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Molly Parkin

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Welcome to Mollywood redirects here. For other uses, see Welcome to Mollywood (disambiguation).

Molly Noyle Parkin
With George Weidenfeld at a party following her appearance on After Dark in 1989
Born
Molly Noyle Thomas

(1932-02-03) 3 February 1932 (age 92)
Pontycymer, Glamorgan, Wales
NationalityBritish
Alma materGoldsmiths College
Brighton College of Art
Known forPainter, novelist, and journalist
Children2

Molly Parkin (born Molly Noyle Thomas, 1932) is a Welsh painter, novelist and journalist, who became most notable for her work on Nova magazine, newspapers and television in the 1960s.

Early life

Parkin was born in 1932, the second of two daughters, in Pontycymer in the Garw Valley, Glamorgan, Wales. She and her family moved to London to live with her grandparents when the Second World War began in 1939.[1] She went to Willesden County Grammar School (now Capital City Academy). During the war, without her parents' knowledge, at the age of 12 she worked on a paper round in Dollis Hill, London, in the evenings. She told her mother that she was studying art after-hours at school. Her grandfather saw her delivering papers, however, and reported this to her mother who prevented her from continuing with the job and punished her by making her do housework. After this she earned a little money from a Mr Hill, their lodger, who took pity on her and paid her to clean his room. She idolised Hill, who she thought was a gentleman, and many years later saw similar characteristics in the actor James Robertson Justice. Later the family bought a tobacconist's and newsagent shop, which employed four paperboys. When one of the paperboys was caught stealing money, her mother—needing to fill his shift quickly—made Parkin, then aged 14, do his paper round instead. On her first day, a car knocked her off her bicycle and she hit her head on the kerb. She was knocked unconscious, hospitalised, and spent about a year off school, convalescing. Parkin spent much of this period alone in her room above the shop, drawing and painting. This developed into an interest in the arts.[2]

Career

In 1949 Parkin gained a scholarship to study fine art at Goldsmiths College, London, and then a scholarship to Brighton College of Art and then The Rome Scholarship British School at Rome After teacher training, she became a teacher Silverthorne Girls School Elephant and Castle. It was at this time she met and fell in love with movie star James Robertson Justice.In 1957 she met Michael Parkin [3] whom she married in the same year. She was painting and exhibiting her work in galleries throughout the late 50's and early 60's and was bought for The Tate. She sold well especially to the clientele of Liberty London. In 1958 she gave birth to her daughter Sarah and in 1961 her second child Sophie. She discovered that her husband was being unfaithful and divorced from her husband in 1963; at this time she lost the desire, inspiration and passion to continue with her artwork. [4]

To support her two daughters, Parkin turned to fashion. After making hats and bags for Barbara Hulanicki at Biba, and working alongside Mary Quant, she opened her own Chelsea boutique, she lived in Chelsea too, which was featured in a Newsweek article about Swinging London. After selling the shop to business partner Terence Donovan, she joined Nova magazine in 1965, when the radical Dennis Hackett became its editor. David Gibbs' comprehensive anthology[5]Template:P57 of Nova pages and images says of Parkin: "A dynamic sense of colour and design was all she needed to guide her. Unfettered by the accepted wisdom of the fashion system, she introduced an unconventional and startling view of what women could wear... always teasing the edges of taste... She set the standard." It was at this time she used the first Black model to model the collections for Nova, an American called Kelly. It was also when she discovered architect Paco Rabanne and featured his clothes.[Making of Moll Autobiography]She starred in anti war film, Good Times, Wonderful Times diretor Lionel Rogosin 1965. She also started appearing on Late Night Line Up and other discussion tv shows she was asked by Kenneth Tynan to contribute to Oh! Calcutta! along with John Lennon, Edna O'Brien, Sam Shepherd[disambiguation needed], Jules Feiffer and Samuel Beckett. AT this time she stood for the liberated woman part of the 1960's revolution of working class Britain's succeeding up the ladder with popular culture but most were men.

