Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties

by Rachel Cooke

  In any case, last time I looked, dreams were free. Vogue, then as now, wasn’t a catalogue; it was a repository of fantasies and yearning, a hook on which to hang one’s aspiration. High fashion filtered down, just as it does today, women adopting its latest diktats when and where and how they could: a peplum here, a new bag there. A lot was going on. There was Christian Dior, whose New Look made its debut on 12 February 1947 (nipped-in waists, padded hips, sloping shoulders, skirts crammed full-to-bursting with petticoats); there was Jacques Fath (his flying saucer buttons were everywhere); and there was Cristóbal Balenciaga (women loved his balloon jackets, which enveloped the upper body in a way that lengthened one’s legs and emphasised one’s face). In 1954 Coco Chanel, who regarded Dior’s designs as an affront to liberated women, created her first Chanel suit (collarless tweed jacket with patch pockets, and a chain sewn into the hem of the skirt the better to perfect its line). As the decade wore on tunics and chemise-style dresses became more fashionable, popularised first by Balenciaga – he was always fiddling with waistlines – and then by Hubert de Givenchy, who launched his ‘sack’ silhouette in 1957. Corsets were on their way out. In London Hardy Amies, who had dressed Princess Elizabeth for her tour to Canada in 1950, had installed himself in Savile Row, where he was attending to the more practical needs of a certain kind of British female. ‘A woman’s day clothes must look equally good at Salisbury station as the Ritz bar,’ he said. Tailoring was the thing. Hemlines were getting higher and so were heels. In 1958 Roger Vivier designed a heel reinforced with steel, and thus the stiletto was revived. Trousers, which so many women had worn during the war, were also becoming more popular. Their champions were Katharine Hepburn, who was reputed not to have a single skirt or dress of her own, and Lauren Bacall.

  Technical innovations made life easier all round. Before the war nylons had all been ‘fully fashioned’, which is to say designed and manufactured individually for legs of all shapes and sizes; stockings did not stretch. In the years following the war, however, it was discovered that stretch could be added by crimping nylon under heat, an innovation that also led to the disappearance of the rear seam. By 1959 DuPont was ready to launch Lycra. Easy-care fabrics made life for housewives a good deal easier. Acrylic, a drip-dry substitute for wool, arrived in 1950. Polyester came on to the market in 1953. It meant, among other things, that pleats no longer had to be ironed in.

  Actresses and models, as ever, were hugely influential. Women loved Audrey Hepburn’s appropriation of Parisian-cum-Beatnik style in Stanley’s Donen’s 1957 musical Funny Face (skinny black pants, turtleneck, cute headscarf); it trumped even the little black dress she had worn in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina three years before. Grace Kelly’s peau de soie and lace wedding dress, created for her by Helen Rose, an MGM Studios costume designer, was widely admired and much copied. In Britain the most well-known models were Barbara Goalen (so famous that when she married a Lloyds underwriter at Caxton Hall in 1954 she was mobbed by crowds of fans) and Fiona Campbell-Walter, a favourite of Cecil Beaton who could earn up to two thousand pounds a day.

  Younger women, however, had different ideas about what they wanted to wear: this was, after all, the dawn of the teenager. Some took their cue from music (Teddy girls wore hobble skirts, flat shoes, cameo brooches and jackets with velvet collars, and styled their hair in ponytails), and others from the movies (Marlon Brando, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor all did their bit to make jeans popular). Rebellion was in the air. Another role model was Françoise Sagan, whose best-selling novel about a pleasure-seeking seventeen-year-old called Cécile, Bonjour Tristesse, came out in 1954, when she was still a teenager (it was made into a film in 1958). Sagan – ‘a charming little monster’, as the novelist François Mauriac put it – had pixie hair and was photographed for the press in gingham shirts, Breton stripes and a polka-dot bathing suit.

  Françoise Sagan: ‘A charming little monster’

  (Roger Viollet/Getty Images.)

