But Is It Art? ...

[Liam]

The room is dark red and womb like. On one wall hangs a photograph, fairly small, surrounded by a wide, white mount inside a tacky gilt frame. You have to get close to really see the image. This is where the complications begin.

Head to one side, the model stares back at the viewer. It is a knowing, adult look, though the naked body appears much younger, as if it is a montage.

An uncomfortable image in all sorts of ways, as Richard Prince realised when he first presented it in an otherwise empty gallery in New York in 1983. He borrowed the title, Spiritual America, from a 1923 photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, depicting the nether regions of a gelded workhorse. The disjunction between the images and the title they share is extremely powerful.

Throughout his career Prince has borrowed images, from Marlboro Man ads to New Yorker cartoons. It would be too simple to say he is commenting on the American psyche; in fact, he leaves much of the commentary to us.

If Spiritual America is a comment on the commodification and premature sexualisation of Brooke Shields, who was complicit in turning her into a 10-year-old sex object? Not Prince. That had happened almost a decade before he re-used the image.

There is something horrible about the photo. I feel uncomfortable.
Prince compounds our unease by not providing a hand-wringing commentary.

If doubt remains about whether this is a comment and corrective, or a symptom of social malaise, it is clear Prince took responsibility when he borrowed Gary Gross's photo, and knew exactly what he was doing.

...

A display due to go on show to the public at Tate Modern tomorrow has been withdrawn after a warning from Scotland Yard that the naked image of actor Brooke Shields aged 10 and heavily made up could break obscenity laws.

The work, by American artist Richard Prince and entitled Spiritual America, was due to be part of the London gallery's new Pop Life exhibition . It has been removed from display after a visit to Tate Modern by officers from the obscene publications unit of the Metropolitan police.

The exhibition had been open to members of the Tate today before opening to the public tomorrow. A Tate spokeswoman confirmed that the display had been "temporarily closed down" and the catalogue for the exhibition withdrawn from sale. The work had been accompanied by a warning, and the Tate had sought legal advice before displaying it.

The decision by officers to visit Tate Modern is understood to have been made after police chiefs saw coverage of the exhibition in today's newspapers, rather than as a result of complaints.

Officers met gallery bosses and are also understood to have consulted the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether the image broke obscenity laws.
A Scotland Yard source said the actions of its officers were "common sense" and were taken to pre-empt any breach of the law. The source said the image of Shields was of potential concern because it was of a 10-year-old, and could be viewed as sexually provocative.

The work has been shown recently in New York, without attracting major controversy, where it gave the title to the 2007 retrospective of Prince's work at the Guggenheim Museum.

The Pop Life exhibition also includes works from Jeff Koons's series Made in Heaven, large-scale photographic images that depict the artist and the porn model La Cicciolina having sexual intercourse.

There are also works by Cosey Fanni Tutti, who, as part of her artistic practice, worked as a porn and glamour model in the 1970s and then displayed some of the resulting images in an exhibition at the ICA in 1976.

Spiritual America is a photograph of a photograph. The original ? authorised by Shields's mother for $450 ? had been taken by a commercial photographer, Gary Gross, for the Playboy publication Sugar 'n' Spice in 1976. Shields later attempted, unsuccessfully, to suppress the picture.

Prince used the image as the source material for his own 1983 piece; he placed it in a gilt frame and displayed it, without labelling or explanation, in a shopfront in a then rundown street in Lower East Side, New York. The title comes from a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz from 1923 of a gelded horse.

Prince has described the image as resembling "a body with two different sexes, maybe more, and a head that looks like it's got a different birthday."

In an essay in the exhibition catalogue Jack Bankowsky, co-curator of the exhibition, describes the image as of "a bath-damp and decidedly underage Brooke Shields ? When Prince invites us to ogle Brooke Shields in her prepubescent nakedness, his impulse has less to do with his desire to savour the lubricious titillations that it was shot to spark in its original context ? than with a profound fascination for the child star's story."

The Metropolitan police said: "Officers from the obscene publications unit met with staff at Tate Modern ? The officers have specialist experience in this field and are keen to work with gallery management to ensure that they do not inadvertently break the law or cause any offence to their visitors."

