Brigitte Bardot sunbathes with her pup, Audrey Hepburn sits on a frog, and the moment Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier first met - alongside a tiger. Celebrities and pets on the French Riviera
Stunning private photos of actors, artists and writers and their furry - and not-so-furry - friends on the Cote d'Azur appear in new book
Photographer Edward Quinn lived among the rich and famous in the 50s and 60s
Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali are seen in rare pictures
By CAROLINE HOWE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED:| UPDATED:
The Cote d’Azur, also known as the French Riviera, was a star-studded playground of celebrities from show business, the art and business world in the middle of the last century.
Irish photographer Edward Quinn lived and worked there.
Described as a ‘cocktail’ photographer, Quinn charmed the stars vacationing on the strikingly beautiful Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. They willingly let him photograph them while on holiday, where they brought their furry and no-so-furry friends along or made new ones. Below are some of the exquisite photographs from the new coffee table book Celebrity Pets on the French Riviera in the 50s and 60s publishes by teNeues publishers.
Bathing beauties: French film star Brigitte Bardot sunbathes with her black spaniel, Clown, in 1956 on the French Riviera. Clown was a present from her then husband, film director Roger Vadim. This was the year that the film And God Created Woman launched Bardot to international fame as a sex symbol. Thirty-four years old at the time, she divorced Vadim the following year.
Black and white period: Pablo Picasso loved dogs and owned many but his Dalmatian Perro appeared on canvas in some of his later paintings. He lived in a sumptuous 19th century house, Villa La Californie, in the hills above Cannes with an uninterrupted view of the sea. This photo was taken in 1961
Hold that tiger: American movie star Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1955 for the first time in the private zoo of Rainier’s palace. The photographer, Quinn, suggested that the couple stroll through the zoo as an ice-breaker between the self-conscious couple.The meeting had been arranged by Paris-Match, the French news weekly magazine. Exhausted by a European tour, it is rumored that Grace unsuccessfully tried to cancel this meeting. She returned to Hollywood and their relationship quickly evolved through correspondence. They married the following year.
Leap frog: Audrey Hepburn was in Monaco for the movie Monte Carlo Baby at the very beginning of her film career in 1951. It was here in Monte Carlo that she was spotted on the set of the film outside of the Hotel de Paris and chosen to play the role of Gigi that shot her to international stardom.
Grrrreat: Film star Elizabeth Taylor was in Cannes in 1957 for the Cannes Film Festival with her then third husband, producer Mike Todd. She is the only one laughing in a close encounter with a large lion cub. On the far left is Art Buchwald, famous New York Herald columnist at the time. Todd’s film Around the World in 80 Days won an Oscar for Best Picture that year
Member of the wedding: Bardot relaxes between shooting the film Voulez-vous danser avec moi? (Come Dance With Me) in Nice, 1959. She is pictured with her beloved dog, Guapa, a rescue dog she adopted that had been abused by children in Spain. Guapa, meaning ‘Pretty girl’, became Bardot’s adored dog for the next fifteen years
Giddyup: Frank Sinatra arrived by carriage in Monte Carlo in 1958 where he performed at a charity Gala Evening at the Sporting d’Eté (Sporting Club) for the UN Refugee Children. His album, Come Fly with Me, came out that year and was nominated for Album of the Year along with five other Grammy nominations at the inaugural Grammy Awards in 1959
Ay, Chihuahua! Jayne Mansfield hugs her Chihuahua while taking a dip in Cannes in 1958. She was on the Riviera with her second husband Mickey Hargitay attending the Cannes Film Festival. The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield, an x-rated ‘documentary’ that followed her wild and sexy adventures through Rome, Cannes, Paris, New York and Los Angeles came out in 1968, a year after her death in a car accident in 1967
Splendid: Film actress Natalie Wood arrived in Cannes in 1962, with her Splendor in the Grass co-star and boyfriend of the hour, actor Warren Beatty. The couple stayed at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. A dachshund watches their arrival
Winging it: Spanish Catalan Surrealist painter Salvador Dali kept a summer home in Portlligat, Cadaques, a small village on the coast of Spain south of the Riviera. The famous artist gathered the fallen feathers from the swans that lived on the shoreline in front of his house and used them for his experimental painting work with a sea urchin. 1957
Spotted: Italian film star Claudia Cardinale, Italian film director Luchino Visconti and Hollywood movie star Burt Lancaster presented their movie Il Gattopardo at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963 in the company of a large cheetah. The film’s title translated to The Leopard and was nominated for an Oscar
Elizabeth Taylor with her miniature poodle in the summer of 1957 when she and Mike Todd rented the sumptuous Mediterranean style Villa Florentina, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Liz would return to La Florentina in 1967 with Richard Burton ten years later
Audrey Hepburn age nine, taken by an unknown photographer in 1938.
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Bee Wilson Friday 19 June 2015 14.30 BST
Audrey Hepburn by Philippe Halsman for the cover of Life magazine, 18 July 1955. Photograph: Philippe Halsman
The greatest film stars inspire certain labels that stick to them as surely and superficially as school nicknames. Marlon Brando is always a “screen legend”. Lauren Bacall is a “siren” and Montgomery Clift, a “heart-throb”. As for Audrey Hepburn, she was, and is, “iconic”: occasionally, an “icon of elegance”, sometimes a “style icon”, but mostly, just plain “icon”.
From the personal collections of Audrey Hepburn’s sons Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Luca Dotti comes Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon, an exhibition of 35 photographs of the actress. Including pictures taken when Hepburn was nine years old, to portraits by giants of the medium such as Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean and Terry O’Neill, the exhibition documents the star’s life. Some of these pieces are well-known vintage magazine covers and famous fashion shoots; others have never been seen in the UK.
Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon review – beautiful, but unrevealing
By the age of nine, Hepburn had perfected her pose. But after gazing at her timeless beauty countless times, you are left wanting to see beneath the stylish facade
Paula Cocozza
Wednesday 1 July 2015 18.58 BST
Here is Audrey Hepburn as you might imagine her: shot in black and white, eyes full of secret dreams. Her features are a checklist of familiar Hepburn iconography. The edges of her smile taper to a dark smudge. She acknowledges the camera without facing it, and her cropped fringe gives a wide margin to a pair of fine brows. She is entirely recognisable from the images amassed at the peak of her career – and yet this Hepburn is only nine years old.