An Afternoon With Audrey Hepburn

Lucy Bell Gallery, Norman Road, St Leonards, until Friday, August 14

MOST Sillwood Road residents would have known Mark Douglas as an antiques dealer, jetting between LA and Brighton where he had kept a home since 1964.

But in the 1990s, after a chance conversation in the street about his camera, Brighton photographer Roger Bamber discovered his neighbour had another life, as Picture Post photographer George Douglas.

“We knew there was a room in his house full of boxes of negatives which he was going to sort out,” says Bamber’s wife Shan Lancaster, who soon became close friends with Douglas’s wife Jill sharing an interest in local history.

“He didn’t talk about himself very much – he had a collection of photo books which he would open up with Roger and talk about F stops or lighting effects.”

It was only when Douglas died suddenly in December 2010, followed by Jill ten months later, that their neighbours realised quite how much Douglas had left behind.

“They didn’t have any relatives,” says Lancaster. “We adopted Jill as granny, and would go around every Sunday to make sure she was all right. We knew she was trying to organise his things.”

When Jill died unexpectedly in October 2011 Lancaster wasn’t expecting Jill’s lawyers to come back and tell her the house and contents had been left to them.

“There were 60 boxes of negatives from the basement to the attic – some labelled, some weren’t,” says Lancaster, who is still only between a third and a quarter of a way through the archive.

The first glimpse the public got of the treasure trove of pictures was in an Artist Open House exhibition last year - organised by North Laine Photography’s Nigel Swallow who had taken on the house. It marked the 50th anniversary of Douglas buying the property.

The exhibition featured previously unseen shots of huge 1950s and 1960s film and television stars, ranging from Tony Hancock and The Goons to Shelley Winters and Audrey Hepburn.

And it was Hepburn that sparked the most interest – particularly from the National Portrait Gallery who were already planning this summer’s Portraits Of An Icon exhibition.

“They called and said they had been looking for George Douglas for ages,” says Lancaster.

“They knew he had done shots of Audrey Hepburn and that there were pictures of her in Picture Post, but they hadn’t been able to trace him.”

Assistant curator of photographs Helen Trompeteler and senior special advisor on photographs Terence Pepper came down to meet Swallow and Lancaster.

They helped identify some of the images they had already uncovered – including rare shots of Dame Laura Knight and poet George Barker - and gave advice on storage and conservation, which was seconded by Antony Penrose who looks after the Lee Miller Archive at Farley Farm.

What makes the shots of Hepburn so special is the period they were taken – when the future icon was still breaking through in 1952 with her first Broadway starring role as the titular Gigi.

Douglas had been sent on assignment to get some shots of the actress, who had been handpicked by the writer of the novella Collette to play Gigi.

It was a Picture Post cover shot of Hepburn which earned the actress her big break. In turn it gave Douglas access to her dressing room ahead of a performance.

“There are 14 shots of her in her dressing room,” says Lancaster. “He had just five minutes so he was clicking away. We have the original contact strip.”

Each shot may be taken from the same position, but none are the same, with the actress’s expression transformed in each one – expressing delight and concern as she prepares to go on stage.

In his as-yet-unpublished memoir Shooting Stars, Douglas said the pair talked about their experiences in New York.

Douglas admitted to Hepburn he found the city “somewhat frightening” adding the people were so cold and aggressive.

Hepburn agreed: “So would you be if you were surrounded by concrete. When do you think they even see green hills or trees?”

Writing his memoirs Douglas recalled: “I had fallen in love with Audrey Hepburn, she was so nice and friendly, and I walked home after the show feeling I had a friend at last in this lonely place.”

Hepburn had agreed to another shoot in Central Park two days later.

Among the shots in the exhibition at Lucy Bell Gallery are pictures of Hepburn by the lake, meeting the carriage drivers who took tours around Central Park, walking around the city streets with her then fiancé James Hanson, and looking out over Manhattan on top of the Rockefeller Centre.