Full Article: Naked Brooke Shields photo is an image for which you must write your own commentary | Art and design | The Guardian





~ L.

[Flower]

I find it must distrubing to read that the mother of Brooke Shields actually was okay with these photos being taken!

[hdw]

God, Liam, I might have known you would latch on to that article, which I read myself the other day. I didn't know you were a closet "Guardian" reader. Sorry, I shouldn't use the c- word!

There's a larger question here of whether something avowedly exhibited to the public as "art", by a professional artist or photographer, should be judged by different criteria than something put together by Joe Bloggs or John Doe who doesn't pretend to be an "artist". Before digital cameras became the norm, there were anecdotal stories of people taking their film to be developed, with snaps of their little kids in the bath or playing in the garden naked, and next thing they knew, the police were knocking on the door. It's quite common now in the UK for parents to be forbidden to photograph their kids in school plays, nativity plays, etc. in case paedophiles are taking advantage of the photo opportunity. But there was an art exhibition recently in the UK with pictures of children unclothed - maybe other people reading this will remember where and when - and the argument was that this was art, not rampant paedophilia.

And what about our friend Roman? Just today on the main Radio Four news programme they were quoting angry bloggers protesting about a leading journalist who had suggested he should be forgiven and pardoned, their point being that if he was Mr. Polanski the teacher from next-door, or Father Polanski the parish priest, would people be so ready to allow him to rape thirteen-year-olds?

Harry

[Liam]

God, Liam, I might have known you would latch on to that article, which I read myself the other day. I didn't know you were a closet "Guardian" reader. Sorry, I shouldn't use the c- word!

Ah, Harry, you know me too well!

And I'm not a closeted ANYthing (except maybe when I'm visiting friends in rural Montana...)

Personally, I thank the good Lord every day for living in NYC, of all places. Who would have thought that the generally upbeat London, for shit's sake, would start banning fuckin' anything???

Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher should be next on the list then, what with all the naked images of kiddies taking baths together, etc.

We should differentiate between acts and expressions. Polanski is a bad example here (though absolutely relevant, I agree) because he was guilty of an ACT. Richard Prince did not photograph a naked 10-year-old. He took the image from a 1976 issue of Playboy and turned it into art. What the original photographer did by filming a naked 10-year-old was an act. What Prince did was an artistic expression of that act, a reinterpreted follow-up, if you will.

And Flower: Yes, I do agree, Brooke's mother actually giving her consent (essentially selling her daughter for $450) is the most disturbing detail in this entire story.

[hdw]

And Flower: Yes, I do agree, Brooke's mother actually giving her consent (essentially selling her daughter for $450) is the most disturbing detail in this entire story.

Let's not be too gallant in our view of the fair sex. The UK is currently reeling from revelations of sexual abuse and internet exploitation of kids in an English nursery, the eldest child in question being only 4 years old, by three people who only ever "met" by email, and two of them are women. It has been leaked to the press that one of these women has shocked even hardened anti-paedophile police investigators by her freely-expressed violent sexual fantasies.

Harry

[Flower]

Let's not be too gallant in our view of the fair sex. The UK is currently reeling from revelations of sexual abuse and internet exploitation of kids in an English nursery, the eldest child in question being only 4 years old, by three people who only ever "met" by email, and two of them are women. It has been leaked to the press that one of these women has shocked even hardened anti-paedophile police investigators by her freely-expressed violent sexual fantasies.

Harry

From my point of view, you could call the mother of Brooke Shields a pimp! To make money of your own 10 year old daughter being photographed in the nude, is abuse, no matter how you look at it.

[Eric]

And this month's lolly flavour is Ped'Ophelia. Gorgeous, pouting and only twelve. Or was it ten? She floated around in a river, you know. In her undies, you know. Shakespeare shook his spear at her, you know. Dirty bugger. Well, not necessarily bugger. She had other orifices to offer.

Oh dearie me. As soon as Polanski gets nabbed, they're already on the horny hunt for more underage panting: hot panting. Now it's Brooke Shields. Brooke who? What did she ever do that we should know about?

