A date with life

Kettlewell, England

NOT much happens in the Yorkshire Dales, this sleepy but stunningly beautiful part of Britain consisting of small villages with stone cottages and houses nestled among dramatic hills. There are warm, agreeable pubs, and a church and a friendly convenience store for every village. The only outsiders generally are hikers keen to take advantage of the ravishing scenery.

It was in this out-of-the-way setting five years ago that Angela Baker and Tricia Stewart, two middle-aged friends living in the Dales, had an idea that would end up having repercussions around the world.

John, Baker’s husband of 32 years, had just died of leukemia, and the two women resolved to find a way to benefit research for the disease. But what could they do that would be arresting, distinctive -- and, most important, that would raise money? It was Stewart who dreamed up the plan: They would round up a dozen friends who would all pose discreetly nude for a calendar based on the activities of the Women’s Institute, a British organization of which both were local members.

The joke about the nudity was that the W.I. (as it is always known in Britain) has a rather proper image; the cliche about its 230,000 members is that they pass their time making jam, singing William Blake’s patriotic English hymn “Jerusalem,” baking cakes and arranging flowers. The nude calendar would show members of Rylstone & District W.I. pursuing such activities without benefit of clothes.

“When we started, if we’d made 5,000 pounds sterling [around $8,500], we’d have been thrilled,” said Stewart wonderingly. But the calendar did rather better; to date it has raised some 650,000 pounds (nearly $1.1 million). An American edition of the calendar alone has sold more than 200,000 copies. And the women’s extraordinary venture has made headlines internationally.

Now their story has been made into a film. “Calendar Girls” opened in the U.S. on Dec. 19, with two feted British actresses, Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, playing Stewart and Baker respectively. A feel-good comedy laced with tears and sadness -- the movie received mostly positive reviews in Britain and the States -- “Calendar Girls” is already a huge hit in its native land. Since its release in September it has grossed about $34 million in Britain, making it the seventh highest grossing British film of all time, surpassing such crowd pleasers as “Billy Elliot” and “Bean.”

Much of the filming, which involved a crew of about 150, took place in and around Kettlewell, a village with a population of 300. One chilly morning in October, Baker and Stewart arrived at the historic Racehorses Hotel to give a visitor a brief, brisk walking tour of Kettlewell, including significant landmarks in the film.

“That’s Rosemary Cottage, where Helen Mirren stayed,” said Baker, pointing out an attractive rustic property. “And this was Ange’s home in the film,” added Stewart, indicating a handsome double-fronted house. The two women entered Kettlewell’s village store, which had a window display devoted to the film. They received with pleasure the news that the store had sold out of the calendars.

Continuing on the tour, they pointed out the lofty hill overlooking the village, where the actresses playing the W.I. women were filmed doing tai chi exercises. And they offered morsels of local gossip every step of the way. Passing an attractive pub called the King’s Head, Baker remarked, “The film people painted the front of this place white.”

“Yes,” said Stewart, dryly. “It needed it, too.”

A real-life double act

In the film Mirren is essentially Stewart (renamed Chris), while Walters, playing a widow, is Baker, but is called Annie. The script (by Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth) portrays the two as firm friends and quickly establishes their humorous rapport; in one scene, they are seen helplessly trying to stifle giggles at a W.I. meeting while an earnest but boring speaker extols the virtues of broccoli. This accurately portrays the women, who are a real-life double act, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing a lot and sharing a confident, breezy, can-do worldview and a wry, laconic, sometimes salty sense of humor, typical of the north of England where they live.

Baker and Stewart are exhilaratingly good company -- warm, sophisticated and eloquent. As such they have played a vital part in the marketing of the film, to a far greater extent than normal for the actual subjects of fact-based movies.

“They’ve become close friends [with me],” said Suzanne Mackie, the co-chief of Harbour Pictures, the London production company to whom Baker, Stewart and four of the other women sold film rights. “Angela and Tricia are funny and down to earth, but you can’t help being moved by what they’ve done.”

Mackie recalled that she first met the two women in July 1999, a year after John’s death: “There was uncertainty as to whether they wanted [the film] to happen. I wanted to make sure it was going to be sensitive. But real-life people in this situation don’t understand how it will be. Angela and Tricia have become savvy along the way, but they were pretty smart anyway.”

Harbour Pictures and Buena Vista, the British distributors for “Calendar Girls,” included Baker and Stewart in the publicity and marketing of the movie. They were photographed walking barefoot along the beach at the Cannes Film Festival with Mirren and Walters, and earlier this year they joined an extensive U.S. tour to promote the film.

The six women got an enjoyable taste of instant stardom, luxury hotels, first-class air travel and sleek limousines when the story about their calendar went global: The film shows them as guests on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. With the film’s release, they are being feted as celebrities all over again. As Baker and Stewart tell it, they were happy to go along with whatever the producers asked.

“Calendar Girls” is Harbour Pictures’ first film. During negotiations there was an immediate bond between Baker and Harbour’s Mackie; Baker was mourning her husband, while Mackie was caring for her terminally ill mother. “When I met Angela, I was losing my own mother to cancer,” she recalled. “She was just going into a hospice, and she died two months later. We have metaphorically held hands over all that.”

Fun rooted in sadness

For all the fun and enjoyment the women have experienced through the film, it remains a story rooted in bereavement, and Baker’s sadness is still evident. “I found it hard to come back from our tour of Australia,” she said quietly. “It was two weeks away, and when you come home, turn the key and you know there’s no one there ... all I wanted was for John to be here.”

Adding to her distress was a split in the ranks of the women who posed for the calendar. After Harbour Pictures approached them, six of the women, including Baker and Stewart, agreed to sign, but five declined to have anything to do with a film. Then Victoria Wood, a popular British comedian, singer and sitcom writer, made a rival bid for the film rights -- and the five dissenters wanted to throw in their lot with Wood. But Baker and Stewart stuck to their guns, and because they were central to the story, Wood was forced to withdraw.

This split has ended friendships; some of the women no longer speak to each other. “I found it so hurtful,” said Baker. “We put it to a vote, and the five girls staying with me in the first place wanted to stay with Harbour. My children had a vote, and the photographer, so we were nine against five. The five should have accepted that. But they couldn’t, which was sad.”

“I wish I’d realized earlier we did it for different reasons, with different levels of caring about it,” said Stewart. “That’s not wrong. But I couldn’t see how they’d do that to Angela. It all came about because people admired 11 women for getting together and doing this thing. And then inevitably we fell out, fulfilling everyone’s prophecies.”

Still, the two women have the consolation that a good man’s memory has been honored and a worthy charity has been handsomely enriched. “We get to feel terribly proud of them,” said Mackie. “We knew if we got it right we could make a lovely, life-affirming film. But all we did is make a film. What Angela and Tricia did is far more important.”

“This experience has made us all much more confident,” said Baker. “That’s right,” Stewart agreed. “Without the calendar, we wouldn’t have known we were capable of doing these things. We’ve grown with it.”