Did anyne watch We’ll Take Manhattan on BBC4 on Thursday night. It told the story of David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton going to New York exactly 50 years ago (January 1962) and coming back with photos that took the USA by storm and revolutionised Vogue and fashion photography in Britain
I enjoyed it hugely – I’m a great admirer of BBC4′s regular documentaries about popular culture. HOWEVER, it opened with four statements:
In 1962, no one had heard of the Beatles
No one expected to be famous who was not born rich or titled
And there was no such thing as youth culture
But then David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton went to New York
This is of course ‘dramatic licence’ since it boosts the significance of the story that follows but it annoys me because it’s simply not the way things are. It implies that history is always the consequence of single events and individual actions and it hardly ever is that simple. Consider for example
1.Between Jan-April 1962 the first Beatles single with Tony Sheridan was released, they were playing regularly in Hamburg and at the Cavern and had already auditioned for Decca and the BBC
2. Try Gracie Fields, George Formby, Max Miller, Dirk Bogarde, Lonnie Donegan, Diana Dors, Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard (add your own)
3. “No such thing as youth culture” – this is such crap it barely warrants a response but in brief try reading Jon Savage’s Teenage: the Creation of Youth 1875-1945 - a huge book, over 500 pages and finishes well before 1962 or Adrian Horn’s Juke Box Britain: Americanisation & Youth Culture 1945-60.
The film ends with them coming back on the plane still in january 1962 and hearing “Love Me Do” playing on the plane’s sound system with Jean Shrimpton wondering if it’s Cliff Richard. “Love Me Do” was released in October 1962.
That last quibble is a little pedantic (in dramatic terms) but overall I wish people would stop making up stories about our world – the truth was sufficiently groovy wasn’t it?
January 29, 2012 at 4:42 pm |
I watched the programme, I suppose it was more entertainment than documentary. In David Bailey’s folio book ‘Archive One,’ that covers his work between 1957-1969, Bailey said, “All I have ever tried to convey in a fashion photograph is the spirit of a Cole Porter or a George Gershwin song – more Cole Porter really – like Ella Fitzgerald singing “I’ll take Manhattan.” In the book Martin Harrison wrote, ‘Bailey provided an accurate reflection of the troubled end to a decade that had begun, for many, on a wave of optimism.’