Customer Reviews

Cecil Beaton

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Before reading this biography,I was aware that Cecil Beaton was an iconic costume designer and photographer known for his dandyism and hob nobbing with high society, but I had no idea of the range and extent of his accomplishments. As Hugo Vickers notes in the closing pages, Beaton "had many careers--photographer, traveller, lecturer, designer, arbiter of taste and fashion,caricaturist, writer, diarist, (failed) playwright, host, wit, social historian." It needed a doorstopper-size tome of nearly 600 pages to squeeze so abundant a life into a single volume. Beaton rose from a bourgeois background to become one of the most sought after aesthetic figures of his time, winning Broadway Tonys and an Academy Award for his costumes, among them the luscious clothing worn in the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady. Vickers, who had access to Beaton's papers and those diaries that had not yet been published, covers Beaton's extraordinary career, examining both his private and public lives. Beaton was an admitted homosexual but also had a number of sexual relationships with high-placed women, his greatest love being movie star Greta Garbo, whom he actually wanted to marry. (Vickers also wrote a book just about the Garbo-Beaton affair.) Just considering the traveling he did in the course of following his professions, as well as for personal pleasure, makes one gape in disbelief at such a peripatetic life. And he was on intimate terms with almost everyone of note in British society, not to speak of the many Americans and other foreigners who were part of his circle. Despite all the acclaim he received (although not universally), he always was insecure about his abilities, and wondered if his contributions were not merely superficial effusions not worthy of true critical respect. He loved several people but never found a true love partner for other than brief periods, and died a lonely bachelor, albeit one with many friends who cared for him. One of his great male loves, an American art history specialist, is referred to only as Kin and we are not told why his last name is not given. The book was written before Google, so it is now easy to learn that this person was Kin Hoitsma.

Readers of this book will come away with a rather good picture of this complex man, including a deeper appreciation of his work. Famed mainly for his photos and designs, especially when dealing with the Edwardian era, and known as a flamboyant fashion plate and snob, he found new depths in his photos when he served the nation as a war photographer, not only in London but in the Far East during World War II. Still, despite many riveting sections, and lots of juicy gossip about the famous people he hung out with, the book is often a slog because it drops so many names along the way that it is difficult to keep up. Vickers accommodates the reader with brief footnotes for many names, but many more are not explained, and unless you sit with an Ipad nearby to look people up, you have to skim these passages about lords, ladies, dukes, duchesses, poets, rock stars (Mick Jagger, of course, will be known to almost everyone),journalists, actors, politicians, heiresses, queens, princesses, princes, and so on and so on, most of whom you're likely never to have heard of. And often, when he does take a line or two to introduce someone, he does so ineffectively. Gordon Craig, for example, was one of the most significant theatrical innovators of the early 20th century, as director, theorist, and designer, but all we are told, apart from his being actress Ellen Terry's son and a one-time lover of dancer Isadora Duncan, is that he was "an innovator in scenic design." And because Vickers seems to follow the trajectory of Beaton's life as revealed in his very detailed diaries, you are forced to wade through pages of trivia before there is a sustained narrative or authorial commentary.

The relatively well-illustrated book (it would require several volumes just to skim Beaton's work) has been heavily researched but it does contain a number of disturbing howlers. Vickers calls Irene Selznick a distinguished director even though she was not a director, but a producer; and she produced only a handful of Broadway plays, although a couple, like A Streetcar Named Desire, were very important. He says that Beaton won both a Tony and an Antoinette Perry Award, not realizing that they are the same award. He discusses the casting of Katherine Hepburn in the Broadway production of Coco but neglects to mention that Hepburn was cast only because producer Frederick Brisson's wife, Rosalind Russell, couldn't do it because of arthritis.

All in all, the book might have been better, but it shouldn't disappoint those who want a thorough overview of Cecil Beaton's life. It's just that they will have to make sure they focus on the forest, not the trees.