They're called the fair sex because they're jolly fair. Like the umpire in cricket. Well-balanced. On a tightrope, so you can look up their skirts. But as Harry says, one of the latest child pornographers was indeed a lady. So don't let the feminists get too high and mighty about filthy males. There are a few kinky ladies around too.

Finally, there is always a question hanging over some artistic endeavour: is it art or is it pornography? Half a century ago this debate will have been held, but quite a few p?dophile-inclined authors were not cracked down on. Take Lewis Carroll who photographed underage girls in the nude, and Louis Paul Boon who fantasised in what definitely be regarded as p?dophilia nowadays. Not to mention the Russo-American butterly pinner.

Where can the line be drawn between a person obsessed with sex, playing a nudge-nudge, wink-wink game, and a genuine artist trying to portray, say, the child nude as something ?sthetic? Not an easy one for Knacker of the Yard.

[Flower]

Where can the line be drawn between a person obsessed with sex, playing a nudge-nudge, wink-wink game, and a genuine artist trying to portray, say, the child nude as something ?sthetic? Not an easy one for Knacker of the Yard.

I think its very easy!

When a child is used to satisfy adults pleasure!

Brooke Shields is not acting as herself, but dressed up with heavy make-up etc.

The photographer Sally Mann has taken several photos of her own children playing in the garden etc., some more or less nude, but none of them with a sexual theme in them. So it can be done!
In fact her photos shows a natural approach to children, that its okay to be nude without it has anything to do with sex what so ever! You sense that there is " a room" for these children to be and act like children without any adult interferrance. You could say the "room" is a place where they are allowed to keep their innocense, and their nudity are not forced or exploited by adults sexuality and fantasies.

[beelzebubbles]

This reminds me of Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece. ?tant donn?s: 1. La chute d?eau, 2. Le gaz d??clairage.

Don't look it up. If you want to know it, you must experience it. And to experience it, you must come to Philadelphia for it lives in the Philadelphia Art Museum. Where are you going; get away from that search engine?

This picture of Brooke Shields is merely a tempest in a pot of tea. the artist true work is here on this forum and in the street with us stirring our spoons in the pot. If he wanted to do something truly shocking, he would give Miss Shields the picture back and let her dispose of it as she would like.

Flower brings up the issue of the eroticization of children. I think I should point out that what grown-up-oriented-sexuals or teleiophiles consider the eroticization of children by making them look more like adults may not stir a pedophile. It is far more likely to stir up, confuse and anger the teleiophiles. Pedophiles and hebephiles like children and pubescents the way they are.

I may be wrong but I don't think that it is only an erotic charge that pedophiles get from children. They may enjoy their company, the way they think, their freedom to play. Does the teleiophile characterize his/her own erotic relationships as only sexual?

[hdw]

I may be wrong but I don't think that it is only an erotic charge that pedophiles get from children. They may enjoy their company, the way they think, their freedom to play.

An acute observation, and it reminded me of a Scandinavian crime novel in my collection. This is the opening of ?ke Edwardsson's "Frozen Tracks", in which someone is abducting small children in Gothenburg, or G?teborg if you will:-

One of the children jumped down from the climbing frame into the sandpit below, and he laughed out loud, suddenly, briefly. It looked like good fun. He wanted to join in, but that would mean getting out of his car, walking round the fence and in through the gate, and climbing up the frame, which was red and yellow.

...Now another child jumped down. He could hear the boy laughing as he lay in the sand ... He was listening to the boy's laughter. He was laughing himself now. He wasn't happy, but he was laughing because, hearing the child laughing, it sounded so much fun to be a child getting up to climb the frame and jump down once more.

...The climbing frame was right here, next to the entrance. He was standing by it.
A leap.
'Wheee!'
Laughter. He laughed again himself, jumped, no, but he could have jumped. He helped the little boy to his feet. Up again, up, up! Lift him up to the sky!

He took it from his pocket and held it out. Look what I've got here.

I remembered that scene when I read your post, but what a bloody job I had to find the book. I had ?ke Fredriksson in my head, and was searching in vain among my F authors until I noticed Edwardsson further along the shelf. Too many Swedes have the same kind of name. I suppose I must have been thinking of Marianne Fredriksson.

