Cecil Beaton - Photographer - Diaries
I would like to tell you
of some additional exhibits I saw
at the Photographic Exhibition 2001.
Cecil Beaton was a society and royal
photographer. When his diaries (comprising
six volumes through the 1950s to the
1970s) were first published he edited
out his more "acid" comments
for fear of offence and libel. Now
that Beaton's last surviving sister
has died, Beaton's literary executor
and official biographer Hugo Vickers
has decided that the uncensored version
can be made public. Beaton was at
the heart of show business and the
Royal family since the 1950s until
his death in 1980. He was a close
friend of the Queen Mother, Princess
Margaret, Grace of Monaco, Audrey
Hepburn and Sir John Gielgud. He was
bitchy, snobbish and vindictive. He
described Katharine Hepburn (still
alive at age 93) in his dairies as,
"looking like a hockey mistress
with rocking-horse nostrils, beet
root-coloured hair and with a strident
voice". She took legal action
to stop Beaton writing about her again.
But he continued to do so in his diaries
so when she appeared on Broadway in
1969 in Coco for which Beaton did
the designs, he described her singing
as "pitiful" and her playing
of Chanel as "like a mousy Mary
Poppins". In the 1950s while
working for Vogue he put Marlene Dietrich,
Greta Garbo (with whom the homosexual
Beaton was in love with) and Norman
Shearer at the top of the list of
the six most beautiful women in films
but in his diaries he tells a different
story. Of M. Dietrich he wrote despairingly
about "her control and manipulation
of the audience" and that "she
was disdainful about the quality of
her cosmetic surgery. "As for
Elizabeth Taylor he considered her
common. She wanted him to photograph
her and he said, "She's everything
I dislike" so he charged a huge
fee so that she would not agree and
it worked! He didn't like Cukor, My
Fair Lady's Director, for which Beaton
did the costumes (and his costumes
influence even today's production
of My Fair Lady now in London) particularly
as it was filmed in Hollywood rather
than London. He hated the film and
Vickers said, "He thought Cukor
was vulgar". They also had a
problem about Audrey Hepburn. "They
thought they had proprietorial rights
over her" said Alexander Walker
(Evening Standard film critic).
Beaton's diaries comprise 150 books:
we can really enjoy the gossip, darlings!But
if you really like Cecil Beaton and
if you are really rich, you can buy
his house in Ashcombe for ?9m: a six
bedroom Georgian manor house with
his elegant photographic studio. He
entertained his guests for tea and
his weekend parties attracted pre-war
society. The Sitwells', the Mitford's,
Oliver Messel etc, they all sunbathed
naked and the locals called the estate
"The Nudist Colony". Salvador
Dali, Graham Sutherland and Augustus
John visited Beaton at Ashcombe (I
have purely visited in my dreams!!!).
BBC has produced a film about Beaton's
garden, which I have already seen
twice and you feel very emotional
to see his studio, his roses, and
him walking around wearing his Panama
hat.
Verinha Ottoni.
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