architecture. Pressured by family, the young man
planned to become an architect. He briefly attended
the local technical college but was an indifferent
student, distracted by movies and other extracurri-
cular pursuits. He turned to banking, but a lacklus-
ter performance in a series of jobs convinced him
(and others) that his talents lay elsewhere. Having
once been fascinated by the theatrical masks he had
seen in performances in Newport, he began making
masks, beginning with one of his own face. His
father died in 1924, after which McBean, his
mother, and sister moved to London. Beginning in
1925, he worked for seven years as a trainee at
Liberty’s, restoring and selling antiques.
He had built a darkroom and studio in his
mother’s house at Acton and was determined to
earn a living in the world of theater. He devoted
his time to photography and mask-making, initially
without income. At an exhibition of his masks and
photographs he had organized for a West End tea-
shop, McBean met the renowned society portrait
photographer, Hugh Cecil. Although McBean was
eager to learn craftsmanship and technique from
Cecil, he privately disdained the formulaic soft-
focus portraits for which the older photographer
was acclaimed. After a year in his employ, McBean
left Cecil to open his own studio in Belgrave Road,
Victoria, where he could practice his distinctive
style of portraiture.
From 1935 to 1955, McBean became one of
Britain’s most well-known photographers, building
upon his talent for theatrical mask making and set
design. In 1932, he received his first stage commis-
sion, to make masks for Ivor Novello’s play,The
Happy Hypocrite. Novello was pleased with the
masks and, after finding that McBean was also a
photographer, invited him to photograph the
show. McBean soon became known as the ‘‘court
photographer’’ of the theatrical world. His pictures
were published in magazines such asThe Sketch,
Theatre World, andPlaygoeras well as used by the
theater companies as publicity stills.
Intrigued by the strange juxtapositions and
dream imagery of Surrealism which he saw in an
exhibition of paintings by William Acton in 1937, as
well as fashion pictures by photographers such as
Horst P. Horst, McBean developed a style of
humorously fantastic portraiture. His interest in
Surrealism was not profound; he was mainly
attracted to the world of fantasy associated with
the movement. His photographic output stands as
one of the best, if not the most obvious, examples of
stagecraft and the directorial mode in photography,
involving elaborate preparation and manipulation
of the subject and setting, as well as photographic
manipulation or trickery after the exposure. He
photographed noted British stage and film actors
Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Paul
Scofield, and others.
While his surrealistic portraits enjoyed consider-
able popularity, they were also sometimes contro-
versial. In 1940, his picture of Diana Churchill’s
apparently disembodied head aroused so much dis-
may that, in a bizarre twist of fate, he was impri-
soned for two and a half years, although he
returned to his work after his release, and his thea-
trical photography again flourished. McBean’s
activities in this field diminished in the 1950s, due
to changing customs and economic circumstances
in the theater (including the elimination of the
traditional two-hour ‘‘photo call’’ at rehearsals
upon which he had relied) and a lack of picture
magazines as outlets for his work.
In the 1960s, however, McBean began to be in
demand to produce record album covers. Although
his style was not a natural fit with the new popular
culture of the 1960s, in 1963 he made a famous,
atypical photograph of the Beatles looking down a
stairwell, a straightforward portrait deriving from a
Bauhaus aesthetic. The appreciative Beatles asked
him to repeat the pose for their updated look in 1970.
After the 1960s, McBean stopped taking photo-
graphs and devoted himself to the production of
collages from fiberglass and metal, designing wall-
paper, and renovating his medieval house in Suf-
folk, Flemings Hall. McBean’s collection of
negatives and other archival material was pur-
chased in the early 1970s by the Theatre Library at
Harvard University, but he destroyed the remain-
der of his glass plates. In his last photographic
phase, he came out of retirement to do color fashion
photography forL’Officielin 1983, then worked for
the FrenchVogue. He died in 1990.
Although much of McBean’s imagery may seem
overwrought and even silly to later critics, his work
in the genre had considerable impact on fashion
and advertising photography of the late twentieth
century. His theatrical photographs—whether in
his naturalistic but glamorous, dramatic style or
in his whimsical, fanciful mode—constitute a valu-
able document of the heyday of mid-century Brit-
ish theater.
DavidHaberstich
Seealso:Fashion Photography; Horst, Horst P.
Manipulation; Portraiture; SurrealismMCBEAN, ANGUS