Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor SL4 6DW, Regno Unito
Hawtreys, Tottenham House, Marlborough SN8 3BE, Regno Unito
Hawtreys, Newbury Road, Thatcham RG19 8LD, Regno Unito
Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Gower St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 6BT, Regno Unito
17-19 Pelham Pl, South Kensington, London SW7 2NQ, UK
Nymans, Staplefield Lane, Handcross RH17 6EB, Regno Unito
Maddox, Bridgetown, Barbados
The Dorchester, 53 Park Ln, Mayfair, London W1K 1QA, Regno Unito
Les Jolies Eaux, Saint Vincent e Grenadine
Point Lookout, Saint Vincent e Grenadine
Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel (13 January 1904 – 13 July 1978) was an
English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century.
The work of Broadway's gay and lesbian artistic community went on display in
2007 when the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation Gallery presents "StageStruck:
The Magic of Theatre Design." The exhibit was conceived to highlight the
achievements of gay and lesbian designers who work in conjunction with fellow
gay and lesbian playwrights, directors, choreographers and composers. Original
sketches, props, set pieces and models — some from private collections —
represent the work of over 60 designers, including Oliver Messel.
Messel is Jewish and was born in London, the second son of
Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Messel and Maud, the only daughter of Linley
Sambourne, the eminent illustrator and contributor to Punch magazine. He was
educated at Hawtreys, a boarding preparatory school then in Kent, Westminster
School and Eton — where his classmates included
Harold Acton, Eric
Blair and Brian
Howard — and at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College.
After completing his studies, he became a portrait painter and commissions
for theatre work soon followed, beginning with his designing the masks for a
London production of
Serge Diaghilev's ballet Zephyr et Flore (1925). Subsequently, he
created masks, costumes, and sets – many of which have been preserved by the
Theatre Museum, London – for various works staged by C. B. Cochran's revues
through the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is at this time that he had a
relationship with Peter Watson. His work as a set designer was also
featured in the US in such Broadway shows as The Country Wife (1936);
The Lady's Not For Burning (1950); Romeo and Juliet (1951);
House of Flowers (1954), for which he won the Tony Award; and Rashomon
(1959), which was nominated for a Tony Award for his costume as well as his
set design. He also designed the costumes for Romeo and Juliet;
Rashomon; and Gigi (1973), the latter two receiving Tony Award
nominations.
For film his costume designs include The Private Life of Don Juan
(1934); Scarlet Pimpernel (1934); Romeo and Juliet (1936);
The Thief of Bagdad (1940); and Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). For
Romeo and Juliet he also served as Set Decorator. He was Art Director on
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), On Such a Night (1956) and
Production Designer on Suddenly Last Summer (1959), for which he was
nominated for the Academy Award.
Oliver Messel
by Francis Goodman
2 1/4 inch square film negative, 1945
Bequeathed by the estate of Francis Goodman, 1989
Photographs Collection
NPG x39504
Oliver Messel and Peter Watson
Vagn Riis-Hansen (Oliver's partner), photographer and date unknown, OHM/3/3/12
Considering the work of classic Hollywood's gay directors and gay
producers, a small but vital subset of the studio system, suggests "queer
cinema" might not be such a modern postulate. Occasionally, a convergence of
director, producer, writer, and star came together, such as happened with
Camille (1937). The gay writer
DeWitt Bodeen said that Camille "represents a meeting of talents
that were perfect for its interpretation." In fact, wags like to call the
picture a rare "all-gay" studio production, and in some ways it comes close:
producer David Lewis, director
George Cukor, screenwriter
Zoe Akins.
Greta Garbo, too, and
Mercedes de Acosta had a hand in the
early draft of the script before Akins took over.
Robert Taylor, who played a
stunningly beautiful Armand, was rumored to be having an affair with the
film's set decorator, Jack Moore.
There was also Adrian on costumes and
Sydney Guilaroff doing hair.
Rex O'Malley infused his Gaston
with a natural feyness, a quality perhaps intended by Cukor and Akins, and
another gay actor, Rex Evans, played
several bit parts. ("Who is that big man and what part is he playing?" Garbo
asked Cukor. "That man is Rex Evans," the director replied, "and he's playing
the part of a friend who needs a job.") Cukor also manuevered the hiring of
another friend, and another gay man, as the picture's true art director,
supplanting the ubiquitous Cedric
Gibbons, whose contract nonetheless decreed screen credit. This was
Oliver Messel, esteemed scenic and costume
designer from the London stage, whose outsider status evoked suspicion in the
competitive world of the Hollywood studios. It wasn't Messel's first encounter
with the studio bureaucracy; in 1935, during the filming of Romeo and
Juliet, Cukor had caused a near war by insisting Messel design the
costumes instead of Adrian, whom Cukor, according to several friends, viewed
as pompous and pretentious. Cukor, as discreet as he was, never tried to
obfuscate either his Jewishness or his gayness in the way Adrian did. "I get
annoyed with statements that call George "closeted",", said his longtime
friend and Los Angeles Times film critic
Kevin Thomas. "George was never closeted. He
never pretended to be anything he wasn't. He lived according to the rules of
his time, that's all."
