Mandy Rice-Davies
| Mandy Rice-Davies | |
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Mandy Rice-Davies in 1964
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| Born |
Marilyn Rice-Davies 21 October 1944 Mere, Wiltshire, England, UK |
| Died | 18 December 2014 (aged 70) London, England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Profumo affair |
| Spouse(s) | Rafael Shauli (1966-1971) Charles LeFevre (1978) Ken Foreman (1988-2014) |
Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies (21 October 1944 – 18 December 2014) was a British model and showgirl best known for her association with Christine Keeler and her role in the Profumo affair, which discredited the Conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963.
Marilyn Rice-Davies came from a Welsh family background but was born in Mere, Wiltshire, and moved to Shirley, Warwickshire, where her father was a policeman. Her mother was a former actress. She attended Sharmans Cross Secondary Modern School. As a teenager in her early years she worked at Woods Farm in Shirley assisting with the horse yard there, however she appeared older than her age, and at 15 she gained a job as a clothes model at Marshall & Snelgrove, a department store in Birmingham. At 16 she went to London and appeared as 'Miss Austin' at the Earls Court Motor Show.
She then worked as a dancer at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho where she met Christine Keeler who introduced her to her friend, the well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward, and to an ex-lover, the slum landlord Peter Rachman. Rice-Davies became Rachman's mistress and was set up in the same house where he had previously kept Keeler, 1 Bryanston Mews West, Marylebone. Rice-Davies often visited Keeler at the house she shared with Ward at Wimpole Mews, Marylebone, and, after Keeler had moved elsewhere, lived there herself, between September and December 1962. On 14 December 1962 while Keeler was visiting Rice-Davies at Wimpole Mews, one of Keeler's boyfriends, John Edgecombe, attempted to enter and fired a gun several times at the door. His trial brought attention to the girls' involvement with Ward's social set, and intimacy with many powerful people, including the then Viscount Astor at whose stately home of Cliveden Keeler met the War Minister John Profumo. Profumo's brief relationship with Keeler was at the centre of the affair that caused him to resign from the government in June 1963, though Rice-Davies herself never met him.
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