[silence]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[car horns]
[distant siren]
[train clatters over tracks]
[indistinct chatter]
[buzzer, door opens]
[door closes]
[footsteps on stairs]
All of this talent, and all of this equipment, for...
for zero! [laughter]
You guys are wasting your time!
And all I can think... That would send me up the wall!
[***]
NARRATOR: In 1978, on a cold December day,
an older woman walking down the street in New York City
caught the very keen eye
of then 49-year-old photographer Bill Cunningham.
The woman, pictured here years earlier,
was wearing a Nutria coat.
That's what he saw first.
And while he may have been all about the coat,
and how it was cut and draped over the shoulder,
the photo he took of that woman, named Greta Garbo,
appeared the next day on the front cover
of the Metropolitan Report of The New York Times.
[***]
Bill Cunningham.
The Nostradamus of fashion and society for over 60 years.
Every Sunday, for nearly 40 of those years,
his two pages of photos and commentary
in The New York Times were wildly popular.
[***]
He, and his bicycle and blue jacket,
would become the most famous, and to his great dismay,
most recognizable street and society photographer
and fashion historian in the world.
In 1994,
long before his bicycle and blue jacket made him famous,
he sat down for an interview
for what he said would be "just 10 minutes,"
for an award he was receiving.
The interviewer was Mark Bozek, a young, rookie producer.
All this cockamanie nonsense, no French wouldn't do that.
It would have to be someone of academic standing or,
you know, a scientist or a...
[chuckles]
Someone who happened to have seen a couple of dresses
on a runway.
[sighs]
I mean it's something I like, but it's certainly --
I think it's, I've always felt
it's the first thing you should get rid of.
My end of it.
Newspaper, that's what's killing it!
Go back to real news!
Instead of all this...
filling around the ads, you know.
[laughter]
I used to get people wild down at The Times.
The reporters, everyone-- people would get terribly serious,
and I'd say, "Well, we're just filling around the ads."
The grocery ads.
[laughter]
[***]
[cheers and applause]
NARRATOR: William John Cunningham
grew up in the shadows of Boston's Fenway Park.
He and his brother and two sisters
were raised by William and Mary Anne Cunningham,
who came from a long line of conservative Catholics.
His father worked for the post office
and his mother firmly ran the household.
The family attended Catholic mass
at Holy Name Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
From an early age,
Cunningham would remember being distracted
by the fashionable hats ladies wore to church.
His 1947 high school yearbook
listed his ambition as "Politician".
His hobbies: "Airplanes".
BILL: No, Boston.
I think I came here when I was nineteen.
And I lived with an aunt and uncle.
Otherwise I could never have...
my family wouldn't have allowed me to... you know,
they're very quiet people...
I came, well, because at that time I was,
let's see, I must have come here in 1949.
[***]
And I had a job at Bonwit's over Teller's in Boston,
an after-school job, in '47.
Then, the people at Bonwit's said,
"Well, why don't you come to New York,
see how do you like working down there?"
And of course I loved it.
Because, the interest in the fashion world --
this is where it all was! [laughter]
'Cause there was nowhere else to go, this was it.
[jazz music]
NARRATOR: After first arriving in New York in 1949
he became a milliner: a hat designer.
He didn't use his last name
because he felt his conservative Boston family
wouldn't approve of his line of work.
He was known then simply as "William J."
He made hats for Ginger Rogers,
Joan Crawford,
Marilyn Monroe,
and other famous stars and socialites of the day.
BILL: My family was, they were all, couldn't believe--you know,
what's this kind of nonsense, no one just leaves, you know.
And so I had a... an aunt and uncle who lived here
and the family thought--well they were frightened first off
I think because it was the fashion business.
I wouldn't know, they were very private people,
they wouldn't say but the... yeah.
I think that bothered them.
Fashion has always been, and I don't know why,
because I don't think we had...
fashion magazines around our home.
My mother and my sisters were...
I don't think that was their main concern...
they, you know, had other interests.
But how I got into it-- I don't, I haven't got a clue.
But I know I was fooling around as a kid making hats,
I think about 1939.
I would have been ten years old.
As I recall, the first time I ever fooled around
and actually made something,
because I was always doing decorative things,
but I made a hat because I had some idea
that my mother was going--
she was coming to the World's Fair.
And I thought, "Oh gee"...
and went to the dime store, you know,
and brought these things
and put a thing together, and so it would have been '39.
