Vogue

Wilhelmina – from Waller High to haute couture

Wilhelmina magazine cover — Wilhelmina was photographed for our cover by Kenneth Helbron during a recent Chicago visit. Shocking pink coat by Marusia highlights the season’s favourite makeup and nail enamel shades. Coat from Martha Weathered.

The colour supplement of the 20 May 1962 issue of The Chicago Sun-Times carried an article by Jean Neal about Wilhelmina, who also featured on the front cover.

To see some photos of her, take a look at Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy.

WILHELMINA: From Waller High To Haute Couture

IT’S A LONG trip from Waller High School to the cover of Vogue magazine, but a girl named Wilhelmina Behmenburg made it in four miraculous years. Today her face is as familiar to readers of L’Officiel, THE magazine of the French couture, as it is to McCall’s and the Ladies Home Journal. Hers is an exciting success story, but it didn’t happen over-night.

Even while she attended Waller, Wilhelmina was being interviewed, and turned down, for modeling assignments. After high school there was a job as designer-secretary in a fabric factory, some parttime convention work and constant discouragement. Neither Chicago stores nor agencies were interested in the 5-foot-10-inch German girl. She was “too big” for high fashion.

It took a job at the International Trade Fair to turn the tide. Reigning as Miss West Berlin (because her factory boss submitted her picture), Wilhelmina met Shirley Hamilton, who was then director of a local modeling agency. Miss Hamilton was the first person to recognize Wilhelmina’s potential. By this time she had to convince Wilhelmina she could become a great model if she worked at it. It meant losing weight, learning makeup and hair styling, studying, exercising and more pavement-pounding.

A few months later the “new” Wilhelmina met Chicago photographer Kenneth Heilbron. He booked her immediately for high fashion assignments. Under Heilbron’s direction she perfected her technique in front of the camera. In a few more months Chicago agencies were anxious for Wilhelmina’s services.

In the fall of 1960 she decided to return to Europe on a vacation. (Wilhelmina was born in Holland, moved to Germany as a youngster and emigrated to the United States with her parents when she was 15.) En route she stopped in New York, where she was interviewed by Eileen Ford, head of the famous modeling agency. Then she continued on to Paris.

When she arrived she was astounded to learn that she had two solid months of bookings through the Dorian Leigh agency. Chicago clients, with European branches, had alerted Miss Leigh to her arrival. She had booked Wilhelmina without ever seeing her!

Then the whirl began. Her picture appeared in high fashion publications across the continent. There were jobs in London, Paris, Munich, Berlin, on the Riviera, in Switzerland . . . in two months the name “Wilhelmina” became synonymous with high fashion.

Exactly one year ago she accepted the most exciting assignment of all. L’Official, official publication of the French haute couture, took her to the Sahara, where it photographed an entire collection of couture designs on her.

The high point of her career was almost a washout because of international entanglements. Wilhelmina and the photographic crew were held up for two weeks waiting for clearance for her to enter Algeria. (That nation specifically prohibits German citizens.) Finally, a government minister wired: “Congratulations, Wilhelmina. You are the first and last German to enter Algeria this year.”

When she returned to the United States last fall Eileen Ford immediately signed her to a contract. Her success in New York simply repeated her performance in Europe—two covers of Vogue magazine, every day crammed with bookings, every month dozens of photos in important national magazines.

Last month Wilhelmina made one of her frequent visits to her parents’ home on Lakewood Av. Her father William is a butcher and her mother, Klasina, has her old job in the fabric factory. Wilhelmina’s success has enabled her to pay the mortgage on her parents’ house, buy them a car and, next year, send them to Europe.

She is realistic about her career and about the future. She says: “I worked hard and I made it. I’ll be 23 next month and, with any luck, I can work nine or 10 more years. Most of all I want to see the world, and modeling will help me do it.”

Because of her old friendship with Kenneth Heilbron, Wilhelmina agreed to work for him and The Sun-Times during her recent visit. The photos on these pages, and on the Fashion Flair pages of The Sun-Times next week, illustrate her extraordinary talent and Heilbron’s ability to capture it.

Early days

She’s born Gertrude Behmenburg in 1939 in Holland but she grows up in Germany. Come the end of the war, she’s six years old. She sets out with her little brother to get the day’s food ration for the family. Skipping down the street they encounter a group of Canadian soldiers. It’s VE Day, they’re celebrating and they’ve had way too much booze. Their vehicle ploughs into Gertrude’s brother and kills him.

In 1954 the family move to Chicago. Gertrude goes to high school, gets a part-time job and becomes obsessed by fashion magazines.

