Cliff Twemlow

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Cliff Twemlow
Born Cliff Twemlow
16 October 1933
Flag of England Hulme, Manchester, England
Died 5 May 1993
England
Years active 1960s–1993

Cliff Twemlow (16 October 1933 - 5 May 1993) was an English actor, nightclub bouncer, horror paperback writer and library music composer.

Twemlow was born in Hulme, Manchester, the son of a Merchant Seaman. He became a nightclub bouncer, or “Tuxedo Warrior”, in 1950s Morecambe before this occupation would take him to Scotland and back to Manchester. Hoping to diversify Twemlow worked as an extra on the television series Coronation Street and attempted to break into the music industry by composing library music under the pen name Peter Reno. The latter was a hugely successful venture, with Twemlow penning more than two thousand compositions within the space of a few years. Musically self-taught, Cliff composed music using what he referred to as the ‘De Dum Da’ Principal. “I had discovered that with the aid of a tape recorder, I could assemble or compose lyric and tune. My voice would simulate orchestral sounds, giving me an insight as to how it could be arranged. God, the noises were appalling. Um Te Ta, Deeple, Dum Rump Pa Pa! I was in hysterics listening to the playback.” he later claimed in his autobiography. Most of his Peter Reno material was written for the company DeWolfe and used in television (Public Eye, Rutland Weekend Television, Quennie’s Castle, The Sweeney) and advertisements. One of his songs “Cause I’m a Man”, written in 1967, later became famous when it was used in the film Dawn of the Dead. A particularly lucrative composition was “Distant Hills”, which was used as the end credit theme of the programme Crown Court from 1972 to the shows end in 1984. “Distant Hills” would also prove to be Cliff’s only brush with the charts when it was used as the B side to Eye Level- the theme from Van der Valk- a single that enjoyed four weeks at number one in 1973. The same year however Cliff would encounter legal problems due to a song of his - recorded by Salena Jones- bearing the name ‘Live and Let Die’. Though released shortly before Paul McCartney recorded a song by the same name for the eponymous James Bond film, a court case was instigated by the publishers of the McCartney song and an injunction slammed on the Twemlow record. Twemlow’s defence was that it was simply an innocent example of two songs bearing the same title, unfortunately a “James Bond” style pose on the picture sleeve threw doubt on this, and the court found in favour of McCartney’s people. The Twemlow/Salena Jones record was subsequently withdrawn. Unfortunately such problems within the music industry, combined with bad business deals, legal hassles and a divorce from childhood sweetheart Georgina Curly meant Twemlow's music success was short lived and he was eventually declared bankrupt. One of Twemlow’s songs from this period “Once” from the album Restless Woman (1971), claims “Once I owned a mansion/ Money couldn’t buy / People used to stop and say / There goes quite a guy/ Now I’m left with nothing/ And I have no place to go/ For when you’re down/ Nobody wants to know”.

In the mid-70s Twemlow took a variety of odd jobs, including a delivery driver for Lomas and Baynes, a company that specialized in supplying equipment for offices, he also worked for a time as a Ferryman on the River Mersey in Irlam. After undergoing an extreme fitness régime to get back into shape (Twemlow’s exercise sessions- which included jogging with lead weights tied to his legs- were the stuff of local legend) Twemlow eventually returned to work as a nightclub bouncer, taking a 70 pounds a week job, at The Omega, a nightclub in Manchester's West Mosley Street. He also married a women named Judith, who worked as a secretary for a Manchester firm of solicitors. In the early 1980s he wrote his autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior,[1] which documented his career in the music industry and as a bouncer. In the books final chapter Twemlow is hospitalized after a fight in a nightclub leaves him with a fractured skull and his family ask him to retire or seek an alternative lifestyle. He refuses and returns to being a Tuxedo Warrior, the book closes with the statement “it is far better to be a resident on the brink of hell, than spend a lifetime in a relentless pursuit of a mythical heaven”. Tuxedo Warrior was turned into a film in 1982, however the film chooses to ignore all aspects of Cliff’s life and instead merely uses him as a character in a fictional narrative. In the film Cliff (John Wyman) is an ex-bouncer from Manchester who has opened a bar in South Africa and becomes involved in diamond smuggling, as well as being torn between two women, an American free sprit (Holly Palance) and a British compulsive gambler (Carol Royle). Confusingly the real Twemlow appears in the film as supporting character ‘Chaser’. The only other character in the film taken from the book, in real life Chaser, r.n. Barney Brogan, was an American bouncer who had a violent confrontation with Cliff in 1950’s Morecambe. In the book he is described as “a big burly American, around 5ft 11ins. Whose face had taken more second prizes than a blind tomcat in a bowling alley….. Chaser was big and evil.”


Encouraged by the success of the Tuxedo Warrior book Twemlow would go onto write two fiction books for the pulp horror market The Beast of Kane (1983) and The Pike (1982). The Beast of Kane, concerns the Gordon family, who adopt a stray elk-hound that turns out to be “Satan himself, fulfilling an ancient prophecy”. Written in the late seventies under the title The Dogs of Kane, the book was submitted as a possible film project for Hammer Film Productions but was rejected. Twemlow then tried to make a film of The Pike, starring Joan Collins, but the budget could not be raised despite Collins’ star power and Twemlow and Collins promoting the film on the BBC’s Look North programme. During the promotion Joan posed with a giant pike prop, made for the film.

