NEVER TOO NAKED
NEVER TOO NAKED
Brilliant construction of the life of Bambi Kellerman, Evita Bezuidenhout’s sister
– Caroline Smart, artSMart, 12 December 2011
Followers of Pieter-Dirk Uys, one of South Africa’s most creative minds, must surely number in the millions. They will be familiar with his indomitable alter-ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, who is widely acknowledged as the most famous white woman in South Africa. They will also know of the exploits of Evita’s younger sister, Bambi, the blonde Afrikaans meisie who married a Nazi and became a stripper in the fleshpots of Europe.
Add to this threesome Ouma Ossewania Poggenpoel, the redoubtable mother of Evita and Bambi, described by Pieter-Dirk Uys as still looking “like a throwback to the Great Trek to the OK Bazaar sale in 1954.”
There’s a DNA history in this quartet somewhere!
Bambi’s first appearance — all of 45 seconds — was in 1985 in the film Skating on Thin Uys. In 1990, she performed on stage in her own cabaret.
With considerable assistance from Pieter-Dirk Uys, Bambi has now revealed the details of her licentious lifestyle which goes back to the days when she and Evita left the Orange Free State to go Overseas in the company of their friend, Mimi, who was on her way to work at the State Opera in Vienna.
Sex is part of Bambi’s make-up and her story is full of professional and personal relationships of varying styles and timeframes as we follow her from her marriage to the abusive ex-Nazi General, Joachim von Kellerman, until she returns to South Africa where she finally sets up one of the most popular wineries in the Cape and becomes free of the spectre of her hated husband.
To quote the press release: Never Too Naked is a “gloves-off, bra-down, knicker-torn, pant-and-groan, blow-by-blow memoir of a sexual existence well-lived. Life with a Capital F… From the dusty lanes of the Orange Free State, via the marzipan cobblestones of Vienna, through the murky boudoir of Nazi nostalgia; stripping in Hamburg, naked in London, pouting in Paris, ending up in Paarl – via Paraguay, Patagonia and hell with a Capital H.”
There is a full photographic history including some of the people who became part of Bambi’s life, such as opera singer Mimi Coertse (the one she went Overseas with), Ava Gardner; Marlene Dietrich; Ernest Hemingway; Paraguay’s dictator General Stroessner — even John F Kennedy and Chris Lombard, to name a few. And who do you think gave the Beatles their early distinctive hairstyles?
To remind readers that there’s no love lost between Bambi and her elder sister, she refers to Evita as “The Vampire.” The narrative is so real that you have to keep reminding yourself that Bambi is a figment of imagination … but she’s certainly very real in this book.
In the real world, ‘acting’ the eras of Bambi in this clever photoshopped album are her friends in Darling. The book is a brilliant construction and a fascinating read but probably not for those who are uncomfortable with explicit language!
Never Too Naked is published by Zebra Press ISBN 978 177 022 1789, and retails at R200.
For a frank interview with Evita and Bambi, click here
EVITA VS BAMBI
artSMart exclusive interview with Evita Bezuidenhout and Bambi Kellermann
– Caroline Smart, artSMart, 12 December 2011
This year, Pieter-Dirk Uys has facilitated two publications on behalf of personalities very close to him: Evita’s BlackBessie by Evita Bezuidenhout, the most famous white woman in South Africa, and Never Too Naked by her younger sister, Bambi Kellermann.
However, the boxing gloves are out as the Poggenpoel sisters take their sibling rivalry into the publishing world, with Bambi’s new ‘tell-all’ sexual memoir threatening to outsell Evita’s BlackBessie.
A press release informs that Bambi was instructed by her publishers (Zebra Press) to send an advance copy of the book to Evita for approval just days before its release. Rumour has it that Evita has asked her lawyers to look into the matter as she plans to sue her sister for libel if any harm is done to her public persona by ‘publishing utter lies’.
“I am disgusted by the lies and fabrications that I have been told about. I will not read that book, Evita says firmly in an exclusive interview with artSMart. “I believe she pretends to like me through her sarcasm. I’d rather be hugged by a Gaddafi.” Talking about the rift between them, Evita considers that sex is what caused it: “The way she used it to humiliate our existence as Christians and civilized Afrikaners. She makes us all look cheap. And everyone is very complimentary about her sense of humour, indicating that I have none. Thank heavens, if that means I’m not like her.”
artSMart turned to Bambi for response and she replied with her usual vigour: “There is no rift. I just know that she hates me so much, that she and I will never ever be seen in the same place at the same time. That’s quite a relief.”
While Never too Naked charts Bambi’s sexual exploits, it also reminds us of historic highlights over the last 60 years or so. However, she shrugs off a suggestion that she could be considered a knowledgeable historian: “Goodness me, no. I was known as a Grand Horizontal in Europe and maybe because I saw life from that angle I remember the details. The story is just my life, not that of a nation, but its fingerprints are all over me. I am Bambi Kellermann, international chameleon. I just wished I had more languages. They are the skeleton key to life’s many locks.”
Evita only allocates one photograph to Bambi in her Evita’s BlackBessie, calling her sister “a thorn” in her side. “How sweet of her,” sneers Bambi. “I include about six of her in mine.”
Looking back on their lives now, would either sister have done anything differently? Evita is the first to answer: “I could have changed our history by putting rat poison into John Vorster’s chicken, battery acid in PW Botha’s tomato cocktail or arsenic in the cake I sent Mandela in prison. I didn’t do those things then, so why should I want to do them now?”
Bambi considers the question more carefully: “I would have allowed myself to be more inquisitive. Not be so afraid. Suffering from the disease to please. I wished I had told the world to ‘gaan kak’ many, many years sooner than I did. But it’s never too late.”
Will Evita and Bambi ever be reconciled? “If they promise not to involve me in any way,” was Pieter-Dirk Uys’ prompt reply.
Beyond camp’s wilder shores
– Andrew Donaldson, Times Live, 18 October 2011
IF YOU READ ONE BOOK THIS WEEK
Never Too Naked, by Bambi Kellerman, with Pieter-Dirk Uys (Zebra Press) R200
AN OUTRAGEOUS, improbable trawl through the back alley gay bars, bedrooms, bordellos and cabaret dives of the latter half of the 20th century as Bambi Kellerman — the younger, sluttish sister of Evita Bezuidenhout — gets on her knees, unzips trouser flies, and takes on the Cold War, Nazis, South American juntas, and apartheid, bumping into Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, Kurt Weill, Ava Gardner, Marlene Dietrich, Chris Barnard, Nelson Mandela and others along the way. A warped scream beyond camp’s wilder shores, but fun.