logo
livingroom

decorative bar

biographies


corner Last update of this page: October 23rd 2017 corner
Hugh "Binkie" Beaumont
(March 27, 1908 - March 22, 1973) UK

Binkie Beaumont

Theatre manager, producer

separator

Hugh "Binkie" Beaumont was sometimes referred to as the "éminence grise " of the West End theatre. Throughout his life Beaumont was evasive about his background, given, as one biographer wrote, "to disseminating fanciful accounts of his origins".

It was not until a 1989 biography by Richard Huggett that the facts became widely known. He was born Hughes Griffiths Morgan, in Hampstead, London, the son of Morgan Morgan, a barrister, and his wife Mary Frances, née Brewer. Morgan divorced his wife for adultery when the boy was two. Mary Morgan then married the co-respondent, William Sugden Beaumont, a Cardiff timber merchant, whom the young Beaumont was brought up believing to be his real father.

The boy was formally known as Hugh, but was generally called "Binkie". The origin of his nickname is uncertain; John Elsom in a 1991 book Cold War Theatre s uggests that "Binkie" was Cardiff slang for a black child or a ragamuffin. William Beaumont died while Binkie was still a boy.

At the age of fifteen Beaumont left Penarth Grammar School and became a box-office assistant at the Playhouse; he was appointed assistant manager of the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cardiff a year later. He was subsequently business manager for Aubrey Smith's touring company and then of the Barnes Theatre in London for the producer Philip Ridgeway. During Beaumont's time with the company five of its productions transferred to the West End, giving him valuable managerial experience in five West End theatres. During his time with Ridgeway, Beaumont met John Gielgud for the first time. He went onto have a long-term relationship with actor John Perry, who was Gielgud's ex-lover.

Beaumont was appointed assistant to Harry Tennent, a senior executive in the Moss Empires theatre chain.At Beaumont's instigation, he and Tennent went into production and management on their own account in 1936, setting up H M Tennent Limited. Tennent concentrated on the business side of the enterprise, with Beaumont as the producer, choosing plays and engaging directors, actors and designers.

Tennent died in 1941, leaving Beaumont in sole control, and for the next twenty years he was one of the most powerful men in British theatre. He maintained a low profile, shunning the limelight partly from natural reticence and partly from his belief that he could operate more effectively behind the scenes.

Beaumont gained a strong commercial advantage over his rivals by setting up a subsidiary company to present classic plays: he successfully maintained that this operation qualified as "educational", and was thus exempt from tax. With productions such as The Importance of Being Earnest , and Hamlet , both with Gielgud, Beaumont made large profits from this ostensibly charitable enterprise.

Gielgud was a strong influence on Beaumont's aesthetic development, and they maintained a mutually beneficial association which survived despite a personal crisis when Gielgud's then partner John Perry fell for and moved in with Beaumont. Perry remained personally and professionally involved with Beaumont for the rest of the latter's life, and all three remained on close terms.

Beaumont was always careful to balance innovation and box-office appeal. He combined both in the London premiere of Oklahoma! in 1947, which ran at Drury Lane for 1,543 performances. He promoted the works of new dramatists, including Christopher Fry, Tennessee Williams, and later Robert Bolt and Peter Shaffer, and engaged promising young directors and performers including Peter Brook and Richard Burton.

The rise of state-subsidised theatre, and the emergence of kitchen sink drama undermined Beaumont's pre-eminence beginning in the 1950s. He disapproved of both, and stuck to his style of lavish, starry West End productions, even when they began to go out of fashion.

He continued to have enormous successes: in 1958, he presented the first British productions of both West Side Story (1040 performances) and My Fair Lady (2281 performances). The latter cost an unprecedented sum to stage, but, thanks to a sustained publicity campaign by Tennent's, advance bookings meant that the show was in net profit two months before it opened.

Beaumont sufficiently overcame his suspicion of the subsidised theatre to be a founder member of the board of the National Theatre, on which he served with energy and commitment during the last ten years of his life. His last production for Tennent's was a 1973 revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife , starring Ingrid Bergman, directed by Gielgud, which opened after Beaumont's death.

Beaumont died at his house in Lord North Street, Westminster, at the age of 64.

separator

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Click on the letter B to go back to the list of names

corner © Matt & Andrej Koymasky, 1997 - 2017 corner