During the Second World War Messel served as a camouflage officer,
disguising pillboxes in Somerset. According to his fellow officer Julian
Trevelyan, he revelled in the opportunity to give his talents free rein. The
disguises of his pillboxes included haystacks, castles, ruins, and roadside
cafes.[2]
In 1946, Messel designed the sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet's new
and highly successful production of
Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty, a production which
famously starred Margot Fonteyn.[3]
It became the first production of the ballet shown on American television, on
the program Producers' Showcase. That production, the first ever
televised in color, survives on black-and-white kinescope[4]
and has been released on DVD.[5]
In 2006, it was revived by the Royal Ballet, starring Alina Cojocaru, with
some new additions to the scenic design by Peter Farmer, and released on DVD.[6]
Passionate about privacy,
Sydney Guilaroff granted a rare interview to the writer John Kobal in the
1950s but refused to be tape-recorded. Unwilling to reveal much about himself,
Sydney did prove to be a "fascinating gossip" about other people,
calling Cecil Beaton "a swishy
little boy" and Oliver Messel "small-minded
and nasty."
In 1953, he was commissioned to design the decor for a suite at London's
elegant Dorchester Hotel, one in which he would be happy to live himself. The
lavishly ornate Oliver Messel Suite, which the hotel advertises as Elizabeth
Taylor's favourite place to stay in London, combines baroque and rococo styles
with modernist sensibility and a considerable dose of fantasy. The suite,
along with other suites that he designed in the Dorchester, are preserved as
part of Britain's national heritage. It was restored in the 1980s by many of
the original craftsmen, overseen by Messel's nephew, Lord Snowdon (Antony
Armstrong-Jones), the former husband of Princess Margaret.
Messel also contributed to retail design, creating the new Delman shoe
store for H. & M. Rayne in Old Bond Street in 1960. Whereas upmarket shoe
stores had been discreet enclaves dressed with curtains and pot plants, while
shoes were consigned to underground stores, this radical refit incorporated
display stands and cases, some of them illuminated, to show off hundreds of
pairs of shoes. An article in The Observer noted that: "Mr Messel and
Mr Rayne are at one in thinking that shoes to buy should be as easy to see and
handle as books in a library".[7]
Oliver Messel came from a wealthy, well-connected family, and when his
nephew, Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), married HRH Princess Margaret,
a lifelong relationship with the British royalty began. Messel was later to
design Les Jolies Eaux, Princess Margaret’s home on Mustique Island in The
Grenadines (a 45 min flight west of Barbados), and "Point Lookout" an
extraordinary stone beach house on the northern tip of Mustique. In 1959,
Messel, exhausted by a demanding theatre season and recurring arthritis,
retreated to Barbados and the lush beauty of the eastern Caribbean. He was 55
and at the peak of a career in which he had dazzled three decades of
theatre-goers with his fantastic, romantic and inspired stage sets and
costumes. The warmth, colour and vibrancy of the tropics seemed to liberate
new sources of energy and imagination, leading him to what would eventually
become a whole new career in designing, building and transforming homes. Not
content to rest there, he also designed many furnishings for these homes,
particularly for outdoor use.
Messel bought an existing house called Maddox, a simple bay house perched
above a small beach on the St. James coast. With the help of his companion
Vagn Riis-Hansen, with whom he had a 30-year relationship,[8]
and a Barbadian staff, Messel gradually transformed it using all the
trademarks of his theatrical design: slender Greek columns, flattened arches,
white-on-white interiors splashed with bright spots of colour, elaborate
plaster mouldings – an easy mix of baroque and classical. It was his use of
the materials and traditions of island architecture that was truly
innovative.Wealthy friends clamoured for Messel to design houses for them,
both on Barbados and Mustique, and thus began what architect Barbara Hill
described as “his work … of converting quite ordinary houses into
wonderlands.” As well as his own home, Maddox, he re-designed and supervised
the renovations of Leamington House and Pavilion (for the Heinz family),
Crystal Springs, Cockade House, Alan Bay and Fustic House. He designed and
built Mango Bay from scratch and was commissioned by the Barbados government
to restore the old British officers Garrison headquarters in Queens Park,
creating an elegant adaptation of it to a theatre and art gallery.
He would probably have gone on to do much more on Barbados, but was lured
away by his friend Colin Tennant and his private island home, Mustique.
Glenconner commissioned Messel to design all the houses built on the island.
Between 1960 and 1978 Messel created some 30 house plans, of which over 18
have so far been built – a tangible and lasting tribute to his genius. But
Barbados remained his first island love and his home, and he died there in
1978, at the age of 74. Fustic House was one of his favourite properties on
Barbados.
One lasting legacy is that his preferred light sage green shade of paint,
now known as “Messel Green’ by paint companies in the Caribbean, has been
immortalised as many property owners choose this colour for its quintessential
Caribbean-ness.
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