BOOK EXTRACT: The Dwarf Who Moved Part 1/2

Knighted in the 2015 New Year honours, Sir Peter Williams is one of the country’s best-known criminal lawyers and a campaigner for prison reform. He has appeared in more than 100 murder trials in a 60-year career, including the Arthur Allan Thomas case and the Basset Rd machine gun killings. He also represented drug syndicate leader Terry (“Mr Asia”) and has long campaigned for penal reform. In the first of two extracts from The Dwarf Who Moved he recalls:

In 1967, New Zealand finally abolished six o’clock closing for licensed premises. This had been the law for about fifty years. As a result of this infamous law, we had what was known as a ‘six o’clock swill’, where men and women jostled in bars to ensure they could obtain enough liquor to satisfy their thirsts before closing time.

In all this barging, copious amounts of beer were spilt on the bar room floor. The spectacle of these people drinking furiously and treading through pools of beer was not only disgraceful, but damning to any dignified culture that might be associated with the imbibing of liquor.

Consequential to six o’clock closing was the proliferation of after-hours drinking places, both legal and illegal. Licensed restaurants mushroomed. The now ACT New Zealand party politician John Banks established a chain of steakhouses where liquor could be obtained and his restaurants became very popular.

There was also an increase in unlicensed supper clubs, where patrons could hide their liquor under the table and musical entertainment was provided. These nightclubs were usually to be found in the upper floors of old buildings, and patrons would surreptitiously bring with them a bottle of wine. The door would be opened by the proprietor with a knowing smile and the patron encouraged to keep the wine out of sight, just in case the police arrived.

There were also rougher places, known as the ‘beer houses’. Many were in Freemans Bay and Grey Lynn, which were then the proletarian areas of Auckland. Alcohol was available in these places until the early hours of the morning, and they attracted a great cross-section of people, including prostitutes, burglars, business people, undercover policemen, lawyers and more. The goings-on in these unlicensed premises could fill many volumes of books, but if one wanted a night out and one was young and strong enough to take care of oneself, these were exciting places to be.
The police really rejoiced in these illegal liquor outlets, because, as they said, if they wanted a fugitive criminal, they knew where to go.

However, the backdrop of this narrative is not one of the notorious beer houses, but the more sophisticated city nightclubs, where live music and professional dancing werepresented, often of a surprisingly high standard. There would be a band, consisting of, say, a double bass, lead guitar, percussion instruments or even a trombone, with a singer out in front, taking the limelight. Generally speaking, the atmosphere was warm and delicious, and personally, I loved these places.

One of the entertainers in these nightclubs was the celebrated Sante Collins. She was an exotic dancer. Not only superbly talented at her art, she was also a very sexually attractive and beautiful young woman. In those days, she was the icon of nightclub patrons, in great demand, and invariably well appreciated by her audiences.
Before she came on stage, the band would play sensuous music, and then she would appear, glamorously attired, and slowly start to dance. When her routine reached its climax, to the great joy of her audience, she would seductively undress.

Everything she did was artistic. There was nothing garish, nothing bawdy, and nothing uncouth about her performances. Every movement was sublime – her whole act was pure poetry.

Sante Collins was New Zealand’s Gypsy Rose Lee. Lee was the American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act who rose to prominence in the first half of the last century. In 1960s Auckland, though, the police had the notorious Vice Squad, headed by a devout Roman Catholic police officer, adamant that he would root out evil in the city. This wickedness, according to him, included any artist who stripped off her clothes. The Vice Squad also relished smashing up beer houses and generally saw themselves as the equivalent of the American police inspector Eliot Ness and his team, who became renowned during the Prohibition period in America.

This Vice Squad was the same team who later charged the Auckland producers of the international hit musical Hair with indecency – because, in the course of the performance and in accordance with the script, some of the actors stripped naked.
Auckland’s Hair was a sophisticated, professional production, well-attended by the public, and played for a season at the town hall.

But members of the Vice Squad, after attending several of the performances, gave evidence at the trial against the producers stating that they were all disgusted at the depravity of the show. Other witnesses were called, including Pat Booth, editor of the Auckland Star, who, incidentally, later became a crusader for the wronged Arthur Allan Thomas, a case I will detail later in ‘The Planted Shell-case’ story. Pat was a well-known Catholic, who in this instance said he was shocked and appalled by the performance of Hair. The jury brought back verdicts of not guilty on all counts, however, and that night the defence lawyers danced on stage with the performers.

But to come back to Sante, the darling of the nightclub scene: it was not long before the Vice Squad became determined that she should be prosecuted, too. Indeed they were determined that she be imprisoned.

© The Dwarf Who Moved, by Peter Williams. Published by HarperCollins New Zealand. Reprinted with permission