Unexpurgated Beaton The Cecil Beaton Diaries As He Wrote Them, 1970-1980

Chapter 1 1970 Cecil Beaton entered the new decade at Reddish House, the country home at Broadchalke, not far from Salisbury, to which he had retreated regularly since he bought it in 1948. Here he was able to lay aside the studied image he wore in London and the United States, and relish all aspects of country life. His friend Michael Pitt-Rivers once asked him, "Cecil, why is it that you are so loathsome in London and yet so delightful in the country?" Cecil mused a moment and confessed, "It's true!" A sterner note was added by another Wiltshire neighbour, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, who stated simply, "We wouldn't let him get away with it." Cecil was fortunate to live in a beautiful and historical part of the country, not far from Stonehenge and Old Sarum, near the great stately home of Wilton, seat of the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, and with sympathetic neighbours in and around the area of the Chalke Valley, the Earl and Countess of Avon at Alvediston, Michael and Anne Tree in Donhead, Lord and Lady David Cecil, Viscount and Viscountess Head, Richard Buckle at Semley, Billy Henderson and Frank Tait in Tisbury This country life afforded him welcome respite from the more synthetic worlds in which he made his living, the magazine world of London, Paris and New York, and none more remunerative, yet more irksome to him, than the world of show business on Broadway and in Hollywood. When in London, he lived at 8 Pelham Place, a late-Georgian house in South Kensington, which he had bought in 1940. He was there during the week, though at every opportunity he escaped to the country. Cecil had indeed lately returned to Britain from a disagreeable stint in New York, designing Coco, a musical based on the life of the celebrated monstre sacre icon of twentieth-century fashion, "Coco" Chanel. She was a peasant-born seamstress, who became a legendary figure in the world of haute couture, creating nimble and stylish suits and freeing women of the encumbrances of formal clothing. Her empire has thrived since her death. The musical starred the legendary American film star Katharine Hepburn as Chanel. She was one of the few great stars of stage and early screen to survive into the twenty-first century. Her "apple-a-day" smile and her long, discreet affair with Spencer Tracy assured her a place in many hearts, if not Cecil's. She had mistrusted Cecil since he had written of her "rocking-horse nostrils" and her "tousled beetroot-coloured hair" in Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook in 1937, not to mention his concluding that she was "in close proximity very like any exceedingly animated and delightful hockey mistress at a Physical Training College." Hepburn insured that, in his Coco contract, he was forbidden to publish a single word about her. The musical was written by Alan Jay Lerner, the brilliant, nervous, highly strung playwright, with music by Andre Previn. Lerner was normally partnered by Fritz Loewe, who wrote the music. Lerner and Loewe were the team which had created Gigi and My Fair Lady. Lerner once vexed himself over the line: "Those little eyes so helpless and appealing, one day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling." Loewe reassured him: "It's your lyric and if you want to crash through the ceiling, crash through the ceiling!" Lerner wrote the words for Coco, but unfortunately he and Cecil fell out badly during this show, because Cecil always needed a hate figure and this time it was Alan. Cecil blamed him for causing Rosalind Russell (the American leading lady in films who favoured roles as a career woman and starred in Gypsy) to be dropped in favour of Katharine Hepburn. This was the more strange, since the show was produced by Frederick Brisson, businessman producer, who had been trying to get the musical into production since 1954. He was a manBeaton, Cecil Walter Hardy is the author of 'Unexpurgated Beaton The Cecil Beaton Diaries As He Wrote Them, 1970-1980', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400041121 and ISBN 1400041120.