Shooting stars
The biggest names of stage and screen, as captured by influential photographer, Angus McBean
Shooting stars
PHOTOGRAPHER ANGUS MCBEAN CAPTURED THE ICONS OF 20TH CENTURY THEATRE, FILM, MUSIC AND DANCE AS THEY’D NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. NOW THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY STAGES THE FIRST-EVER MUSEUM RETROSPECTIVE OF HIS REMARKABLE IMAGES
AUDREY HEPBURN, 1951 McBean’s signature technique of incorporating props into his shots was used to great effect for this 1951 beauty advert. He placed the unknown model amid classical columns set against a stark sandy background, emphasising her fresh-faced timeless beauty. The model was Audrey Hepburn and the picture led directly to her screen test in Hollywood. Three years later she won the Best Actress Oscar for Roman Holiday and went on to star alongside many of the great actors of the day, from Fred Astaire to Humphrey Bogart.
IVOR NOVELLO, 1947 Seen here leaning against bound scores of his musicals – another example of McBean’s preference for enhancing his portraits with props from the sitter’s life – Novello was a matinée idol and talented composer who first achieved fame with his World War One song ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. His contribution to popular entertainment is still honoured today with the Ivor Novello Award, an annual accolade presented by the record industry to songwriters and arrangers.
DOROTHY DICKSON, 1938 A friend of the late Queen Mother, Dorothy Dickson was an American-born actress who spent most of her career on the London stage. She was best known for her version of the classic Jerome Kern song ‘Look for the Silver Lining’.
QUENTIN CRISP, 1940 Flamboyant, effeminate and outrageous, Crisp – born Dennis Charles Pratt – never hid his homosexuality despite the abuse that he often attracted. Posing for photographs was not a new experience for him – he made a career out of sitting for artists, which he compared to being a civil servant “except that you were naked!” This observation gave rise to the title of his first volume of memoirs, The Naked Civil Servant, in 1968, which was made into a successful TV series. In 1981 he emigrated to the US, inspiring the song by Sting ‘Englishman in New York’, and upon his death his ashes were scattered over Manhattan.
SELF-PORTRAIT CHRISTMAS CARD, 1982 Between 1934 and 1985 McBean produced an influential series of Christmas cards, often featuring himself and always exhibiting a strong humorous streak. Some of these are extremely valuable today. In this one, McBean looks down on a model tea party, with himself as host. Note his famous beard, which he grew upon quitting his first ever job – working as an antiques restorer at London store Liberty’s – as a defiant symbol of his refusal to ever be a wage slave again.
VIVIEN LEIGH AS AURORA, 1938 Captured here as the Goddess of the Dawn, Vivien Leigh was famed as much for her beauty as for her acting talent. Her portrayal of the great Southern belles – Scarlett O’Hara (Gone With The Wind, 1939) and Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951) – won her two Academy Awards but it was on the stage that she spent most of her career, often alongside her husband, Laurence Olivier. Her health, however, cast a dark shadow over her life. Affected by bipolar disorder, her violent moodswings were frequently misunderstood and impacted upon her reputation, while recurrent bouts of tuberculosis further weakened and eventually killed her.
VIVIEN LEIGH, 1938 In 1936, Ivor Novello commissioned McBean to make some masks for a production of The Happy Hypocrite, in which he was starring alongside a new unknown actress. Novello was so impressed with McBean’s work that he commissioned him to take the actual production photographs. The results were a huge success and launched McBean’s photographic career. The actress in question, whose beauty had been so perfectly captured in McBean’s dreamy shots, was Vivien Leigh, who became something of a leading lady for McBean – he went on to photograph her throughout her career. This shot of her, McBean’s favourite picture, was turned into a postage stamp in 1985.
SPIKE MILLIGAN, 1961 McBean’s characteristic touches of humour and surrealism perfectly capture the impish spirit of Spike Milligan for the cover of his album, ‘Milligan Preserved’. One of the all-time greatest comic minds, Milligan is best remembered for the Goon Show, which ran for nine years on BBC Radio and only ended at the request of Spike himself after he suffered several nervous breakdowns. A favourite with Prince Charles, Milligan received an honorary knighthood in 2000 – his Irish background preventing him from receiving the full title.
DAME MARGOT FONTEYN, 1951 Perfectly framed by a dancer’s legs, McBean captures here the effortless poise and grace of one of the world’s greatest ballerinas. Still some 20 years away from her final performance when this portrait was taken, Fonteyn was set to retire when she was introduced to a new dancer recently defected to the west: Rudolph Nureyev. Their partnership was one of the most magical of all time and gave her career a second lease of life. For all her English elegance, however, Fonteyn was not without a wild streak – in 1967, she and Nureyev were arrested when anti-drugs police raided a party they were attending.
A snapshot of history
Although interested in photography from an early age, it was as a maker of masks and theatrical props that Angus McBean (1904-1990) first made his name. An early admirer of his work was celebrated Bond Street photographer Hugh Cecil, to whom McBean was apprenticed before eventually setting up his own London studio. With a career spanning the 1930s-1970s, McBean became one of the most influential photographers of his day.
From Audrey Hepburn to the Beatles, his distinctive pictures – with their elements of wit, fantasy and surrealism – graced the pages of eminent magazines such as The Sketch and Tatler. The likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton insisted on only him for their portraits and throughout the 1940s and 1950s he was the official photographer for the productions at the Royal Opera House, Sadlers Wells, the Old Vic, Glyndebourne and Stratford-upon-Avon. He was also responsible for creating one of the most defining images of the Swinging Sixties – a picture of the Beatles hanging over the balcony of their record label’s offices, which was used on the cover of their record Please, Please Me.
These images will be on display together for the first time at The National Portrait Gallery, London from 5 July-22 October, before touring to Sheffield and Wales early next year. www.npg.org.uk
MAE WEST, 1948 American actress, playwright, screenwriter and all-round sex symbol, Mae West started out in vaudeville, performing under the name ‘The Baby Vamp’ aged just
12. It set the tone for the rest of her career: wherever she went, controversy followed. Banned from Broadway and even imprisoned on moral grounds – although she charmed her way through that experience and got two days off for good behaviour – it wasn’t until 1932 that Hollywood came calling, thanks to the success of her play Diamond Lil, which was made into the 1933 Oscar-nominated film She Done Him Wrong, starring Cary Grant. In 1937, her innuendo-laden appearance on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s radio show caused such outrage she was banned from radio for the next three decades. Could McBean’s choice of prop for his portrait of West – a puppet of herself that could easily be taken for a ventriloquist’s doll – be a sly reference to this incident?
SELF-PORTRAIT CHRISTMAS CARD, 1939 Another example of McBean’s Christmas cards; this time with him as Neptune. The Christmas cards allowed McBean to give free reign to his considerable creativity and often show him at his experimental best, with double exposure frequently used to achieve the surreal results.
RENÉ RAY, 1938 A prolific all-round entertainer, London-born René began her career as a singer before moving onto films, theatre and eventually writing. In the 1930s alone she appeared in 34 films.
She entertained the troops during the Second World War, put in a stint on Broadway in An Inspector Calls, and published her first novel in 1947. In 1975, she became Countess Middleton upon her marriage to Earl Middleton.
