Binkie Beaumont; Angela Baddeley; Emlyn Williams

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Angus McBean Photograph. © Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.

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Binkie Beaumont; Angela Baddeley; Emlyn Williams

by Angus McBean
bromide print, 1947
15 in. x 11 3/4 in. (380 mm x 297 mm)
Purchased, 1977
Primary Collection
NPG P59

Sittersback to top

Artistback to top

  • Angus McBean (1904-1990), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 283 portraits, Sitter in 79 portraits.

This portraitback to top

Taken for the Tatler and Bystander, August 1947.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Pepper, Terence, Angus McBean Portraits, 2006 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 July to 22 October 2006), p. 63 Read entry

    The most celebrated of McBean’s 'Play Personalities' series shows the camera-shy theatrical producer Hugh 'Binkie' Beaumont manipulating models of Emlyn Williams as Sir Robert Morton and Angela Baddeley as Catherine Winslow in the first production of Terence Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy. This opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in May 1946. Beaumont was brought up in Cardiff and at the precocious age of sixteen became assistant manager of the town’s Prince of Wales Theatre in 1924. His rise continued and in 1936 he formed, with Harry Tennent, administrator of the Drury Lane Theatre, the production management company H. M. Tennent. With a number of long-running hits such as Gerald Savory's George and Margaret, which ran for 799 performances, followed by Dodie Smith's Dear Octopus (starring John Gielgud), the company prospered, its prestige attracting great talent. The post-war years of the late 1940s were a golden time for new star writers and directors such as Peter Brook and Christopher Fry; McBean was their photographer of choice to document and promote this work. The era of well-dressed theatre ended in 1956 with the rise of the Royal Court's new theatre - which espoused stark realism and kitchen-sink drama - as well as the advent of subsidized theatre, which made the more lavish old-style productions commercially unviable.

  • Rogers, Malcolm, Camera Portraits, 1989 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), p. 249 Read entry

    At the age of twenty-eight 'Binkie' Beaumont founded with his associate H. M. Tennent the firm of theatrical producers H. M. Tennent Ltd. Beaumont was from the beginning the moving spirit behind the company, but, even after Tennent's death in 1941, he did nothing to publicize his own name. His firm, however, dominated the West End theatre for almost twenty years, and during that period Beaumont had the power to make or break the career of almost any actor. From the start he had the friendship and support

    of John Gielgud and Noel Coward, and this, combined with his exceptional managerial skills and perfectionism, resulted in a run of highly successful productions. Above all, the firm of Tennents became a byword for superbly dressed comedies with starry casts.

    Angus McBean began his career in the theatre as an odd-job man, making masks and building scenery, but turned to full-time theatre photography in 1936, and, as 'one-shot' McBean, was virtually official photographer to Tennents. His work is characterized by its wit and imagination, and, as he himself puts it, 'the use of surrealism for its fun value'. In this characteristically inventive photograph Beaumont is shown as puppeteer, manipulating Angela Baddeley as Catherine Winslow and Emlyn Williams as Sir Robert Morton, in the first production of Rattigan's The Winslow Boy, which had opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in May 1946. It is the perfect image of Beaumont who all his life cultivated anonymity, and yet was a domineering personality, one in whom, according to Tyrone Guthrie, 'the iron fist was wrapped in fifteen pastel-shaded velvet gloves'. It was published in The Tatler and Bystander in August 1947.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 732

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1947back to top

Current affairs

Princess Elizabeth marries Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey. Philip renounced his title of Prince of Greece and Denmark, to become Duke of Edinburgh when he married the heir to the throne.

Art and science

The first Edinburgh Festival includes performances by Kathleen Ferrier, Alec Guinness and Margot Fonteyn. The Festival is now a major annual international arts event that takes place over three weeks every August, and includes top class performers in theatre, music and dance as well as lesser-known performers who take part in the parallel 'Fringe Festival'.

International

India is granted independence from the British Empire and the former British Raj is partitioned into India and Pakistan. After various revolts and several years of civil disobedience led by Gandhi and his Quit India Movement, Britain agrees to disband the Raj and grant independence to India.
Palestine is partitioned into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone.

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