John Bignell and the celebrities: fame in the sixties

Some of you may not have heard of John Bignell. I googled his name when I was preparing to write this and you don’t find much – lots of results about his book Chelsea Photographer and the inevitable reference to the picture he took of Claudie Delbarre a few days before she was murdered. (See the King’s Road Blues post if you want see the picture) But there’s very much more to John Bignell. He did street photography, news, fashion, art even a bit of glamour. He documented bohemian life in Chelsea from the 50s to the 80s. And like many London photographers in the 60s he snapped his share of the celebrities of the day.

Celebrity itself was a little different then of course.

A young David Hockney, sitting with the widow of Igor Stravinsky.

A couple of other shots in art galleries:

Claire Bloom and Rod Steiger in 1961 according to Bignell’s notes, then married (his fourth marriage, her third, and final one) The man on the left is David Tomlinson but I don’t think it’s the actor from Mary Poppins. (or is it?)

The man with the prominent nose is L S Lowry sharing an amusing story with an unknown gentleman and the already ubiquitous Richard Attenborough.

Another high class occasion:

Derek Nimmo (ask some old person if you don’t know) officiating at some formal occasion puzzling over an illegible note with Lady Limerick. This could be a literary occasion. There’s an impressive collection of old books in the background.

Bignell must have been on good terms with his subjects. He often took pictures in their own homes.

Chelsea resident, film and TV actor Harry Fowler, with his wife Kay. Mr Fowler who died earlier this year made an appearance in the short lived BBC2 Chelsea-based soap opera World’s End, which I’ve already referred to in a previous post.

This is one of my favourites among Bignell’s celebrity photos:

Charles Gray, another local, looking like a man who knows how to have a good time. He had a long career in acting, playing one version of the James Bond villain Blofeld (in Diamonds are Forever), at least three versions of Mycroft Holmes, on film and TV, and most memorably for me Mocata, the villain in the Hammer adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out.

Another classy interior:

A fairly young Ned Sherrin striking a pose while sitting down, possibly in the flat in Chelsea where he lived for many years.

Bignell found many of his subjects on the streets of Chelsea.

Ryan O’Neal examining a shop keeper’s pendant in a slightly disconcerting manner.

Sammy Davis Jr making his way down the King’s Road, possibly on his way here:

You can see him on the balcony. Has the crowd gathered for him, or is this a normal Chelsea Saturday afternoon back in the 60s?

You’ve seen a lot of male celebrities so far so here are a couple of famous women:

Jayne Mansfield with her daughter Jayne Marie at Victor Silvester’s dance studio on the King’s Road. Jayne Marie is unmistakeable I think. I got carried away with the caption Jayne Mansfield and daughter, thinking the daughter was Mariska Hargitay, star of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit but it turned out to be Ms Mansfield’s first daughter. I can see the family resemblance though.

Just a little way down the King’s Road was the Chelsea Palace. Here Bignell took this excellent picture of another famous blonde actress.

Diana Dors in the dressing room with a man named Michael Keaton who looks very pleased to be on the receiving end of Ms Dors’s attention.

This post has been an introduction to John Bignell. I’ll be coming back to him again over the coming months to try and show you the full range of his work. But for now here’s the man himself behind the bar of the Six Bells.

And here’s a puzzle for you. Who on earth are these guys?

Are they an actual group, or just some likely looking hipsters Bignell gathered together for the picture, which is simply called Love is all you need?

So if anyone has any ideas please let me know. We’ve already eliminated Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch by the way.

Ruins and reconstruction in North Kensington

The building below featured very briefly in the recent BBC programme on Portland Street in the “Secret history of our street” series.

It’s the Notting Hill Brewery which was located at the northern, least affluent, end of Portland Road. It was demolished in the late 1930s to make way for a new housing block, Nottingwood House, an example of progressive social housing for the time. The street is empty. Possibly because this was about to happen:

Destruction is a familiar theme in the history of North Kensington. There have been speculative house building programmes in the area from the 1850s onwards. Some have succeeded and some have failed. As in the programme the streets nearest Holland Park Avenue and Notting Hill High Street and Notting Hill Gate were the most likely to succeed and survive. Proximity to the new railways has also played a part, as light industry and animal husbandry gave way to housing.

There was another major factor of course.

Rackham Street and St Charles Square, as stark and grim as any purpose built gothic folly, just after the war. These bombed out ruins represent terror and loss of life for the people who lived there but bomb sites were also playgrounds for children growing up during and after the war. We’re all fascinated by destruction one some level.

The emptied streets are still and silent in an early morning at the end of the tumultuous war years.

Life went on among the ruins and for the children below, hanging around and playing near St Michael’s Mission Hall in Rackham Street, the bomb sites were a normal backdrop to their lives.

Destruction is also an opportunity for change and reconstruction.

Another view of the gasometer we saw above, a landmark which survived the war, with St Charles’ Hospital in the background.  In this 1951 picture allotments and pre-fabs have filled the bombed out area prior to re-building. Below the same view in early 1952.

Later in the 60s and 70s there was another wave of destruction and redevelopment as slum housing was demolished and local industry declined.

New building began again. Some projects, like the Westway brought their own form of destruction along with the spaces that would grow up beneath the motorway.

Other developments brought controversy. Here you can see the lower floors of Trellick Tower under construction.

We’ll come back to both those projects in future posts.

North Kensington has been knocked down and built again time again in its history, which is comparatively short by London standards hardly 200 years from fields to city.

We started here at the Notting Hill Brewery.

A group of residents proudly pose for a photograph showing they were not ashamed of where they lived.

