Wife Bryher, Partner
Algernon Islay de Courcy Lyons
Queer Places:
155 E 61st St, New York, NY 10065
Villa Kenwin, 1814 La Tour-de-Peilz, Svizzera
Riant Chateau, Territet, 1820 Montreux, Svizzera
Villa Tuoro, Via Tuoro, 80076 Capri NA, Italia
Kenneth
Macpherson (27 March 1902 — 14 June 1971) was born in Scotland, the son of
Scottish painter, John 'Pop' Macpherson and Clara Macpherson. Descended from 6
generations of artists, Macpherson was a novelist, photographer, critic and
film-maker. It is only in recent years that Macpherson's contribution to
cinematography has come to be recognised with the re-discovery of his work,
which, though limited in output, was far ahead of its time, both in subject
matter and cinematic technique. His 1930 film, Borderline, is now very much
part of the curriculum in the study of modern cinematography today. In his
work with the Pool Group (1927–1933), which he co-founded with
Bryher and
HD,
Macpherson also established the influential film journal, Close Up.
Little is known of Macpherson's early life, the pre-Pool Group period,
although much is made of his post-Pool Group years, which appear to have been
colourful. One commentator goes as far as to disingenuously identify, for
interested parties, the source of 'a lurid description of his personal life
during his New York years'.[1]
Macpherson's story began in 1927, when he married English writer, Annie
Winifred Ellerman, (known as Bryher
in the literary world), the daughter of a British shipping magnate. Bryher's
inherited fortune would help to finance Macpherson's projects. Although
Bryher's and Macpherson's marriage lasted for twenty years, for much of the
marriage, both Macpherson and Bryher had extra-marital affairs. Bryher was
lesbian but Macpherson was distinctly bi-sexual.
Macpherson was in a relationship with cabaret singer
Jimmie Daniels.
Bryher commissioned
Richmond
Barthé to make a bust of Daniels.[2]
A sexual partner, common to both Bryher and Macpherson, was the American
poet, Hilda
Doolittle (known in literary circles as "HD"). Doolittle had been a close
friend of Bryher's since 1921. They had a lesbian relationship, spending a lot
of time together in Riant Chateau, Territet, Switzerland, where Bryher had a
house. Not long after their marriage, Macpherson and Bryher moved to Territet,
later joined by Doolittle, who brought along her 9-year-old daughter, Perdita.
(Perdita's father was Cecil Gray, the Scottish music critic and composer). In
1928, Doolittle had a sexual relationship with Macpherson, becoming pregnant
by him. The pregnancy would be aborted later that year. In the same year,
Macpherson and Bryher formally
adopted Perdita, registering her name as Frances Perdita Macpherson.[3]
In September 1931, Macpherson and Bryher moved to a new home at
Burier-La-Tour, which they had commissioned Hans Henselmann to build. The
home, which overlooked Lake Geneva, came to be known as Kenwin, derived from
the names, Kenneth and Winifred, and would double as a film studio and home,
not only for themselves, but also for an assortment of dogs, cats, and
monkeys. Bryher gave her address, at the time, as Villa Kenwin, Chemin de
Vallon, 1814 Burier-La-Tour, Vaud, Switzerland. (During the war years, Bryher
would use Kenwin as a staging post for the evacuation of refugees from Nazi
Germany.)[4]
It was the late 1920s, and race, sex and mental illness were decidedly
taboo subjects for cinema audiences; cinematography was just a tool for the
use of Hollywood moguls in the production of lucrative films for mass
entertainment. The stage was being set, though, for a challenge on this
'phoney' world with new thinking individuals springing up to present
alternative ideas. Film-makers were being influenced by the philosophy of the
Frankfurt School, the theories on human behaviour of Sigmund Freud in Vienna
and the innovation of Soviet and German 'montage cinema'. Macpherson would
identify with this new thinking and hope to contribute. In 1927, together with
Bryher and Doolittle, Macpherson co-founded the Pool Group. Realising that
their ambitions would be stifled by British censorship and the social
prejudices of the time, the group re-located to Switzerland. There, they could
fully consider sensitive taboo issues and investigate the means of
successfully transferring these thoughts onto celluloid. It was during this
period in Switzerland that Macpherson would produce his main work, the film,
Borderline. At the time, however, the film received a lukewarm
reception from the critics, and Macpherson would archive the film in a 'bottom
drawer', where it would lie dormant for the next 53 years.
It was in 1927, from their base in Territet, that Macpherson, Bryher and
Doolittle launched themselves as the Pool Group. Pool would veer away from the
West's commercial model of film production, and produce material which would
promote cinematography as an 'art form'. Their model would be based on the
work coming out of Germany, particularly G W Pabst, and coming out of Russia,
particularly
Sergei Eisenstein. Their subject matter would be human behaviour, and its
many facets, and their task would be representing this behaviour on screen,
influenced by the work of Freud.[5]
Also at Territet, Macpherson founded the influential film journal, Close
Up, dedicated to "independent cinema and cinema from around the world".