In her two years as fashion editor the flamboyant Parkin raised the bar with her coverage – shot by the new generation of young photographers – that again affirmed the Swinging City[6] which Time magazine reported in 1966 as the hub of creativity and hedonism. She moved on to become fashion editor of Harpers & Queen in 1967, and The Sunday Times Harry Evans was her editor. In 1969, being named Fashion Editor of the Year in 1971. In 1969 she married her second husband artist Patrick Hughes[disambiguation needed] and in 1973 she left The Sunday Times to write her first Novel. she wrote a 750-word outline for a novel entitled Love Allpublished in 1974. Although it was disliked by publishers Blond & Briggs, the office secretary commented that she liked it, and it was picked up for publication. Her second novel established her as a feminist writer of comic erotica. Published in 1975, Up Tight was highly publicised, thanks to fashion photographer Harry Peccinotti's cover shot of a French model wearing see-through knickers; this jacket design resulted in booksellers Hatchards keeping it under the counter. In the later 1970s, as a chatshow celebrity Michael Parkinson Russell Harty and comic erotic novelist, Parkin wrote an uninhibited weekly interview in the Saturday edition of the Evening Standard.[citation needed]. In 1975 Her husband and youngest daughter moved to St Ives, Cornwall where Molly went on to write 7 more books all very sexually orientated. She also had a column in magazine Girl About Town. In 1979 Parkin moved with her husband. After returning from living in New York City in 1980, she left her second husband Patrick Hughes, and returned to London still writing her novels living in Cheyne Walk with her two daughters for a year in The Rolling Stones house.<Moll: The Making of Molly Parkin'Victor Gollanz 1993'> She was drinking heavily in 1984 she wrote and toured in her one man show costumes by Mr Pearl she performed with Quentin Crisp at Ronnie Scotts and The Edinburgh Festival 3 years running. Her director was Nica Burns.[7] By the time her novel Breast Stroke was published in 1983, she had become an alcoholic. The three publications, plus various articles for men's magazines, earned her the position of 24th in Time Out magazine's review of London's best erotic writers.[8]

In 1987 she gave up drinking, started painting again, had a facelift and with the publication of her autobiography Moll: The Making of Molly Parkin in 1993, was on the tv again with Dr Anthony Clare. [9] Her first major exhibition in 1990 Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff later she would also exhibit at the Washington Gallery in Penarth. Much of her new work was inspired by Celtic landscapes, in particular Pontycymer — although she also found her travels in India moved her to produce more vibrantly coloured works. She did a lot of travel writing at this time travelling around the world for the Daily Telegraph amongst othersShe became Agony Aunt for TVQuick magazine for 5 years. In October 2010, her memoirs Welcome to Mollywood were published where she revealed she had been sexually abused as a small child repetitively by her own father causing her amnesiac trauma.<Beautiful Books 2010>Cacciottolo, Mario (30 October 2010). "Molly Parkin: Fashioning her own career". BBC News. Retrieved 3 January 2012.</ref>

In 2010, a portrait of Parkin painted by Darren Coffield was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London for the BP Portrait Award.[10]

She was a 'castaway' on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs in May 2011.[1]

In May 2012, she was awarded a Civil List Pension by the Queen for her services to the arts.[11]

Parkin featured in an episode of Channel 4's Britain's Weirdest Council Houses in February 2016, in which she was filmed in her council flat in a tower block in the World's End Estate at the World's End area of Chelsea. She had moved into the flat in 2002, after she was declared bankrupt following a cancer scare.[12]

In 2017 Parkin appeared live in a one-woman show at a London salon hosted by Simon Oldfield of Pin Drop Studio.[13] More Recently she has exhibited her paintings at The Stash Gallery, London.2020 this is within www.Vout-O-Reenees.com A private members arts club owned by her daughter Sophie Parkin

References

  1. ^ a b "Desert Island Discs with Molly Parkin". Desert Island Discs. 8 May 2011. BBC. Radio 4.
  2. ^ "The Paper Round with Molly Parkin". The Paper Round. 3 January 2012. BBC. Radio 4.
  3. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/18/michael-parkin
  4. ^ Moll; The Making of Molly Parkin - Autobiography pub 1993 VictorGollanz
  5. ^ "Nova 1965–1975, by David Gibbs (Editor), David Hillman (Compiler), Harri Peccinotti (Photographer)". Pavilion Books, 1993.
  6. ^ "The Diamond Decades: The 1960s". The Telegraph. 10 November 2016.
  7. ^ "How we met: John Maybury & Molly Parkin". The Independent. UK. 29 July 2007. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  8. ^ "Sex and books: London's most erotic writers". TimeOut. 26 February 2008. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  9. ^ BBC Two - The Seven Ages of Man, Molly Parkin www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02t9qhz/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02t9qhz
  10. ^ "Welsh artist Molly Parkin becomes a subject in awards show", 24 June 2010
  11. ^ "Molly Parkin shocked to receive rare honour". The Daily Telegraph. 20 May 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  12. ^ 'Clive Martin meets the octogenarian artist whose wild social life has been as striking as her painting' - The Guardian 14 June 2014
  13. ^ "Molly Parkin". Pin Drop. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
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