of mind which Iain Finlayson explores in his witty and often savage new book. The Golden Years of Tangier began shortly after the First World War and barely survived the Second. During that time the names of the passers-through run like an alternativeWho's Who: William Burroughs, whose nightmarish city Interzone inThe Naked Lunchis modelled on Tangier;Jack Kerouac,Allen Ginsbergand Ronnie Kray (among many others) who came for sex; the unhappy Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who gave legendary parties in the Casbah;Tennessee Williams,Joe Ortonand Kenneth Halliwell; Cecil Beaton, Timothy Leary andTruman Capote. But Tangier also had its more permanent residents: most famously David Herbert, second son of the Earl of Pembroke, who ruled Tangier's social scene 'with a whip of knotted floss silk' andPaul Bowles, who wroteThe Sheltering Skyand all the works of his maturity there. They and their kind, says Finlayson, live in the city in a kind of time-warp: for them, it is 'the last resort of the living dead, alive but not madly kicking'. This is the tarnished side of Tangier which emerges when the glitz has faded, 'the city of illusory vanities... like a mirror it merely reflects what one wishes to see... In Tangier, it is easy to be caught, trapped, by the reflection of one's desires... it is the ante-room of failure, the casualty ward of desire'."e;

• Michelle Green, (1992), "e;The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier"e;

• John Hopkins, (1995), "e;The Tangier Diaries 1962-1979"e;, San Francisco: Cadmus Editions, 243 pages, ISBN 0-932274-50-1-0 (paperback).

• Tales from the cityinThe Independent Magazine, 13th. January, 2001, pages 15-16. "e;A whole series of wealthy and intrepid expatriats have found their way to Tangier over the centuries. Among them was Samuel Pepys, who visited in the 17th century, the legendaryTimescorrespondent Walter Harris, who lived there in the early 20th century, and Emily Keane, the Englishwoman who caused outrage in the late 19th century by marrying the Sherrif of Ouezzane. The literary associations with the city built to a seedy crescendo in the first half of the 20th century when, between 1923 and 1956, it was made a neutral international zone, and the resulting lack of regulations governing politics, homosexuality and, above all, drugs, drew even more visitors."e;

Biography,bibliography,press cuttings.

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The Knitting Circle

First uploaded 15th. August, 2006.

Last altered 15th. August, 2006