  Which brings me, finally, to the bikini. It was Louis Reard, a French automobile engineer, who invented the bikini in 1946 (he was running his mother’s shoe shop at the time). He had the idea when he saw women rolling up (or down) their swimming costumes the better to get a tan. He called his invention the bikini after Bikini Atoll, where the first nuclear bomb had just been tested. But it wasn’t until the Fifties that his design really took off: Brigitte Bardot posed in one during the Cannes Films Festival of 1953 and the world went mad for the idea. ‘A swoonsuit that exposed everything about a girl except her mother’s maiden name,’ as Diana Vreeland, the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar, put it. Vreeland thought the bikini was well named. It was, she said, ‘the most important thing since the atom bomb’.

  For a colourful account of some aspects of the British fashion industry and of daily life on a glossy magazine in the late Forties and early Fifties, I recommend In the Mink (1952) by Anne Scott-James, who was the editor of the British edition of Harper’s Bazaar. The book caused a mild stir on its publication, the critic Harold Hobson describing its references to sexual behaviour in the fashion world as ‘shocking and disgraceful’. It seems tame now but, on the other hand, some things never change. Her account of the Paris collections – ‘just when you felt you must faint, the show would start’ – will seem uncannily familiar to anyone who has ever read a twenty-first-century newspaper report on the same subject. It’s all here: the clichés, the tantrums, even the difficulty of writing a properly interesting beauty feature when ‘this year’s Pink Blush is really just last year’s Old-fashioned Rose rechristened’.

  Some Good and Richly Subversive Novels by Women 1950–60

  Iris Murdoch: ‘Running over with purpose and intelligence’

  (Mary Evans Picture Library/IDA KAR.)

  1950 Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym

  Pym’s first novel, a comic tale of spinsters and the clergymen on whom they dote, is not quite as cosy as it might first appear. Its women would rather be unmarried than submit to the limitations imposed by pompous husbands.

  1951 School for Love, Olivia Manning

  Fantastic, little-known book set in Jerusalem in 1945, in which Felix, an orphan, comes to live with the miserly Miss Bohun. A radical novel for its unsentimental refusal to deal in female characters who are comfortable, let alone likeable.

  1952 The Sugar House, Antonia White

  The third novel in the sequence that began with Frost in May. Not White’s best, but a brave portrait of a doomed marriage and a woman who is slowly disintegrating. Shot through with fear, and claustrophobic as a padded cell.

  1953 The Echoing Grove, Rosamond Lehmann

  Structurally ambitious, and exceedingly dark, this is a novel about sibling rivalry and sexual jealousy – a pair of sisters, Dinah and Madeleine, having been widowed by the same philandering bastard.

  1954 The Tortoise and the Hare, Elizabeth Jenkins

  Imogen, the once-beautiful wife of Evelyn Gresham, barrister, is powerless to defend her marriage against her neighbour, the stout and tweedy Blanche. A fine study of female self-esteem: where it comes from, and how it disappears.

  1955 A World of Love, Elizabeth Bowen

  A deliberately short novel set in a heatwave about a young woman who discovers a cache of love letters in the attic, and of their startling effect both on her and her extended family. Passion distilled.

  1956 The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay

  A group of eccentrics travel in Armenia ‘hawking the C of E to infidel dogs who thought we were mad and were probably right’. Fantastical, funny, plangent – and featuring a number of highly pleasing gags about the emancipation of women.

  1957 Angel, Elizabeth Taylor

  Angelica Deverell is a snobbish and deluded popular novelist who believes fervently in her own epic spoutings – a monstrous creation, then, but also, perhaps, an example of the willpower and wilful blindness involved in being a writer, even a very bad one.

  1958 The Bell, Iris M
urdoch

  A singular novel that combines a (for Murdoch) convincing plot with her fondness for symbolism (the bell at its heart clangs for love, and for self-knowledge). Set in a religious community led by a man whose sexuality has prevented his becoming a priest, this is part caper and part thoughtful treatise on personal morality.

  1959 The Vet’s Daughter, Barbara Comyns

  Why isn’t Comyns better known? Perhaps because her books follow no pattern, each one so different from the last. Bizarre and horrifying, this is the story of Alice, oppressed daughter of the title, whose ability to levitate first imprisons, then liberates her.

  1960 The L-Shaped Room, Lynne Reid Banks

  A young woman, pregnant and unmarried, struggles to survive in a run-down boarding house. The Fifties do not emerge from this novel well, but the courage of its heroine is just as vividly wrought as its infested mattresses and yellowing wallpaper.