I think I'm going to remove all my Scandinavian crime writers from my main bookshelves and keep them together in one place, if I can find the space. That means Mikkel Birkegaard, ?ke Edwardsson, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indri?ason, Mari Jungstedt, Stieg Larsson, Camilla L?ckberg, Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund, Jo Nesb?, Yrsa Sigur?ard?ttir and Maj Sj?wall & Per Wahl??. I often remember a plot but can't remember the book or the author's name, unless it's Mankell or Sj?wall & Wahl??, who started the whole genre.

Incidentally, where are all the Danish crime writers? Just not translated into English? Or are they too high-minded to descend to genre fiction? I have a Leif Panduro novel (Den Ubet?nksomme Elsker)sitting downstairs to get into sometime. I always have some Scandinavian literature in the original lingo on the go to keep my Nordic end up.

Harry

[Flower]

This picture of Brooke Shields is merely a tempest in a pot of tea. the artist true work is here on this forum and in the street with us stirring our spoons in the pot. If he wanted to do something truly shocking, he would give Miss Shields the picture back and let her dispose of it as she would like.

Flower brings up the issue of the eroticization of children. I think I should point out that what grown-up-oriented-sexuals or teleiophiles consider the eroticization of children by making them look more like adults may not stir a pedophile. It is far more likely to stir up, confuse and anger the teleiophiles. Pedophiles and hebephiles like children and pubescents the way they are.

I may be wrong but I don't think that it is only an erotic charge that pedophiles get from children. They may enjoy their company, the way they think, their freedom to play. Does the teleiophile characterize his/her own erotic relationships as only sexual?

I was pointing out where the line is to Eric!
That adults use children for their own sexual pleasures!

I am not able to say if pedophiles only have one kind of taste in children or whether the photographer of Brooke Shields has got it all wrong by trying to make her look older with make-up etc. Getting it all wrong in the sense that he thought that it would be interesting and not understanding that the mere fact that she was a child and innocent and nude, was enough for pedophiles.
Either way, then its double abuse. First one to take photots of her in nude to the pleasure of adults, second try to make her look sexual and older with make-up in order to give something to men to pick up on or whatever you say.
To me that can never be art!

From what I understand of pedophiles then they like the fact that the child is young and therefore easier to manipulate. What they then do to the child is VERY much adult stuff and a destruction of the innocence and abuse on many levels.

[Liam]

This picture of Brooke Shields is merely a tempest in a pot of tea. the artist true work is here on this forum and in the street with us stirring our spoons in the pot. If he wanted to do something truly shocking, he would give Miss Shields the picture back and let her dispose of it as she would like.

It's interesting how the discussion has veered off into an altogether different territory... Eric, no doubt, would have been riled.

The bottom line is, Pedophilia is a crime, and as far as I'm concerned, it should remain a crime in the future as well.

But I was rather trying to draw your attention to the fact that the Tate gallery has been made to withdraw the work from a scheduled public exhibit all because the organized establishment THOUGHT it (i. e. the image) exceeded the limits of public propriety and artistic license.

While the whole situation surrounding the 10-year-old Brooke Shields may or may not be a storm in a teacup, I agree that it's better to forget about it at this point, unless you want to use it as an example in a serious discussion about the exploitation (sexual or otherwise) of children in this country or the rest of the world.

However, one thing that is certainly NOT a storm in a teacup is the fact that limitations have been placed on Richard Prince's artistic freedom. Mind you, he has no access to the ORIGINAL Brooke Shields photo. God only knows how many copies of the original 1976 issue of Playboy are still in circulation, but what Prince did was he took a picture OF a picture, thus providing a kind of twice-removed glance at the initial act of sexual trespass against Brooke Shields.

He has no way of returning the original photograph to the actress because he's not the one who has photographed her in the first place. He's merely illustrating his position as an artist--it is a fact that the young actress was exploited by the industry at age 10, and he, as an artist, is portraying/analyzing that fact in the here and now. What you personally think of his artistic endeavor is not really relevant--personally I wouldn't buy tickets to this exhibit either!--but his freedom as an artist, as a photographer, is something else entirely.

