Femmes fatales Christine Keeler & Mandy Rice-Davies

For a short while in the early 1960s, the names of two good-looking Brits were known to virtually every American having the IQ and awareness of a radish. Leggy, sultry brunette Christine Keeler and seductive blonde Mandy Rice-Davies brought the Conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold McMillan low in 1963 when it was learned that Keeler was sleeping with both British Secretary of State for War John Profumo and a Soviet naval attache named Yevgeny Ivanov--perhaps a classic case of trying to have it both ways.

Both girls had grown up in humble circumstances and to get on in the world, used what they had, namely, good looks and a giving attitude. Both began their quest for the glamorous life as store models, then became club dancers.

Keeler was befriended by English osteopath Dr. Stephen Ward and for a while lived with him, apparently platonically. At a party thrown by the playful peer Lord Astor, Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo and the two struck up an affair. Meanwhile, Keeler had lined up Rice-Davies with one of her former lovers, slumlord Peter Rachman.

Details are unclear, but another Keeler lover, John Edgecombe, fired shots at a house in which the two girls were talking, and his trial caused many a sordid detail to become public.

As age took its inevitable toll, both Keeler and Rice-Davies published their autobiographies, and both were featured in the 1989 movie Scandal, in which Joanne Whalley was Keeler and Bridget Fonda played Rice-Davies. Rice-Davies tried her hand at recording pop music but met little success, later marrying an Israeli and becoming a nightclub owner in Tel Aviv.