  It’s worth noting, too, that the decade is bookended by the publication of Stevie Smith’s two finest collections of poetry, Harold’s Leap (1950) and Not Waving but Drowning (1957).

  Select Bibliography

  Adam, Ruth, A Woman’s Place: 1910–1975 (1975; Persephone Books, 2000)

  Atkinson, Harriet, The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (I. B. Tauris, 2012)

  Bailey, Paul, Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Fred Barnes, Naomi Jacob and Arthur Marshall (Hamish Hamilton, 2001)

  Bell, Melanie, Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2009)

  Box, Betty, Lifting the Lid: The Autobiography of Film Producer Betty Box, OBE (Lewes Book Guild, 2000)

  Box, Muriel, Odd Woman Out (Leslie Frewin, 1974)

  Brome, Vincent, J. B. Priestley (Hamish Hamilton, 1988)

  Bullock, Nicholas, Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (Routledge, 2002)

  Chivers, Susan and Suzanne Woloszynska, The Cottage Garden: Margery Fish at East Lambrook Manor (John Murray, 1990)

  Collins, Diana, Time and the Priestleys: The Story of a Friendship (Alan Sutton, 1994)

  Collis, Rose, A Trouser-wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain (Cassell, 1997)

  Cook, Judith, Priestley (Bloomsbury, 1997)

  Cooper, Artemis, Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David (Michael Joseph, 1999)

  Cooper, William, Scenes from Provincial Life (1950; Penguin, 2010)

  David, Elizabeth, A Book of Mediterranean Food (Lehman, 1950)

  , Summer Cooking (Museum Press, 1955)

  , French Provincial Cooking (Michael Joseph, 1960)

  Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey: A Play (Methuen, 1959)

  Dundy, Elaine, The Dud Avocado (1958; Virago, 2011)

  , Life Itself! (Virago, 2001)

  Festing, Sally, Barbara Hepworth: A Life of Forms (Viking, 1995)

  Fish, Margery, We Made a Garden (1956; Faber, 1983)

  Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (1963; Penguin, 2010)

  Garfield, Simon, Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain (Ebury, 2005)

  Gibbons, Stella, Westwood (1946; Vintage, 2011)

  Gibson, Trish, Brenda Colvin: A Career in Landscape (Frances Lincoln, 2011)

  Gray, Patience, Plats du Jour (1957; Persephone Books, 2006)

  , Honey From a Weed (1986; Prospect Books, 2001)

  , Ring Doves and Snakes (Macmillan, 1989)

  , Work Adventures Childhood Dreams (Edizioni Leucasia, 1999)

  Harper, Sue, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (Continuum, 2000)

  Harrison, Martin, Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties (Merrell, 2002)

  Harwood, Elain, England: A Guide to Post-War Listed Buildings (2000; Batsford, 2003)

  Hawkes, Jacquetta, A Land (1951; Collins, 2012)

  , A Quest of Love (Chatto & Windus, 1980)

  Heilbron, Hilary, Rose Heilbron: The Story of England’s First Woman Queen’s Counsel and Judge (Hart Publishing, 2012)

  Heilpern, John, John Osborne: A Patriot for Us (Chatto & Windus, 2006)

  Henry, Joan, Who Lie in Gaol (Gollancz, 1952)

  , Yield to the Night (Gollancz, 1954)

  Hodgson, Vere, Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson, 1940–45 (1976; Persephone Books, 1999)

  Horwood, Catherine, Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010)

  Kellaway, Deborah (ed.), The Virago Book of Women Gardeners (Virago, 1996)

  Kynaston, David, Family Britain 1951–57 (Bloomsbury, 2009)

  Laski, Marghanita, To Bed with Grand Music (1946; Persephone Books, 2009)

  Maddox, Brenda, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins, 2002)

  Malcolmson, Patricia and Robert (ed.), Nella Last in the 1950s: Further Diaries of Housewife, 49 (Profile, 2010)

  Meades, Jonathan, ‘Ian Nairn’, in Museum Without Walls (Unbound, 2012)

  Minns, Raynes, Bombers and Mash: The Domestic Front, 1939–45 (Virago, 1980)

  Mortimer, Penelope, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1958; Persephone Books, 2008)