I think this goes hand-in-hand with the discussion of Nabokov's Lolita (is it "really" literature?), the recent arrest of Roman Polanski, the unified attempt of the reactionary Christian Right across the United States to ban And Tango Makes Three from public and school libraries and telling our children what to read and what not to read, etc., etc. Who the fuck is the government to limit our freedoms in the realm of art and ideas? If you personally think that something is immoral and/or distasteful, that is fine--since it's coming directly from you, you made that judgment on your own without any outside help or interference; but when the Big Brother begins to make those decision FOR you (because, let's face it, he really DOES have your best interests at heart), that's when Liam's hair gets raised.

To further illustrate my point, I'd like to bring up the case of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work I personally consider provocative yet vastly boring (he was, in my humble opinion, more of a social commentator than a genuine photo-artist):

In June 1989, pop artist Lowell Blair Nesbitt became involved with a scandal involving Mapplethorpe's work. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. had agreed to host a traveling solo exhibit of Mapplethorpe's works, without making a stipulation as to what type of subject matter would be used.

Mapplethorpe decided to show a new series that he had explored shortly before his death, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment curated by Janet Kardon of the Institute of Contemporary Art.

The hierarchy of the Corcoran and several members of Congress were horrified when the works were revealed to them, and the museum refused to go forth with the exhibit.

It was at this time that Nesbitt, a long-time friend of Mapplethorpe, revealed that he had a $1.5 million bequest to the museum in his will. Nesbitt publicly promised that if the museum refused to host the exhibition he would revoke his bequest. The Corcoran refused and Nesbitt bequeathed the money to the Phillips Collection instead.

After the Corcoran refused the Mapplethorpe exhibition, the underwriters of the exhibition went to the nonprofit Washington Project for the Arts, which showed the controversial images in its own space from July 21 - August 13, 1989, to large crowds.

...

In 1998, the University of Central England was involved in a controversy when a book by Mapplethorpe was confiscated. A final year undergraduate student was writing a paper on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and intended to illustrate the paper with a few photographs.

She took the photographs to the local chemist to be developed and the chemist informed West Midlands Police because of the unusual nature of the images. The police confiscated the library book from the student and informed the university that the book would have to be destroyed. If the university agreed to the destruction, no further action would be taken.

The book in question was Mapplethorpe, published by Jonathan Cape 1992. The university Vice-Chancellor, Dr Peter Knight, supported by the Senate took the view that the book was a legitimate book for the university library to hold and that the action of the police was a serious infringement of academic freedom.

The Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by the police, under caution, with a view to prosecution under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act. This Act defines obscenity as material that is likely to deprave and corrupt. It was used unsuccessfully in the famous Lady Chatterley's Lover trial.

Curiously the police were not particularly interested in some of the more notorious images which could have been covered by other legislation. They focused on one particular image, 'Jim and Tom, Sausalito 1977,' which depicts one man urinating into the mouth of another.

After the interview with the Vice-Chancellor a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service as the Director of Public Prosecutions has to take the decision as to whether or not to proceed with a trial.

After a delay of about six months the affair came to an end when Dr Knight was informed by the DPP that no action would be taken as 'there was insufficient evidence to support a successful prosecution on this occasion'. The original book was returned, in a slightly tattered state, and restored to the university library.

Once again, whatever you personally think of the images is not relevant. Personally, I view a lot of them as eroticized black-and-white (pun intended) kitsch. But I don't need our Congress to tell me that, or to limit my right of access to these images should I wish to view them at my personal leisure.

Anyway, I feel, as Nabokov said, my voice rising to a "too strident pitch".

Freedom of expression is generally protected by our Constitution, case closed. I've no idea how the English or the rest of the Europeans argue about the pros and cons of the artistic license.

[Mirabell]

I think this goes hand-in-hand with ... the recent arrest of Roman Polanski,

I don't, actually. That man anally raped a 13 year old girl.

In her own words

The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, "Take off your underwear" and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn't wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey's testimony, wrapped his hands around the child's waist.

The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson's home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he "keep away." According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later "started to have intercourse with me." At one point, according to Gailey's testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was "on the pill," and "When did you last have your period?" Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt." Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, "Because I was afraid of him."