I even went to second-hand stores to buy all the old issues … I read them cover to cover, devouring every word and every picture of my new idols, the beautiful models who reached so glamorously from the pages out to me.

Two years later she’s offered a place at modelling school and she borrows the money to finance it from her father. She emerges as Winnie Hart, model (her real name clearly not viable). 1958, and she graduates from high school and joins Models Bureau. She’s on her way but there’s a problem…

Figuring things out

At 37-24-36 and 159 pounds, she is some way away from the waif-like figure expected of a model. This is brought home to her in no uncertain terms by Patricia Stevens (who will rechristen ‘Winnie’ as ‘Wilhelmina’), a booker at another agency who approaches her at the 1959 International Trade Show in Chicago. She takes ‘Winnie’ downstairs to a coffee shop and tells her to order whatever she wants: “Enjoy it. You’re not going to have anything like it until you lose thirty pounds.”

Wilhelmina skipping out

Chicago, 1962. According to the dealer who disposed of Kenneth Heilbron's estate, this is part of a shoot commissioned by Jean Neal, the fashion editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. Apparently it was completed in a single day and took in shots in the French Village, outside the El Grifon nightclub and at Chicago's Art Institute. Some of the results were used to illustrate an article about Wilhelmina in the newspaper's May 20, 1962 Sunday supplement. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Sweater girl

Chicago, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling a chunky sweater. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Ready to twist

Chicago, 1962. Early morning in the French Village, Wilhelmina modelling a silk jersey dress, with topaz jewellery to match. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Sweater girl

Chicago, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling a chunky sweater. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

When Wilhelmina visits New York, Eileen Ford of the Ford Modeling Agency tells her that she can’t be a model ‘with those hips’. But if she loses twenty pounds, she could go to Paris.

In Paris a colleague introduces Wilhelmina to diet pills.

I found myself walking along the Champs-Elysées with the cars coming towards me, but my body had no reaction whatsoever.

It’s an ongoing battle.

I was on continuous diets. I’m not fat as far as real life is concerned, but I certainly was when it came to modelling. I ate twice a week. In between, it was cigarettes and black coffee. On Wednesday, I had a little bowl of soup so I wouldn’t get too sick, or a little piece of cheese on a cracker. On Sunday, I’d have a small filet mignon without salt or any sauce. I was running on nervous energy as well as determination.

Success

Following a year in Paris and with a L’Officiel cover to her credit, Wilhelmina returns to the US and takes New York by storm. She is booked weeks, even months in advance.

In 1964, in a series called Private Lives of High Fashion Models, the New York Journal American reports that Wilhelmina has ‘risen to the top of the heap of the 405 girls who work under contract to the city’s top five agencies. Her career to this point is covered in a Chicago Sun-Times article, Wilhelmina: From Waller High To Haute Couture.

For the next five years she goes on shoots around the world, from South America to India to Hong Kong to Lapland. She doesn’t let up – she never takes holidays and often works 12-hour days. She is a model professional. According to Kenneth Battelle, a hairstylist:

Wilhelmina would arrive in her limousine, makeup totally on, open her bag full of hairpieces on foam things, ask what you wanted, be on the set within fifteen minutes, do the shot, jump back in her limousine, and he gone.

And her earnings rise to $100,000 a year.

Post-impressionism

Chicago Art Institute, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling James Galanos' silk print cocktail creation against a post-Impressionist painting by Seurat. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Wilhelmina outside the El Grifon nightclub

Clubbing 1

Chicago, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling an Emilio Pucci sleeveless dress in tones of hyacinth and turquoise, a silver fox fur on her arm outside the El Grifon nightclub. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Clubbing 2

Chicago, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling an Emilio Pucci sleeveless dress in tones of hyacinth and turquoise, a silver fox fur on her arm outside the El Grifon nightclub. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Abstraction

Chicago Art Institute, 1962. Wilhelmina modelling a dress by James Galanos. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

And then…

In her first years in New York Wilhelmina dates many men. Of the city’s playboys, she says:

They take you out because they want to he seen with a beautiful woman. It’s easy here to he used as a display doll. But as a model, it’s important to he seen at nightclubs and restaurants.

In 1964, she meets Bruce Cooper, an associate producer of The Tonight Show, and in February 1965 they get married.

When Eileen Ford pushes work towards the next generation of models and Wilhelmina’s bookings start to dry up, the couple respond by setting up an agency of their own – Wilhelmina Models. Four years on, the agency has 100 men and women on its books and has a turnover of over $3 million. Wilhelmina judges Miss USA and Miss Universe contests and visits Europe three times a year to see the fashion shows and recruit new talent.

