Description
Billy Cotton (6 May 1899 – 25 March 1969) and his team of glamorous showgirls, The Silhouettes. Billy Cotton was a Bandleader, although he could not write music or play a musical instrument. He had an extraordinary life that during included work as a Bus driver, a welterweight boxer, footballer for Brentford, and flew for the RAF but crashed his plane and nearly died on the same day that the RAF was formed. Billy Cotton had a twenty-year career in show business after the war. His Sunday lunchtime radio show – which transferred to television in 1956 – was heralded with his trademark catchphrase “Wakey wakey” and became a staple for millions of households between 1949 and 1968. photograph by George Douglas.
Audrey Hepburn on the Rockefeller Tower in New York. Published in Picture Post, 1952. This was before she became a movie star. She was appearing on Broadway in a musical called Gigi.
Who Was George Douglas
Born in 1922 in Rottingdean, a seaside village just outside Brighton but his father was American and the family moved to the States in the 1930s, first to Texas and then to Santa Monica, California.
Santa Monica, guaranteed sunshine apart, was not that different to Brighton. George bought a battered old Leica camera from a pawnshop for a few dollars, and patrolled the seafront, capturing the locals doing their thing.
His work began appearing in magazines like Life and other publications all over America but he wasn’t content. What he admired was the daring style of the ground-breaking British magazine Picture Post, which was setting new standards in photojournalism.
In 1951 he travelled to London by ship, busked his way into the Picture Post office the day after he arrived and managed to sell them a feature. Two days later he sold them another. George and Picture Post were made for each other. He sold them 99 stories in three years – serious features, silly celebrity stunts, beautiful reportage on the lives of everyday working people in England and always, whenever possible, beautiful girls.
The commissions rolled in as he met and photographed a myriad of celebrities and chased stories all over the world.
Then, when he was still only 48, he decided to give it all up, shrugging off the decision with: ‘Press photography is a young man’s job.’