The first issue of Close Up, describing itself on the front cover as an
"international magazine devoted to film art", appeared in July 1927.
Macpherson was editor, with Bryher as assistant editor, and Doolittle making
regular contributions. Macpherson, who was particularly influenced by the
Russian film-maker Sergei Eisenstein and whom he first met in 1929, "dictated
the tone and direction of the publication, contributing articles that defined
the role of the director and defended the integrity of cinema and its right to
be considered as art". Close Up published many of the first translations of
Eisenstein's ideas. Macpherson continued as the main editor until the
magazine's demise in 1933.
Macpherson's films can best be summarised as presenting contentious issues
using avant-garde experimental film-making techniques to represent emotional
and psychological states of the human mind. "Macpherson's brilliance lies in
his ability to photograph small movements as nuanced, meaning-producing
gestures".[6]
His work would go on to influence future film-makers such as Nathaniel Dorsky
and Robert Beavers. In all, Macpherson made three short films, Wing Beat,
Foothills and Monkeys' Moon, one main feature, Borderline
and co-produced Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy.
His first short film, Wing Beat (1927) was an investigation into
telepathy and featured himself and
HD in
acting roles. The film survives only in fragments. Macpherson described the
film as 'A study in thought... a free verse poem'. His second short,
Foothills (1928), footage of which was discovered in 1979, concerns a
city-woman visiting the countryside, with 'added psychoanalytic ingredients'.
Nine minutes and ten seconds of footage, in 16mm black and white, exist of his
third short film, Monkeys' Moon (1929), which featured Macpherson's 2
pet douracouli monkeys. This film was thought to be lost until the Beinecke
Library of Yale University acquired a copy in 2008, where it was fully
restored and digitised.
Macpherson's sole feature, Borderline (1930), originally believed to have
been lost, was re-discovered by chance in Switzerland in 1983. The silent film
with English inter-titles, dissected race and gender relations and was centred
on a love triangle, featuring
Paul Robeson and
HD. It
attempted to delve into the mental states of its characters using the
technique of 'montage', based on Eisenstein's film theories. The film confused
and bewildered critics leading the London Evening Standard's Clive MacManus to
advise Macpherson "to spend a year in a commercial studio" before attempting
something as difficult again. Deeply upset by the film's hostile reception,
Macpherson archived his film and withdrew from film directing. In 2006, the
British Film Institute sponsored the restoration and eventual DVD release of
Borderline, revitalising interest in Macpherson's work.[7]
By the late 1920s Barbara
Key-Seymer had become friends with the bisexual Grenadian cabaret
entertainer Leslie Hutchinson. From the
early 1930s Barbara became good friends with the African American gay
entertainer and nightclub host
Jimmie Daniels and his boyfriend
Kenneth Macpherson, a Scottish
modernist filmmaker and critic who earlier in 1930 had directed Borderline, a
feature film starring Paul Robeson
and Eslanda Robeson.
Later in the 1930s Jimmie Daniels and Kenneth Macpherson moved to New York,
where they socialized with individuals including Barbara's (by then)
ex-girlfriend Olivia
Wyndham and Olivia's girlfriend, African American Harlem Renaissance
performer
Edna Thomas.
After spending a few months in New York in 1935,
Kenneth Macpherson eventually based himself there to focus on writing, photography and
his art collection. It was here that he met
Peggy Guggenheim, a wealthy
American art collector, who instantly fell in love with him. In 1944, in New
York, he co-produced Hans Richter's avant-garde compendium, Dreams That
Money Can Buy, the project being financed by Macpherson and Guggenheim.[8]
In 1947, Macpherson returned from America, spending much of his time in
Switzerland and Italy. He bought a home on Capri, "Villa Tuoro", which he
shared with his lover, the photographer,
Algernon Islay de Courcy Lyons. Bryher supported her husband and his
friend on Capri, requesting that they take into their home the ageing
Norman Douglas, the
Scottish novelist. Douglas had been friends of Bryher and Macpherson since
1931. Macpherson remained on Capri until Douglas's death in 1952, writing an
epitaph for Douglas, from which the Latin inscription, on Douglas's
gravestone, is derived (Omnes Eodem Cogimur).[9]
Macpherson then moved to Rome, where he published his third novel, 'Rome 12
Noon'. In 1965, he 'retired' to Tuscany to work on his new book about
Douglas's Austrian doctor, the Viennese born, Dr. Elisabeth Moor. Moor was
Capri's doctor from 1926 until the early 1970s and was one of the island's
more colourful characters. The book would eventually be published in 1975
under the title, 'An Impossible Woman – Memories of Dottoressa Moor' with a
preface, notes and epilogue by the English writer, Graham Greene.
Macpherson died in Cetona on 14 June 1971, leaving everything, including
his inheritance from Douglas, to De Courcy Lyons.
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