Superficially, it’s all great. In reality, it’s not. Bruce turns out to be a brutal misogynist who sleeps around with the models and beats up his wife. Kenneth Battelle remembers how:

A couple of times she came to bookings with a black eye. There were products you could cover black eyes with. She had all that. But she never talked about it. It was a more disciplined time. You wouldn’t spew your personal life out to anybody.

Wilhelmina is a sticker. She stays with Bruce for the sake of their children. In 1979 she is diagnosed with pneumonia, then, shortly afterwards, with inoperable lung cancer. She is just 40 years old when dies in March 1980. According to her obituary in Time magazine:

During her cover-girl days, Wilhelmina boasted that she was “one of the few high-fashion models built like a woman.” And she was. With her 5 ft. 11 in., 38-24-36 frame, doe eyes, delicate cheekbones and mane of high-piled dark hair, she epitomized the classical, aristocratic look that she helped to make the style standard of the 1950s and ’60s…

Want to know more about Wilhelmina?

The best source of I’ve come across is Michael Gross’s book, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. To see more pictures, take a look at Wilhelmina on Facebook and at Wilhelmina Cooper, from Model to Model Agencie.

André de Dienes – desert frolics

André de Dienes is best known for his photos of Marilyn Monroe and I’m planning to showcase some of those in a future article.

Here I’d like to draw your attention to two of his other obsessions: the great outdoors (and in particular the American West) and the nude. And perhaps this was his way of escaping from his past.

Desert contours 1

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

Desert contours 2

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

Desert contours 3

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

A bit of background

With the currency devalued and his family in crisis, André’s mother commits suicide and he runs away from the Transylvanian village of Turia, where he was born, to Budapest. There he takes a job in a fabric store, where he spends his days surrounded by wealthy women and expensive fabrics. By night he works as a stagehand so as to get to see operas and musicals.

But he hasn’t gone far enough to escape his demons. Age 15, he travels across Europe, mostly on foot, until he arrives in Tunisia where he purchases his first camera. In 1933 he goes to Paris to study art. There he’s taken up by the couturier, Edward Molyneux, for whom he undertakes a series of fashion shoots.

Five years later, in 1938, Arnold Gingrich, editor of Esquire, offers him work in New York City, and helps fund his passage to the US. There he works for Vogue, Bazaar, Life and other magazines. He’s still restless and in 1944, spurred on by his interest in native American tribes and by an invitation from David O Selznick (producer of Gone With The Wind), he moves to California.

A more vivid contrast with the land of his birth is difficult to imagine. And there he settles and begins to specialize in nudes and landscapes.

André de Dienes in his own words

His objective is to see beauty in nature. He travels extensively to find the right locations for his shoots, his favourites being deserts and seashores. He writes:

Every picture I have taken of the nude was for the sole purpose of expressing my feelings for the beautiful.

His advice to photographers interested in photographing the nude is unambiguous:

I ask you not to disgrace the nude with your camera. Respect it, express its beauty, exercise and better your beautiful emotions. Try not to photograph just naked girls; try to give meaning to your pictures; be proud of the photos you take. Do not abuse the luck and privilege of having a girl pose for you in the nude. Do not photograph nudes as I do, but try your own techniques, give in to your own feelings. Try to create something entirely new, abstract, in any way, as long as it remains within the bounds of decency.

Ironically but perhaps not surprisingly given his status as one of the leading photographers of nudes of the early 1950s, he ends up contributing to Playboy during its early years. In fact, one of his nudes features in the very first issue.

Technically, André de Dienes’ work is pretty superb. He rarely uses a light meter:

Neither in shooting nor in enlarging do I use a light meter (except for color indoors). My brain becomes a computer and I figure the exposure pretty accurately.

And to make his photographs true to life, he never retouches them.

The two shoots

Both of the shoots on this page were taken at the sand dunes near Yuma, Arizona.

I did drive through those sand dunes several times. It’s a beautiful stretch of about twenty miles wide, one hundred miles long of big, big sand dunes like in the Sahara desert in Africa, and I took many beautiful photographs of nudes. And I did encounter sand storms several times, so bad that the windshield of the car had to be replaced twice, and the insurance company refused to insure me any further.

They are brimming with escapist rapture. There’s something ecstatic about them. They show the rapport André de Dienes builds with his models, and the results are wonderfully spontaneous.

In Desert Contours, it’s late afternoon and the sun is getting low in the sky, casting long shadows across a vast desert landscape that dwarfs the unidentified model as she runs, jumps and surfs, her curves set against the swirls of the wind-ruffled dunes. She may occupy a tiny portion of the canvas but she is absolutely the focal point.