No. I'm sure not, no no no...
[laughter]
No, they were...
I had... marvelous parents who were... rather conservative.
I guess it was because it was something
you could do yourself, with you hands
MARK: Mm-hm.
Don't ask-- I haven't got a clue why,
I mean no one in my family ever been in this...
these areas or anything of the sort.
I was first working
in the advertising department at Bonwit's.
So they thought that was alright. [laughing]
And it was only--only supposed to be for a short while.
Then of course what happened was
I was working in the advertising department doing that and then
there was a custom millinery salon in Bonwit's
and the designer, a European woman,
wonderful woman,
and I was down because I was interested to see
how they do things and make things
and she encouraged me to come in on Saturdays
when the workroom wasn't busy and learn the trade.
And that's what I did.
It's fairly simple.
I didn't make them well,
but that's how I learned, started off.
[***]
There was a lease department called Chez Ninon...
they were private dressmakers
and Bonwit's would lease them the space.
And they had a very grand clientele,
they dressed every Astor,
every Vanderbilt, Rockefeller in New York.
Everyone.
They had been in business, two women, since 1929.
And what happened was
right after the post-World War period
there were a lot of big fêtes and fancy dress balls.
And they said,
"Oh Bill, our clients need something to wear
to this big ball, would you whip something up?"
"Oh," I thought, "that's terrific... "
You know, you could use your imagination,
it was fantasy,
that's how it started, I did these things.
[***]
Well, as a matter of fact, I was fired from Bonwit's
just for that reason.
At one of these events someone said,
"Oh Mrs. Pauline" and that was Walter Hoving's wife's name,
"Oh, it's that darning young man at Chez Ninon
made us these marvelous--" and she says, "What young man?"
and she was furious that it wasn't someone from Bonwit's...
that you know... here I was in the advertising department
and I was doing this on the side.
BILL: Yes, yes.
So that was the best thing they ever did, was fire me.
Then I went out and started on my own.
[laughter]
BILL: At this point my aunt and uncle were very upset
because they could see I was definitely not moving
in the advertising direction,
and so they wouldn't help me at all.
[***]
So what I did was I remember walking around the streets
looking for empty windows and if I saw an empty window
I would go and inquire if there was a room for rent.
[laughter] A pretty naïve thing to do!
But, you know, I was pretty dumb about those things.
At any rate, on 52nd Street, just off Madison Avenue,
this row of little houses...
and I saw went I went in
and a young secretary at a desk--receptionist said,
"What do you mean you want a room to make hats in?"
I said, "Well, I need a room to make hats in
but how much would the room be?"
and "I don't know, I don't have any money,
but I'm going to make some."
And she said to me,
"Come back tomorrow."
And I did come back, and she said,
"Listen, there's a room on the top floor
and they need a janitor."
[laughter]
And she said, "I'll tell them you'll be the janitor
to clean the little house
and you'll get the room rent free."
And that's what happened.
I was still living up on Park Avenue
with my aunt and uncle, but...
MARK: This was a little place you could do--
Yeah, they were-- I was pretty much leaving
by the service entrance at that point.
[laughing]
BILL: I worked at night at Howard Johnson's
and did different jobs around and I used to deliver lunches--
there was a...
lunch... drugstore on the corner of 52nd Street,
that's where I found this, and Madison, at lunchtime, and...
people in the millinery district remember, they said,
"Oh, he'd come down in the morning
with all the dimes and nickels to pay
for whatever he was... buying."
MARK: Do you remember meeting Bernadine
when she came by to look?
BILL: No, I met Bernadine later when I went to Women's Wear
and they wanted to see
some of the hats and write about them and...
the head of Women's Wear said to Bernadine,
"I want you to interview a milliner,
he's coming down, William J."
And she--Bernadine saw me come in with all of these hat boxes
and she said, "Oh, just leave the boxes here.
When will William J be around?" and I said, "Oh, that's me!"
[***]
NARRATOR: In the mid-1950's, Cunningham would move
into the famed Carnegie Hall Studios
and live there for the next 50 years.
For many of those years,
his apartment consisted of a tiny room with a small loft
that was crammed with file cabinets
full of his photos and negatives.
He slept on a single mattress
on top of many more of his photos and negatives
and he shared a bathroom
with everyone on the twelfth floor.