By contrast, a different way of expressing defiance and a sceptical attitude to redevelopment is shown in this picture, while the Lancaster West Estate is being built in the background.

Thanks to Sue Snyder who started me off with the idea of the pictures of the Brewery but isn’t to blame for where I went afterwards.

 

Kate at the Pageant 2: Tudor dreams

We’re back at the Chelsea Pageant this week moving out of the medieval era into more familiar historical times. The Pageant devoted four of its ten episodes to Tudor subjects. This is not surprising. Chelsea begins with the big riverside houses of the Tudor aristocracy. It was in Chelsea that Henry VIII had a manor house and a hunting lodge conveniently accessible by boat. And of course his sometime friend Thomas More lived in Chelsea. The Tudor monarchs haunt Chelsea in fact and legend and they continued to loom large in the Edwardian imagination.

Mr Herbert Jarman, an amateur Henry VIII, looking a little like Charles Laughton in the later film. Mr Cavendish Morton portrays Thomas More but we have a less definite idea of how More should look. In the background two of his daughters look on anxiously. Here’s one of them, Margaret Roper with her mother, sharing another moment with a distinctly non-Tudor fence in the background.

Episode 4 has two parts: a friendly visit to More’s house by Henry for the purpose of offering the post of Chancellor to him, and later, More’s last day in the same house as he obeys the summons to his trial and execution. Episode 5 covers an attempt to seduce the young Princess Elizabeth, episode 6 the funeral procession of Anne of Cleves which began at the Manor House.

Catherine Howard intercedes with the young King Edward on behalf of Thomas Seymour. The woman with her hair down on the left is the young Princess Elizabeth.

The ladies and gentlemen of Chelsea seemed happy to take on the roles of their Tudor forbears.  Kate Pragnell was also patrolling the entrance of the Royal Hospital like an early paparazzo.

An older version of Elizabeth arrives with an anachronistic escort.

Interested parties and spectators with no tickets await the arrival of another important personage.

Episode 7 was about Elizabeth’s return to Chelsea to relive childhood memories and watch a children’s masque of Spenser’s Faerie Queen, a sprawling allegorical poem in which Elizabeth features under several different guises.

Here are two other versions of Elizabeth an adult and the child Gloriana along with the poet Spenser stepping inside his creation. Elizabeth also appears as Lucifera, Queen of Pride:

The Faerie Queen is full of unsuitable wonders.

Including a version of George and the Dragon.

This must be a rehearsal, assuming the man in the straw boater in the group on the left doesn’t represent a time traveler.

Are those horses or mice (or something worse) pulling the coach? Is that Mr Punch driving it?

He’s not in the cast list but is this Dr John Dee facing the queen?

There is still something magical about these scenes. Amateur actors act out fact and fantasy living out dreams of another English dreamtime.  Here’s another group with an infiltrator from modern life. She is us, spying on the past.

Two more primal scenes from the Masque:

Our friend, the giant Orgoglio.

And best of all, a woman St George, the maiden Una and a friendly lion. That’s what I call entertainment.

Other posts about the Chelsea Historical Pageant:

Kate at the Pageant 1908

Kate at the Pageant 3: an adventure at Ranelagh

Beach style 1906 : Linley Sambourne at the seaside

There was a heat wave in 1906 throughout the whole of the British Isles, quite late in the year at the end of August and the early days of September. Edward Linley Sambourne went to the coast as thousands of others did, and with him as usual went his camera.

In temperatures of 90 degrees the wind blowing off the sea must have been refreshing even though it also presented a challenge to these three women who are literally hanging on to their hats. Here are some others with the same difficulty:

Despite the heat holiday makers were wearing their normal clothes with few concessions to the weather.

Even on the beach, where Sambourne is still catching women unawares:

Has he woken this woman from her nap while her friend sleeps on? And caught the two below in another unguarded moment

I think he must be working with the hidden camera again, especially in this picture.

I’m quite certain that she wouldn’t have been pleased to be pictured emerging from the water like this in her modern bathing costume.

These pictures were taken at Brighton and Folkestone during the heat wave. Earlier in the year in July Sambourne had been in Weymouth where he captures the busy atmosphere of the crowded beach.

He may have crossed the Channel to Weymouth from Ostende where he had been a few days earlier. Here’s a picture taken on the boat.

Another woman having difficulty with a sea breeze. The same day Sambourne had been on the beach at Ostende.

A young woman goes barefoot to walk up the paved slope from the beach.

Another group of women go bathing making use of that curious Victorian invention the bathing machine:

And at the end of the afternoon when the crowds have thinned out, a more stylish young woman goes for a stroll. That was always my favourite time of day on the beach.

Earlier in the year Sambourne made another channel crossing, but this time his main photographic subject was this woman and her husband.

In the original version of this post I thought that they must be Sambourne’s daughter Maud and her husband Lennie. But after looking at some other photos of Maud and consulting Sambourne’s diary a Sambourne expert has shown that he was travelling alone on this trip. So Sambourne must have struck up an acquaintance with the couple. He was certainly persistent in his desire to catch the woman on camera, following her around the ship as she was buffeted by the wind.

Finally she takes shelter, but Sambourne is still snapping away.

She is probably wishing her new friend would just stop taking pictures for a while. But photography is an obsession, luckily for us.

As I’ve had to revise this post now we know who the couple on the boat are not I have an opportunity to thank the staff at Leighton House and Linley Sambourne House for putting up with me writing about their man. Both places are worth a visit if you’re in Kensington and if you want to read more about Sambourne Shirley Nicholson’s book A Victorian Household based on the diaries of Sambourne’s wife Marion is still available from Amazon and other online retailers.