Binkie Beaumont & West End Theatre

Binkie Beaumont was just one of the great characters, and there is always the thing about… you say, ‘I’m going to see Binkie Beaumont’ or go up into the office because you saw him as well for some part or something at the West End and you had to get into this lift. You had to get into this tiny lift, and quite often… well, I’m not sure we should say all this really, it might sound homophobic or something but it isn’t. […] Sometimes you got squeezed into this tiny lift with someone you didn’t particularly want to… Do you remember the film The Producers? […] There is a wonderful scene in that when the terribly gay producer and his minion has to go down and pick them up and they have to go up in this tiny lift and it all gets… I was quite a young actor then, and you had to be quite careful because you often ended up with hands on your knees and all that sort of stuff. You were a prey to some nice charming chaps in the business and when I first went I was quite innocent - ‘Oh aren’t they so nice and friendly’ but you start to realise quite soon, ‘This is not quite right.’ You just ignored all that, but it was quite tricky. So Binkie Beaumont was just famous [for this sort of thing], and, of course Terence Rattigan the great writer, there was a sort of coat room… but they were fabulous people, I mean, they loved theatre, that was thing: they loved theatre and they ran it really well and were beautiful people because they cared about the theatre.

(An edited extract from an interview with Anthony Verner on 19 April 2007, conducted by Eleanor Carter)

- How far does Binkie Beaumont's sexuality impact on our understanding of the theatre in the 1950s?

Comments

[stephen wischhusen]

I think Beaumont's sexuality is irrelevant. He did a trendous job in bringing quality to the stage. Not always in the pkays, I grant you, but in settings and the way the productions were dressed. "H.M.Tennant Presents" on the top of a poster was generally the sign of a well made production. The Company ran the Globe and Queens Theatres as well as a non-profit ditributing exercise for a while at the Lyric Hammersmith, aided by the Arts Council, to give newer works a try. I think there was a rumo9ur about the funds generated not being always used for the right purpose. But if by being gay, Beaumont had the right eye what would look good on the stage and what would draw an audience, well then I believe that was to the betterment of the Theatre in general. In time of course his ideas no longer worked and were overtaken by more modern developments but please don't knock his concept of the well-made play. He kept a lot of people in work and a lot of theatres open. After his death, Helen Montague led Tennants for a while, still mainting standards. Later in went in to decline as the people at the helm lacked his skill. I think his sexuality was one of the things which gave him an edge, but it was part of the man, not the whole man.

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