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Private Notes
Alan Whicker observes six trends in the American Lifestyle, six cults which have not reached Britain - yet. This week he looks at Americans who are questioning the inevitability of death, and ways to cheat it.
Where have all the American children gone? The pre-teens, the seven-to-elevens you'd think are entitled to be childish, have grown into the first Micro Media generation - mature moppets who make movies instead of playing games and are completely at home with computers and crime, the stockmarket and sex.
There is a new economic force in America today, privileged and envied: the swinging, 24 million unabashed and unwed adults with few inhibitions about their marital status. In the third of his journey into the new transatlantic lifestyles, Alan Whicker found them courted not only by each other, but by big business.
Continuing his series looking at modern American trends, Alan Whicker visits "The Greenhouse" in Texas, where American women pay up to $110 per day for treatments to make them slimmer and younger-looking.
Business executives, America's leading heroes, enjoy the greatest prestige and the greatest rewards. The President of General Motors collects £330,000 a year and others pick up £125,000. In return, Society demands nothing from the top executive - except his entire life!
In the last part of his series examining modern American trends, Alan Whicker looks at the problems faced by retired people who are fit and active.
Gay liberation is one of the fastest growing movements in America. In this episode Alan Whicker attends a homosexual wedding in San Diego, meets a gay bishop, three transexuals and some members of a lesbian tide.
Whicker looks at an extraordinary group of people whose belief is absolute and baffling, they are members of the first and largest of several hundred Jesus Communes - the 'Christian Foundation' of Tony and Susan Alamo. He investigates the position of this enigmatic couple, so lacking in charisma yet commanding such complete and astonishing allegiance. Why are there Jesus freaks content to exist 30 to a room in conditions of squalor, when their unlikely leaders live on the hill above in such style?
In Whicker's investigation into this American city, we consider the background of America's greatest mass-murder, ride with the Police on their remarkable night-patrols, fly with the Helicops, shoot with the Fastest Gun in the West, play ‘The Game’ with Houston junkies, mingle with 140 widows in a club that costs £6,000 to join and sample life among the 'Never Sweat Set'.
Charmain Biggs, wife of Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs, talks at length for the first time on television about her life with Ronald. They discuss the background to his part in the robbery, his dramatic escape from Wandsworth and their life on the run in Australia where, eventually, a number of people knew who they were.
Americans have one Secret Society which everyone longs to join, based on an improbable sandbar down in Florida. For a century Palm Beach has been the Mecca of the Super Rich, living between tall walls and high hedges with only one money problem - how to spend it. Palm Beach, a never-never land, where no-one feels properly dressed without a yacht, is seemingly populated by bathroom billionaires known by their products, like Mr Kleenex, Mrs Listerine, Mrs Q-Tips and Mrs Gillette. In his remarkable study of America's new aristocracy at play, Whicker reflects that the rich should not be resented but enjoyed as a pageant - as they pass before us, a glittering entertainment. He talks to society hostesses, including Juliette de Marcellus, Helene Tuchbreiter, and Ann Hamilton.
In this fourth revealing report from his Indian travels, Alan Whicker journeys through the princely state of Rajasthan to chronicle the end of this golden era in which a Sun God has been transformed into a Mister, and to see what has happened to this most exotic race of Maharajahs. He meets the dignified queen mother - the Rajmata of Jaipur, who tells of being cast into prison by Mrs Gandhi. The present Maharajah keeps a team of polo ponies, and also plays the game on elephants, but lesser mortals must use bicycles. Jodhpur's palace is now an hotel, as is the Lake Palace of the Maharana of Udaipur, whose family is the oldest in the world. In the 15th-century desert city of Bikaner, the Maharajah remembers sand grouse shoots with King George V.
Whicker revisits one of Los Angeles more unusual marriages - plastic surgeon Kurt Wagner & his wife Kathy (“I’d Like to Think I’m Nearer to God than Frankenstein”, ITv TX 3rd October 1973). He finds that Kathy, now 38, has had two more improving operations since they last met - a full facelift and an acid treatment. Whicker gives viewers that sense of privileged eavesdropping as he peels away the attitudes of this unusual couple and reveals some startling truths about the surgeon whose patients call him Mr God. Why would he turn to psychiatry? What has led the couple to get involved in ESP and marriage counselling? Rarely has there been such a sting in the tail of one of Whicker's films...
Alan Whicker visits legendary Shaw Brothers Hong Kong film studio and meets Sir Run Run Shaw.