  , The Pumpkin Eater (1962; NYRB, 2011)

  , About Time Too: 1940–1978 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993)

  Myrdal, Alva and Viola Klein, Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (Routledge, 1956)

  Nicholson, Virginia, Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace 1939–1949 (Viking, 2011)

  Panter-Downes, Mollie, One Fine Day (1947; Virago, 2011)

  Powers, Alan (ed.), Robin Hood Gardens: Re-Visions (Casemate UK, 2010)

  Reed, Paula, Fifty Fashion Looks that Changed the 1950s (Conran Octopus, 2012)

  Rickards, Jocelyn, The Painted Banquet: My Life and Loves (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987)

  Rowntree, Diana, Interior Design (Penguin, 1964)

  Sandbrook, Dominic, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (Little, Brown, 2005)

  Scott-James, Anne, In the Mink (Michael Joseph, 1952)

  Smithson, Alison, A Portrait of the Female Mind as a Young Girl: A Novel (Chatto & Windus, 1966)

  Smithson, Alison and Peter, The Charged Void: Architecture (Monacelli Press, 2002)

  , The Charged Void: Urbanism (Monacelli Press, 2004)

  Spain, Nancy, Poison for Teacher (Hutchinson, 1949)

  , Why I’m Not a Millionaire: An Autobiography (Hutchinson, 1956)

  , The Nancy Spain Colour Cookery Book (World Distributors, 1963)

  Spanier, Ginette, It Isn’t All Mink (Collins, 1959)

  , And Now It’s Sables (Hale, 1970)

  Spicer, Andrew, Sydney Box (Manchester University Press, 2011)

  Summerskill, Edith, Letters to my Daughter (Heinemann, 1957)

  Thomas, Dylan, ‘The Festival Exhibition’, repinted in Ralph Maud (ed.), On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts (New Directions, 1992)

  Tomalin, Claire, Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades (Viking, 1999)

  Uglow, Jenny, A Little History of British Gardening (Chatto & Windus, 2004)

  van Damm, Sheila, No Excuses (Putnam, 1957)

  , We Never Closed: The Windmill Story (Hale, 1967)

  van den Heuvel, Dirk and Max Risselada, Alison and Peter Smithson: From the House of the Future to a House of Today (010 Publishers, 2004)

  Wheeler, Mortimer, Still Digging: Interleaves from an Antiquary’s Notebook (Michael Joseph, 1955)

  Whitehorn, Katharine, Selective Memory (Virago, 2007)

  Wilcox, Claire (ed.), The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947–57 (V&A Publications, 2007)

  Wise, Damon, Come By Sunday: The Fabulous, Ruined Life of Diana Dors (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1998)

  Wyndham, Joan, Anything Once (Flamingo, 1992)

  Acknowledgements

  My primary sources for the essays in this book were my subjects themselves: their published memoirs and other works (see the Select Bibliography – almost all are long out of print) and, where such docum
ents existed, their diaries and letters. But I also relied hugely on the recollections of their families, friends and former colleagues, many of whom were kind enough to talk to me at length, sometimes more than once. To this end, I offer heartfelt thanks to Frances Atkin, Sir Henry Boyd-Carpenter, Chris Brickell, Miranda Amour-Brown, Susan Angel, Tony Box, Morris Bright, Iris Chapple (ever a Windmill Girl!), Trevor Dannatt, Leonora Dossett, Carol Gardiner, David Gentleman, Neville Goldrein, Nicolas Gray, the late Richard Hamilton, John Hare, Nicolas Hawkes, Norman Hudis, George Kasabov, Jane Kerner, Dick Laurie, Sandra Lousada, Leslie Phillips, Tom Priestley, Simon Relph, Sir Christopher Rose, Ronald Simpson, Samantha Smithson, Soraya Smithson, Simon Smithson, Barbara Thomas, Jeremy Thomas, Tim Tinker, Nick Werner Laurie, Maureen Whitty, the late John Winter, Christopher Woodward and Elizabeth Young.

  For details of Rose Heilbron’s personal life and career, not in the public domain, I am indebted to Hilary Heilbron’s excellent biography of her mother, Rose Heilbron: Legal Pioneer of the 20th Century: Inspiring Advocate who became England’s First Woman Judge.