Desert Dance 1

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

Desert Dance 2

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

Desert Dance 3

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

In Desert Dance, Mallia Phillips (identified as the model on the back of one of the prints) is jumping for joy, her diaphanous dress billowing around her.

Want to know more about André de Dienes?

There’s some good background in the introduction André de Dienes. Marilyn. Online, take a look at Ten Glamour Photographers of the 50s and 60s and Cursum Perficio.

Veruschka and Rubartelli – a fashion legend

Veruschka and her sisters — 1968. Veruschka (second from left) and her sisters – Gabriela, Nona and Catharina. Photo by Franco Rubartelli. Read more.

Of all the 1960s models, none has a stronger presence, more distinctive looks or greater charisma than Veruschka. Franco Rubartelliʼs photos of her helped to create a fashion legend.

Diana Vreeland, US Vogue’s exotic, no-holds-barred editor-in-chief, gave the couple (and they were a couple, living together in a loft in Rome) carte blanche and they repaid her with some of the era’s most iconic editorial shoots, epitomizing late-sixties boho chic.

Veruschka’s story

The story starts in 1963 with Veruschka’s mother approaching Dorian Leigh. Leigh was one of the great models of the 1950s and has set up her own modeling agency. Her verdict:

She looked like a deer, awkward and yet so graceful. Her mother wanted me to take Vera’s younger sister as a model. The sister was smaller, blonder, prettier, but not magnificent like Vera. The next day Charlotte March took pictures of her, and they were incredible.

But Veruschka, still using her real name – (Countess) Vera von Lehndorff – is well over six foot tall. So in spite of Dorian’s advocacy, she has a tough time breaking into modelling. Nevertheless, there’s interest from a few photographers, among them Franco Rubartelli. Like Veruschka, he has yet to make a name for himself. But he’s mesmerized by her and the attraction is mutual. They are destined to become lovers.

1964 and 1966 are the turning points in Veruschka’s modelling career. In 1964 after an abortive visit to New York, she decides to take matters into her own hands and create a new persona:

Veruschka – contact strip — Around 1968. Veruschka by Rubartelli.

I said to myself, “You have to think of something,” … You shouldn’t just go to a photographer and show your book. Hundreds of girls do that. You have to do something so they will not forget you, so they will say, “That girl was really something different.” I had no doubts about myself. I knew I had something which was interesting and I wanted to work with that. So I said, “OK, now we have to find a way to make sure that others see it too.”
So I thought, “I’m also going to be a whole new person. And I’m going to have fun. I’m just going to invent a new person; I’m going to be Veruschka.” Veruschka was a nickname I had when I was a child. It means “little Vera.” And as I was always too tall, I thought it would be nice to say that I’m little Vera. And it was also nice to have a Russian name because I came from the East.
I decided this person has to be all in black. At that time everybody wasn’t wearing black. So I bought myself a cheap copy of a Givenchy coat — very narrow and just a little bit flared on the bottom, quite short, just covering the knee — a black velvet hat, and very soft black suede boots, which at that time people didn’t have. You could really walk like an animal in them. I thought I had to have this very beautiful walk. When I come in, it should be really very animallike.
So when I came back, I went right away to see Barbara Stone. I said to her, “You must tell all the photographers about this girl coming from the East, somewhere near Russia. Never be too clear from where exactly. She wants to travel to the States, and she wants to meet you because she likes your photographs. She’s very interested in photography. She’s really quite extraordinary. You should see her.” So of course they always said yes, because they were interested in another kind of girl.
I would arrive and say, “Hello, how are you?” And they would say, “Can we see some pictures?” And I said, “Pictures? I don’t take my pictures around with me. For what? I know how I look. I want to know what you do.” And then of course they got interested. I remember Penn saying, “Would you mind going over to Vogue?” He made the call.
My first trip to Vogue was very funny. I had seen Vreeland at Bazaar already, and she had made remarks. “Oh, you have wonderful legs,” or, “Your bone structure is wonderful,” or something. But then at Vogue she said, “Who is that girl? Put her name right on the wall. Veruschka,” she said, “Veruschka, you’re going to hear from me.”
Vreeland was after me all the time. So I called her and I said, “Listen, I would love to do a story about jewelry on the beach.” And she said, “Take everything and go,” and she would publish the whole thing. I could call up and say. “I would love to do this or that,” and she said, “Wonderful!” or often, “Maybe not,” but anyway you could talk. We were then becoming teams…

Around 1970. Rubartelli and Veruschka relaxing. Photo by Pierluigi Picture Feature Service. Read more.