[beelzebubbles]

Liam, thanks for clearing up my misconception about Shields photograph, but I think I may not have been clear.

I understand Shield's photograph is not the work in question.

Prince's use of Shield's photograph is.

The use he made of it was provocative and got a reaction and here we are still reacting and discussing quite a number of topics from pedophilia to the use of the imagery of naked children to an artist's license to the state's responsibility.

I would say that Prince's exhibit is a success as a conceptual piece.

I worry less about what the state does before my eyes than what they do behind my back. As long as there is openness and reaction, we may consider ourselves free or as free as any of us may hope to be

[Flower]

I don't, actually. That man anally raped a 13 year old girl.

In her own words

I agree with you, Mirabell!

[Flower]

Liam,
I actually think that the artist who used the photo of Brooke Shields, abused her, like her mother and the photographer did.

As far as freedom of doing whatever art you want to or viewing whatever art you want to, and not having the government to act on your behalf, well then I think there are/should be limits to this freedom.

This week a danish newspaper has been writing an article about a website, who has drawings of very violent sexual abuse of children. I didnt dare to press the link as I was afraid the drawings would haunt me. The company who hosted that website cut them off. But they should be up running on some other line. What do you do with stuff like that? Call it freedom of expression? A right to make drawings of what you want and as a viewer: freedom to view what you want???? Apparently no children was harmed, they say.

This discussion reminds me very much of the debate we had in Denmark when the famous cartoons was published. Then it was freedom of speech.

[Eric]

Beelzebubbles, #9: I'm afraid that those of us living in Europe would find it rather expensive to pop over to the Philadelphia just to "experience" something. I'm going for Google. Sorry, Beelzebubbles, but you've lost me with teleiophiles and hebephiles. What do they mean in non-Greek-soaked English?

Perhaps I'm a bit innocent, but I thought lots of little girls liked dressing up in rather ridiculous clothes that do happen to show their legs, and that that was something quite normal. We didn't have all this fuss when I was young. But now you almost get the feeling that the curators are hoping for titillation to get people to go to their museums and keep up the attendance quotas so they will still receive grants.

I suppose that Brooke Shields won't be Liam's cup of tea in a storm, but I think the moralists assume there is a direct link between pictures showing child nudity and the excitement - and incitement to action - of p?dophiles. Whether this can be proven one way or the other is doubtful. The spate of Lolly & Polly affairs do show, as I said above, that astute curators like to have risqu? things. I agree with Liam when he says:

Personally, I view a lot of them as eroticized black-and-white (pun intended) kitsch.

Photography is especially prone to an artistic climate where endless so-called photos of genius are churned out, almost on a production line, and no one dares to point out the Emperor's New Clothes (or lack of them). I think there is an awful lot of photo-pseudery around, with people trying to show how open-minded they are by showing pictures of beautiful taut bums. Then, when the novelty has worn off, some photographer comes along and exhibits endless photos of beer bellies and sagging tits. And we're now meant to "ooh" and "aah" at the dialectics of ugliness. To use a physiological phrase: what a load of bollocks (not the most visually ?sthetic part of the male frame, if we discount the erotijism involved).

Mirabell: you're not shocking anyone with your dozen words. I think we are all adult enough to see the dilemma between prosecuting a man after thirty years, and letting a child-rapist get off scot free. This is further complicated by the fact that the girl who was raped (even if drugged, and no consent was given), is now a woman in her forties, and is rather upset that all this is being brought up again. Polanski mixed with a strange crowd of people, if you remember the Manson and Sharon Tate episode. There is a definite morbid, rather sick streak in Polanski. It's not a clearcut issue.

[hdw]

Polanski mixed with a strange crowd of people, if you remember the Manson and Sharon Tate episode. There is a definite morbid, rather sick streak in Polanski. It's not a clearcut issue.

Sex 'n drugs - if not rock 'n roll (maybe the Charleston) - have been part of the deal in Hollywood since its earliest days. The silent-film comic Fatty Arbuckle was accused of a girl's death at a drug-fuelled party, and at a slightly later date Errol Flynn was, if my remembering is correct, accused of raping an under-age girl on his yacht.

Harry