Artist Don Bachardy is profiled in the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter (dated April 2), ahead of a major retrospective at The Huntington in San Marino, California, showcasing what journalist Michael Slenske describes as “perhaps the most definitive fine art rendition of Tinseltown in history.”
“For nearly seven decades, painter Don Bachardy has lured Hollywood luminaries — from Marlene Dietrich to Mark Ruffalo — to sit for portraits, most frequently inside his second-floor studio perched atop a converted garage at his cliffside bungalow overlooking Santa Monica Canyon.
‘Don and his brother would go crash Hollywood premieres and take photos of themselves with all these stars when they were teenagers. That’s a helpful way to think about Don as an artist,’ says curator Karla Nielsen … ‘He just wanted to be near this world and was really interested in capturing it.’
Capturing ‘it’ really started with Bachardy’s mother, who hid money from his father to take her boys to early morning movies when they were just kids … If the film fascination came from his mother, making portraits was a gift from his older brother.
‘Ted drew every one, usually portraits of actors from movie magazines and I followed his example,’ Bachardy, who speaks and walks a little slower at 90 but still has a sparkle in the eyes poking out from behind his wire frame spectacles. He tells me over one of several morning meetings exploring the art-filled rooms of Adelaide Drive, WeHo, last summer that his older brother not only introduced him to painting, but also to the man who would teach him how to be a serious artist.
It was on Valentine’s Day 1952 (the same year he met Marilyn Monroe … ) that Bachardy, then buzz-cut and 18, first encountered the 48-year-old Isherwood, whose pair of Weimar era-set novels The Berlin Stories would inspire Cabaret.
Don, meanwhile, was painting famous faces from magazine pages. That is, until Isherwood offered to sit for him, and he learned the pleasure of capturing all the contours and moods of his sitter’s faces sans makeup or editorial retouching. ‘That became the only way I wanted to work,’ says Bachardy … ‘Once I was with Chris I started meeting real movie actors and it was thrilling for me.'”
The article states that Don was photographed with Marilyn ‘at a premiere’, while elsewhere it has been suggested that they met at the 1952 Academy Awards (which Marilyn didn’t attend.) Monroe fans will spot her acting coach, Natasha Lytess, in the background.
In fact, the encounter took place during the annual Los Angeles Times charity football game at the L.A. Coliseum in August 1952, with the L.A. Rams winning the day. A press photo from the same event is now part of the newspaper’s archive.
This occasion is sometimes confused with a baseball game that Marilyn was rumoured to have attended with new beau Joe DiMaggio in March 1952; but as eagle-eyed fans will note, she was wearing her famous pink ‘cutaway dress’ from Niagara, which didn’t go into production until July.
Marilyn later discussed Don’s partner, Christopher Isherwood, with author WJ Weatherby, confirming she knew the part of Santa Monica where they lived (per Conversations With Marilyn.) Their long relationship inspired Isherwood’s novel, A Single Man – Bachardy had a cameo role in the 2009 movie adaptation – and is explored in the documentary, Chris & Don: A Love Story.
Don Bachardy’s original photo with Marilyn is featured in the Huntington exhibition, which opens on April 12 through August 4, and also features sketches of her co-stars, Bette Davis and Montgomery Clift.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a book, Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits; with Michael Schreiber’s oral history, Don Bachardy: An Artist’s Life, to follow in October – and another documentary is also in the works.
And finally, a portrait of Jane Russell – painted two years before she died – can be viewed on Bachardy’s website (see here.)
The Marilyn Report 