[***]
NARRATOR: The history of the Carnegie Hall Studios,
built in 1894 by Andrew Carnegie,
was compassionately told
in Josef Astor's 2010 film, Lost Bohemia.
In no other single location
had such an extraordinary group of artists ever been gathered.
His neighbors included composer Leonard Bernstein
and author Paddy Chayefsky.
Client Marilyn Monroe tried on Cunningham's hats
while waiting for Lee Strasberg's
Actor's Studio classes.
Katharine Hepburn waited in the halls
for her voice coach.
Bobby Short played the piano.
Martha Graham and George Balanchine
danced and choreographed.
[***]
Jessica Lange slept on Cunningham's couch.
Judy Garland would belt out songs from the rooftop.
And Marlon Brando and his friend and fellow actor
Wally Cox shared a studio.
At the height of Brando's popularity in the '50s,
he would hide out in Cunningham's apartment
to avoid the crush of women attempting to get to him.
BILL: Well, Marlon Brando's studio was where--
lets see, we're on nine... on eight,
until the girls broke the door down,
then he moved out.
Trying to get to him.
And then they broke the door down,
because they were at that time wooden doors.
NARRATOR: In the early '60s
author Norman Mailer
and his third wife Lady Jean Campbell
actually shared a studio with Cunningham.
Oh no, I did that when Lady Jean was there,
I finally let Mailer and her have the whole thing,
because a woman that was working with me--
one morning, Mailer came down nude.
[laughing] And the lady who was working with me said,
"That's the end, either he goes or I go."
[laughing]
So I gave them the studio, and [laughing]
I went and got a studio next door.
And I wasn't there long, and...
Jean said "Oh, this is terrible, Bill,
we can't have this, you know, we miss it."
So she said, "Why do we just knock--"
it was that studio, which would be right there, the wall.
She said, "Why don't we make a mouse hole."
So we got a sledgehammer
and we knocked a hole in the wall
so we could crawl through to the other studio.
Yeah!
Well, so you wouldn't have to go outside
in the hallway and... yeah.
I'm afraid I did.
I was as nuts as they were. [laughing]
NARRATOR: Perhaps the most celebrated
and most bohemian
was his down-the-hall neighbor of 50 years,
Editta Sherman,
known to many as The Duchess of Carnegie Hall.
She was, among many things, a portrait photographer
and a self-taught ballet dancer famous for doing
the Dance of The Dying Swan as a hobby
on the empty stage of Carnegie Hall.
EDITA: It was closed, the theatre was closed.
BILL: [laughter] The house was empty.
Well you know, Life Magazine did a picture of me in my ballet.
Didn't you see that?
[piano music]
[***]
NARRATOR: June 4th, 1952.
"Dear Claire, last week we opened our services club
and really it is a wonderful place
for the boys to come to
and it has everything you could want in it
in the line of entertainment.
The Army certainly spends enough money
to keep the men here happy.
This weekend is going to be quite exciting for me
as I am going to the Arts Students ball here in Paris
and I hear it is one of the most exciting dances of the year.
I am going as a lobster all covered with fishnet.
Four other friends are coming too
and we all have dates in Paris.
I am taking Stella.
Love, Bill."
[***]
BILL: When I was in the Army, when I was in France,
I would always go to the shows with women and...
I was involved in everything they were doing and all the...
so forth and so on.
And they would have me
send the clothes back through the Army Post.
I never thought anything of it, "Oh, sure I'll send them back,
it's nothing, I'll take them to the camp."
But of course I was too stupid to realize they were doing it
so that they wouldn't have to pay duty!
[laughter]
No, they would make reproductions of them.
MARK: They would, so they were...?
In the '30s they used to buy it
because these were cheaper in Paris then, Balenciaga,
I can remember they'd buy six of the same black dress.
- That's what they did, you see, - MARK: And then what?
BILL: The models to copy here, you see.
BILL: No, because they used to send telegrams saying...
and sign them "Aunt So-and-so"
or "Aunt Nona" and "Aunt Sophie."
Well I don't care, I get to see the shows in Paris!
You know... the camp, they didn't care
and they'd say, "Alright, take two weeks off."
Yes.
BILL: Oh, to Paris, to see the shows. Oh sure.
- BILL: Yes!
No, that was very fortunate...
it was just one of those flukes, you know.
It was--they went down the line...
every other one went to Korea
and the other ones went to Europe.
And so I was studying French like crazy and they said,
"Do you speak French?" And I said, "Oh yeah, some... "
And that was it!
