Cornel was a suave, sophisticated figure, always elegantly dressed, combining elements of Cary Grant and Cecil Beaton—as befitted a man who was the last of the film star portraitists in the glamorous Hollywood style of George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull and Lazlo Willinger. However, Cornel was British and worked for Rank Studios in the late 1940s and 1950s photographing established stars such as David Niven, Gregory Peck and Marlene Dietrich as well as newcomers like Brigitte Bardot and Virginia McKenna on the large-format camera that he later donated to the museum (and which can be seen in Insight: Collections & Research Centre).
I first met Cornel in 1984 when we did a public tour around his one-man show here at the museum and we continued to keep in touch. The museum acquired twenty of his pictures for our collection. I was especially keen to include examples of his group pictures of those members of the film industry whose contributions are so vital to the way a film looks and sounds but who rarely get recorded in the stylish manner of which Cornel was a master—people such as production designers, special effects supervisors and newsreel cameramen.
Cornel was awarded a BAFTA—the only photographer to be so honoured—on a memorable evening in 1998. After being interviewed by David Puttnam (a great fan of Cornel’s prortait of Brigitte Bardot, I remember!), Cornel received his award at a dinner, with speeches from Virginia McKenna and Donald Sinden, a major Rank star in the 1950s, who was outstandingly witty.
I included Cornel’s work in our 2008 exhibition about films stars and photographers, Live by the Lens, Die by the Lens, and conducted a video interview with him, which can be seen here:
Although Cornel Lucas left Rank in 1959 and established his own studio in Chelsea where he successfully pursued a career as a fashion and advertising photographer, it will be for his stunning film star portraits that he will primarily be remembered.
The desire to acknowledge the importance of the film ‘technician’ in the creation of films lay behind the series of on-stage interviews called Script to Screen that I initiated in 1986. Yes, we interviewed directors, performers and writers, but we also included designers, editors, cinematographers and composers. I was pleased to be able to attract Richard Rodney Bennett to Bradford, not just because he was the composer of superb scores for Far From the Madding Crowd and Murder on the Orient Express but because he lived in New York and only returned to Britain occasionally.
In those days, before the opening of Pictureville Cinema, we ran the evening film programme in the IMAX cinema on four evenings a week. Because of its design, the IMAX cinema was unsuitable for an intimate one-to-one conversation directly in front of the screen, so we constructed a special temporary stage over the first two rows of seats for such occasions. Because of the disruption this caused, we therefore decided usually to do such interviews late on Sunday afternoons—not the best day of the week on which to get guests to travel by rail from London.
To save time, I usually picked up guests from Wakefield or Leeds and drove them to Bradford. Our in-car conversations were always interesting but I particularly remember the one with Richard Rodney Bennett. I always avoided talking at any length about what might be discussed in the interview as there is a danger that you’ve done the interview before going on stage so the event doesn’t have the spontaneity it should have. I certainly didn’t have that problem with Richard, who was keen to talk not about music or film but about car boot sales and knitting, which was one of his pastimes!
Richard’s range as a composer and musician was wide—from atonalism to jazz and cabaret, which he performed with singers like Marion Montgomery and Claire Martin as well as singing to his own piano accompaniment in later years. In his interview, he expressed his strong views about the role of the composer in film, comparing it to journalism, and was particularly clear about his relationship with the director: he was hired to do the music, and as few directors had any knowledge of music or its potential he should be left to get on with it! It seemed an imperious approach but it obviously worked, for three of his film scores were nominated for Oscars and he won a BAFTA award for Murder on the Orient Express.
We shall miss them both.
Cornel Lucas, born 12 September 1920, died 8 November 2012
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE, born 29 March 1936, died 24 December 2012