It may have been almost ten years before her iconic role as Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, but that elegance, beauty and confidence in the young future star is there to see in all the shots.

“When we did the Open House we had visitors who had travelled hundreds of miles to see the shots of Hepburn,” says Lancaster.

“She’s got this charisma. Not only was she beautiful, she was also a very empathetic person. When they first met she asked George how he was feeling – he felt he had a friend.”

The three summer exhibitions of Douglas’s Hepburn photos at the National Portrait Gallery, in Arles and Lucy Bell Gallery – run by the wife of expert printer Robin Bell – could be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the images Douglas took in his career.

The National Portrait Gallery is still in regular contact as the long job continues of archiving the massive collection, which is now looked after by Edenbridge-based archive Topfoto.

“When Nigel was living in the house surrounded by filing boxes he was saying: ‘You have no idea what we have got here,’” says Lancaster.

“Douglas did 99 features in three years for Picture Post – not all of them are glamorous features.”

In Topfoto’s online collection are shots of a children’s hotel in Sussex Square, the rolling out of the red carpet for the express train the 20th Century Limited in New York’s Grand Central Station, and shots of a speech clinic in Stockton-On-Tees.

Among the stars captured by Douglas’s lens are a very young Roger Moore from 1958, Irene Handl baking in her kitchen and Jimmy Edwards at a polo match.

The affection his subjects had for Douglas can be seen in his collection of books signed and dedicated to the photographer - who had known fellow photographic legends like Bill Brandt, Elliot Erwitt, Bert Hardy and Thurston Hopkins.

“He took a shine to Shelley Winters,” says Lancaster. “She once knocked on the door of his ski chalet dressed in nothing but red flannel underthings and asked him to take a picture of her under the Christmas tree.

“He took pictures of The Goons for the TV Mirror, and did private jobs for Peter Sellers dressed as different characters.”

Lancaster is hoping to do another future exhibition focusing on Douglas’s work in the fashion industry for magazines including Harpers and Vogue.

Born in Rottingdean in 1922, Douglas moved to Dallas, Texas, with his mother in 1939 and trained in aeronautical design engineering for the Garrett AiResearch Corporation.

But it was his Leica camera, bought from a pawn shop, which gradually stole his heart – and when he sold his first picture for $30 he handed in his notice.

He sold work to the LA Times in the 1940s, and was in charge of photography for the Sun Valley News Bureau in Idaho in 1948, before moving back to LA to begin a career as a celebrity snapper.

He moved back to England in 1950 to work for Picture Post, staying with them until it closed in 1957. After that he worked on women’s magazines and TV Mirror, even shooting The Beatles for two weeks during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night.

Douglas’s career in photography ended in 1970, when he returned to California to look after his sick mother.

“When she became ill he couldn’t rush around and do assignments,” says Lancaster. “He put everything on hold and lived off his savings to spend time with his mother.”

His new career arose from his mother’s life-long love of antiques.

“She used to drag him around to old furniture sales in the 1930s,” says Lancaster. “It gave him a thorough grounding in what to do.”

His antiques shop in Santa Monica, which was emblazoned with a union jack, sold items to the likes of Frank Sinatra and Larry Hagman.

He never went back to photography – once telling Bamber in conversation that “photography is a young man’s game”.

“He was always loading up his little blue car taking items to his lock-up in Portslade to take to Santa Monica,” recalls Lancaster.

“I think stopping so quickly made him reassess his life.”

*George Douglas’s photography also features in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Audrey Hepburn: Portraits Of An Icon which runs until Sunday, October 18, and at Voies Off, the fringe festival to Arles 2015 Les Rencontres De La Photographie, which runs from Monday, July 6, to Saturday, July 11.

*An Afternoon With Audrey Hepburn also features pictures by Angela Williams taken of Hepburn in 1964 at the Ritz in Paris.

Open Tues to Sat, 11am to 4pm, free. Call 01424 434828.