Hollywood confidential

From Monroe to Brando, Sir Cecil Beaton’s revealing portraits of the greatest film stars

Cecil Beaton came to Hollywood in 1929 with writer and close friend Anita Loos and her husband, director John Emerson. ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the extravagance of Hollywood,’ he wrote in his scrapbook. ‘Or to burlesque its crazy fantasy, for in most things it is beyond the wildest flights of fancy.’

He brought with him an 8x10in portrait camera at the prompting of [American entrepreneur and publisher] Condé Nast, who had insisted that he approach Holly wood portraits with more ‘serious’ equipment. ‘For the first few days in Hollywood I cursed Condé Nast under my breath each time I had to make an exposure with my beastly camera,’ Beaton later said. ‘To have to abandon my old snapshot camera and start with my new apparatus was like having to walk with a wooden leg after an amputation.’

Despite this initial handicap, Beaton’s early years capturing the stars would create a new visual language in portraiture for the film studios.

Over time, Beaton became a Holly wood insider, and during the years when he was working on Gigi and My Fair Lady, his most cherished moments were spent scouring the well-stocked studio warehouses and working with teams that could create overnight anything he desired in the way of sets and costumes. He photographed some of the most iconic Hollywood stars of the golden age of cinema.

Marlon Brando, Japan, 1953 Beaton later said of Brando: ‘He has lost his looks in 10 years, looks like a heavyset businessman, podgy hands, a thick build… But his behaviour is all that could be desired, courteous, cooperative, goodhumoured, but quiet...