When George Harrisons Handmade Films rescued screenwriter Barrie Keefe and director John Mackenzies film from heavy cutting and TV broadcast, they must have known they were getting a bargain from the hard edge of the television industry. As for the inspiration behind Bob Hoskins bullet-headed, pugnacious gang boss, its been said more than once that it was bullet-headed, pugnacious ex-gang boss Freddie Foreman not least by the man himself. In recent conversations with me for a forthcoming book of photographic anecdotes about him and the Krays, he described the parallels between the film and his own criminal career:
Hoskins Harold Shand is a prototype 80s yuppie, dreaming of developing the then derelict docklands for a future Olympics; Foreman had sailed up the Thames to raise money for the Olympic boxing team. Both the movie gangster and the real-life criminal entrepeneur owned casinos; in the film, Shands is blown to pieces by a bomb; in reality some of Freddies betting shops had been targeted by arsonists. When Harold is trying to find out whos been taking such diabolical liberties, he hangs a load of crims up in the cold storage of a meat market Foremans workplace when he was young.
Even the films most supposedly far-fetched plot device (all-out war between the IRA and London gangland, which never actually occurred) may have its basis in fact: Fred Foreman and his firm of robbers were arrested in Ireland and sent to Mountjoy Prison, after going to raid a bank that had been put up by the Provisional IRA; in the film, Harolds partners double-cross over a similar deal, and the killing of several IRA men, leads to carnage on the streets of London. "Someone was really feeding them information about me for the character," opines 83-year-old Freddie, once the godfather of British crime. "All of those things came together. I think its the best fim theyve ever done about the gangster life." Enjoyed this article? Share any thoughts down in the comments.
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