Rubartelli’s story

Born in Florence, Franco Rubartelli is a self-taught photographer, inspired by Swiss model Françoise Schluter, whom he meets, falls in love with and marries. His jealousy at his wife’s flourishing career prompts him to have a go at photographing his wife himself. He send the resutls to Vogue and gets the thumbs-up from Diana Vreeland. Soon the couple find themselves working for Vogue Italia but it’s not enough to save their marriage and in 1965 they part company.

Waiting in a hotel to meet a potential client, “a tall, skinny woman in a black cloak and long knee-high boots walked past and caught my attention.” No marks for guessing who she turns out to be. He asks Veruschka to drop by his studio with her portfolio, the two get on like a house on fire and the rest is history. They’re together for the better part of the next nine years.

The collaboration

There is no better team than Veruschka and Rubartelli. After a few shoots, Vreeland encourages Veruschka to come up with her own ideas. Taking her up on the offer, Veruschka poses in Japan’s snow country wearing a lynx coat and standing next to a sumo wrestler. In 1966 she does her first shoot wearing nothing but body paint (it will become a lifelong artistic pursuit). Most of the time she does her own make-up, hair and styling.

The most successful ones were done like that, because I was in charge of it. With the photographer we created the whole thing on the spot. We cut up the clothes even, if it looked better.

But Rubartelli remembers things a bit differently and highlights the contribution made by a third member of the team – Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, a textile designer turned stylist and designer.

Giorgio was unlike anyone else; his creativity was superior. He had been born in Florence, Italy, but had spent so much time outside of the country that he had forgotten the language a little; when he spoke, it was a funny [argot]. He was an original and very imaginative designer.

According to Rubartelli, the three would meet to develop themes and stories for shoots. The process involves many hours of thinking, sketching out ideas, doing tests, visiting museums, studying books and watching movies – sounds like fun.

For the next eight years, Veruschka and Rubartelli produce a series of editorial spreads that epitomize the free spirit of the late-60s/early-70s – fusing fantasy with glamour. It’s a partnership that calls to mind that of David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton in the early 1960s. But while Shrimpton was clearly the muse who sparked Bailey’s creativity, Veruschka plays a much more active, perhaps even the leading role in her collaboration with Rubartelli. She will go on to work with others such as Holger Trulzsch with whom she produces Veruschka: Transfigurations.

In 1966 Veruschka stars as herself in Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult film set in swinging London. With a nonchalance and audacity that only she could carry off, the single line she utters in the five-minute scene in which she stars is: “Here I am.”

Blow-Up seals Veruschka’s status as a celebrity in her own right. Offers come flooding in. In 1967 she is one of the highest-paid models in the world and she appears on the cover of Life magazine. The accompanying feature is titled Bizarre, Exotic, Six Feet Veruschka – The Girl Everybody Stares At.

But success is the beginning of the end for her relationship with Rubartelli. Always possessive, he gets more and more jealous. Even as things are falling apart, he invests all his money in Stop Veruschka, a film that bombs. With a mountain of debt, he leaves Rome for Venezuala and disappears from the limelight.

And the arrival in 1972 of Grace Mirabella to replace Diana Vreeland as editor of Vogue spells the end of Veruschka’s stint as a fashion model.

Veruschka with cheetah — 1967. Veruschka and Rubartelli collaborate with a cheetah. Read more.

Want to know more about Veruschka and Rubartelli?

Unfortunately, Veruschka’s own website is currently offline. As well as an article in Vogue, which includes a link to Rubartelli’s Instagram diary, there are various books, including an autobiography, in German (which unfortunately I can’t read). Here, to be getting on with, are my main sources…

Michael Gross’s book, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, for a great overview of Veruschka’s career as a fashion model (the lengthy quote above comes from here)
A.G. Nauta Couture’s article, Veruschka, the Amazonian Barbie, for a nice online summary (especially if you can’t get hold of Michael Gross’s book)
George Gurly, The First Supermodel-Veruschka, for an account of an encounter with the model
A.G. Nauta Couture’s article, Veruschka in perhaps the Most Epic Fashion Story, for an account of a shoot in the mountains of Japan.

Vogue

WILHELMINA: From Waller High To Haute Couture

Other topics you may be interested in…

Early days

Figuring things out

Success

And then…

Want to know more about Wilhelmina?

Other topics you may be interested in…

A bit of background

André de Dienes in his own words

The two shoots

Want to know more about André de Dienes?

Veruschka’s story

Rubartelli’s story

The collaboration

Want to know more about Veruschka and Rubartelli?

Other topics you may be interested in…