I was only there...
it must have been a matter of months,
and I struck up a conversation with a woman who ran
a millinery shop in the little village
where I was stationed in Rochefort-sur-Mer,
it's on the west coast of France, and...
a lovely, charming lady,
and she used to let me come in at night
and I used to make models and hats,
and then when I'd go up to Paris I would show them around.
I'd take them to Schiaparelli, they'd buy a couple...
You know...
I... there were no rules!
No. I don't think so. [laughter]
And I kept it very quiet, believe me.
- [laughter] - I'm sure.
- Yes.
["La Vie En Rose" plays]
BILL: I saw my first Jacques Fath show,
going back now, this is 1951,
with Nona and Sophie and I--it was fabulous.
[***]
AP: According to Jacques Fath, one of the Paris top-notchers,
hips are definitely being worn this autumn
and waists are conspicuously minute.
The people that came in there, the spirit of the designs,
and he was full of zest and life, it was marvelous.
And Dior was more conservative for the Chez Ninon client.
I remember at Jacques Fath, they would--
Nona and Sophie would sit there
and I'd be just dying a thousand deaths
because it was so wonderful, and they were thinking,
"Oh, he's going to lose money on this,
this is terrible, terrible,
he's going to lose so much money."
[***]
And then the other time was when I went to Balenciaga,
[woman speaking in French]
everyone was always coming out of the show,
because the press was in a month later,
and they were all raving about a coat or a suit,
"Oh, it was the same thing as always,"
and, "Lovely this coat," or, "that suit."
And I remember the first time I went,
I couldn't believe it!
[***]
It was absolutely glorious, the most beautiful fantasies
of creation that you could imagine!
[***]
No, I just wear whatever I--
someone gives me, or I pick up, or... [laughs]
Suzette used to buy shirts
in the thrift shop for fifty cents!
I don't think they have those now.
Oh I never--no, no.
I hadn't bought clothes in...
when I was in business I never had money to spend on myself.
I paid my bills but I didn't... no, I just... whatever's...
people used to give me--
when someone died they'd give me their clothes,
their friend's clothes or something like that.
I remember one time in Paris Nona and Sophie said,
"Now Bill, you're going to the Duke and Duchess'
for lunch, so be sure you dress up."
And I said, "Oh, oh, that's alright. I have... "
So when we got there, I was telling them but they said,
"Well what are you going to wear?"
And I said, "Well, I have...
Mr. Tucker's shoes, and Hannah Troy's husband's suit,
and someone else's shirts I had forgotten--
oh, Mr. Unger's shirts!"
And nothing was said, but when we got to lunch
they thought that was hilarious,
and they were telling the Duchess
and they were all laughing.
But they were marvelous clothes,
they bought the best clothes that could be had
and their wives didn't know what to do with them,
so they gave them to me. They were marvelous.
What do I care? You know.
I know I should care more how I look,
but it's more important I go out and get the right picture.
That's the main thing.
- BILL: Yeah!
BILL: Yeah. No, they host...
because when Nona and Sophie-- Mrs. Park from Chez Ninon
knew the Duchess as a young girl, very well.
But Mrs. Park wouldn't go.
Because she--no, she wouldn't curtsy to the Duchess.
Because she knew her as a young girl and...
BILL: Well, the Duchess wasn't one of my favorites
because she wasn't that fashionable,
she was very studied. Very studied.
- BILL: Oh, charming.
Absolutely delightful, delightful, wonderful man.
Put you right at ease, no highfalutin nonsense.
No putting on.
He was charming, absolutely charming.
Take you back in the garden and say,
"C'mon Bill, I want to show you some new plants"
and I remember the one time that I rode out with...
I think it was Mrs. Spreckels from San Francisco
and the Duke saying,
"Oh, you chintzy, you only brought me two bulbs!"
And she said, "Well they're this and this and they'll multiply--"
Oh, he was charming!
But he demanded great respect for his wife.
Great respect.
And... but he was charming, charming.
Real, down to earth.
He used to tell me about when he first came to America,
when he met Buffalo Bill, and the West,
and--oh, he loved it.
[***]
NARRATOR: Sophie Shonnard and Nona Park.
It's history's guess as to what
would have happened to Cunningham
had he not met these two discrete
but very stylish and cunning women
who since 1929 ran a private dressmaking shop
called Chez Ninon.