In 1983 Twemlow acted in, wrote and composed the music for “GBH”, one of the earliest British films to be shot on videotape. Considered more true to Twemlow’s life than the Tuxedo Warrior film, GBH features him as Steve Donovan aka “The Mancunian”, a world weary nightclub bouncer hired to protect a club from a London gang. The film’s well remembered video cover features a blood splattered Twemlow holding an axe with the tag line “more brutal than The Long Good Friday”. GBH lead to Twemlow appearing in more shot on video features, including The Eye of Satan (1989) in which Cliff plays a mercenary with satanic powers, and Firestar: First Contact (1991) in which Cliff and Oliver Tobias battle alien monsters. These films, shot on low-budgets and mostly filmed in Manchester, continued until his premature death from a heart attack in 1993.

Contents

[edit] Trivia

  • Worked as a laborer in an Urmston sawmill (circa 1960), where he was able to carry long planks of wood under each arm, that generally required two men to push them on carts.
  • Nicknames for Twemlow included ‘Scrapper Twem’ (during school age), and ‘Cheyenne’ (early 60s) after a character in the TV western series of the same name starring Clint Walker.
  • Once appeared on television claiming he was going to “catch” the Loch Ness Monster.

[edit] Acting roles

  • Coronation Street (mid-1960s) ... Extra
  • Tuxedo Warrior (1982) ... Chaser
  • GBH (1983) ... Donovan
  • Harrising Moments (1983, uncompleted)
  • The Ibiza Connection (1984) ... Wolf Svenson
  • Mason’s War (1984)
  • The Blind Side of God (1987) ... Johnny Zero
  • Assassinator (1988) ... Devlin
  • Moonstalker (1988)
  • Tokyo Sunrise (1988, uncompleted) ... Johnny Zero
  • The Eye of Satan (1989) ... Kane
  • GBH2 Lethal Impact (1991) ... Steve Donovan
  • Bad Weekend (1991) ... Hawk
  • Firestar First Contact (1991) ... John Trooper

[edit] Discography

[edit] Peter Reno Albums

  • “Z-Patrol” (1967 DeWolfe; with Reg Tilsley)
  • "Inter City" (1967 DeWolfe; with John Reids, Jack Trombey)
  • “Traveling Light” (1967 DeWolfe)
  • "Polaris" (1967 DeWolfe)
  • “For the Young” (19?? DeWolfe: with John Reids)
  • “Big City Story” (1968, DeWolfe)
  • “More Electric Banana” (1968, DeWolfe) (songs “Street Girl” “Love, Dance and Sing” only)
  • “Inherit the Wind” (1968, DeWolfe)
  • “Colours” (1969, DeWolfe)
  • “Blue Pacific” (1969, DeWolfe)
  • "Loony Tunes" (1969, DeWolfe)
  • “TV Suite Vol 2” (DeWolfe 1970, with Johnny Hawksworth)
  • "Sweet Chariot and Friends" (1970, DeWolfe)
  • "Key Largo" (DeWolfe 1970, with Reg Tilsley)
  • “Sunspots” (DeWolfe, 1971 with Johnny Hawksworth)
  • “Sit Back” (Hudson music 1971)
  • “Illinois” (DeWolfe 1971)[1]
  • “Alibi” (DeWolfe 1971 with Johnny Hawksworth)
  • “Restless Woman” (DeWolfe 1971)[2]
  • “Times Two” (DeWolfe 1971, with Keith Papworth)
  • “Afro-Rock” (DeWolfe 1971, as Vecchio)
  • “Native Rhymes” (DeWolfe 1972)
  • “Quartet of Modern Jazz Vol.2” (1972, DeWolfe)
  • “Tete a Tete” (1972, DeWolfe with Reg Wale, Simon Haseley
  • “City Scene” (DeWolfe 1972 with Keith Papworth and Jack Trombey)
  • “Junction” (DeWolfe 1973)[3]
  • "Synthesizer Contact" (DeWolfe 1973)
  • “Syndrome” (DeWolfe 1973 with Reg Tilsley)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2673/tuxwarriordsc00135ru5.jpg

[edit] Films Availability/DVD Controversy

A German dubbed DVD release of Firestar: First Contact was released by VZM entertainment in 2005, and is available through Amazon.de

In 2006 GBH director David Kent-Watson set up a website designed to release Cliff’s films onto DVD. Unfortunately in most cases orders for the DVDs were not honoured, although Kent-Watson still took his customers money, and failed to answer emails on the subject. The few customers who received the DVDs found them to be defective and/or of poor quality (an imdb post mentions “I ordered several films and only half showed up over a long period after the release date. Quality of the discs is poor especially the authoring and sound levels”). Kent-Watson’s website no longer advertises the DVDs.

[edit] References

  • Twemlow, Cliff (1981). The Tuxedo Warrior : Tales of a Mancunian Bouncer. City Major Press. 

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Cliff Twemlow
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION English actor, nightclub bouncer, horror paperback writer and library music composer
DATE OF BIRTH 16 October 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Hulme, Manchester, England
DATE OF DEATH 5 May 1993
PLACE OF DEATH England