Full Circle - Dusty Springfield DVD Review

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DVD Review

From frumpy folkie to panda-eyed pop star, Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (aka Dusty Springfield) became one of Britain's leading vocalists and best musical exports. In her formative years she was exposed to an eclectic 'songbook' by her parents, even though her dad was a "Beethoven nut". On leaving folk trio The Springfields (with brother Tom and Tim Field) in 1963, she scored several trans-Atlantic hits, regularly being voted the UK's top female singer. Between November 1963 and November 1995 she charted 26 singles, with only one chart topper - You Don't Have To Say You Love Me in March '66. She also registered 12 albums, the highest being Golden Hits, a number one, in the same year.

This light-hearted 1994 documentary, with guest appearances by French and Saunders as spoof interviewers and the lady herself, we get an easy stroll through her highly successful career. She openly explains the crucial musical directions and decisions that expanded her repertoire and fame. Featuring many of her best known songs, there's some scary hair, eye-make-up, dresses and even scarier TV studio sets from the 60s and 70s. Ranging from the NME Poll Winners show ( circa early 60s ) to her own 'Dusty' shows, which includes a 'flickering' duet with Jimi Hendrix on Inez and Charlie Foxx's Mockingbird (the only known existing footage) to a sublime duet with Burt Bacharach. She doesn't reveal much of her private life, but relishes the opportunity to explain her eclectic choice of songs that served her well. Key to her success, as you'll see, was her fearlessness in tackling ballads to powerhouse Motown classics like Nowhere to Run, Heatwave and Dancing In The Street, which brought her the tag of 'white lady of Soul'. Following considerable chart absence in the 80's (she lived in Holland from '73 -'89 ), she re-emerged in a blaze of glory on the Pet Shop Boys' hit What Have I Done To Deserve This in '87.

Snippets include duets with emerging Soul legend Marvin Gaye, Tom Jones, and Dame Edna.

After a lengthy battle with cancer, she died in 1999 in England, just before her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and two months after receiving an OBE.

Elly Roberts