[***]
Without question, they had the most influence
on Cunningham's vast sense of style.
Chez Ninon dressed anyone who was anyone in America
and the cream of the crop of New York society.
[***]
Cunningham once described them as women who came
from well-to-do families,
who both had disastrous marriages,
and that their families set them up in business together
in hopes that they would not commit suicide.
They lived together on Park Avenue.
Soon after that they left Bonwit's
and went out on their own.
You know, had their own salons.
And I was always over there.
That's how I got involved
in working on collaborating on the clothes
for Mrs. Kennedy when she was in the White House.
Because she used to come there from when she was--
God I think from even before she was married.
And always buy things on sale.
BILL: Yeah, I think it was great.
I mean it was... you know, by that time hats were over,
and she wanted the least possible thing to wear,
and it just you know, something in the back and you know,
it was fine, it suited her I mean.
She was obliged by etiquette to wear, and so she did.
NARRATOR: For over 50 years it has been common knowledge
that perhaps one of the most famous dresses in history
was a line-by-line copy of a dress
designed by French designer Coco Chanel
and later confirmed by its longtime designer
Karl Lagerfeld,
but Cunningham clearly claims otherwise.
Let's face it.
That idea and that design
all came from Balenciaga in Paris.
No matter, you know, whether she bought them from Bergdorf's
or whoever claims to take credit for it.
NARRATOR: So involved was Cunningham
in the collaboration
with Chez Ninon and Jacqueline Kennedy
that he was personally asked to dye
a red Balenciaga dress black
to wear to President Kennedy's funeral in November of 1963.
["Porcelain" by Moby plays]
[song continues]
A lot of the Hollywood people would come in for their own,
you know, clothes, hats
for their own lives and things like that.
And... lovely people but they didn't mean
anything to me because they didn't have style.
You see?
And they were wonderful.
Joan Crawford would come.
BILL: Well, in her own life, I... not like the films.
The illusion that we knew from the films
didn't exist in their own lives.
The only one that came close
which came in was Gloria Swanson.
The others: Ginger Rogers, Leslie Caron, Josephine Baker.
all of these people...
I can't remember all their names,
they were wonderful, charming people.
But, it wasn't style I had known at Chez Ninon.
There we had Mrs. Paley...
Brooke Astor, I mean,
all these marvelous people wearing beautiful clothes.
And beautiful taste.
Oh... well, yeah, because that's not their interest,
you see that all ended after World War II.
And that's when I realized my focus
was not ever on theatre or Hollywood people.
Because I wasn't interested in that--
crossing the line from fashion to theatre.
I'm strictly interested
in the way women dress in their own lives.
And that's what interested me.
And secondly, I saw how Hollywood dressed,
and so I wasn't interested in that.
And I had worked at Chez Ninon all those years
and I saw how beautifully women dressed there,
and occasionally a movie person would come into the shop,
into Chez Ninon.
Like I remember...
I think Elizabeth Taylor came once, and...
who was the other--and we didn't know what to do with her!
[laughing]
It wasn't our-- it wasn't the taste
of the shop so they kind of discouraged her,
you know, I mean it wasn't for snobbish reasons,
it was a matter of taste...
and their taste was just different.
[***]
BILL: I was aware of him
because suddenly Women's Wear came to life
in the late '50s
and what it was John was working the Paris bureau,
and I didn't know who he was,
but I would read the reports back in New York
and they were electrifying.
It was marvelous.
And what happened was John knew
Mrs. Park and Mrs. Shonnard from Chez Ninon.
So he knew them very well,
then somehow they must have mentioned me to him,
because they, like my family,
had tried to get me out of fashion and interested,
first off, in the advertising, which didn't work out,
and then when John Fairchild came along,
they said, "Oh! This is perfect.
We'll get Bill involved in newspaper work.
Get him out of fashion."
I remember there was a luncheon,
and they never went to lunch...
they must be kidding!
I can't hardly spell my last name,
because I'm a person in images.
Then I thought, "Well I'll write one and that will end it."
He'll read that and that will be the end of it.
Well, it was just the opposite.
[***]
NARRATOR: "What should have been
the most glamorous ball in New York
turned out to be a starved turkey.
What are the leading fashion personalities thinking about
then they show themselves
in the most understated attitudes,
and then fill their magazine papers with outrageous flights
of fancy for the public to accept as fashionable?"
BILL: John read it, saw that column and he thought,
"Oh no, that's just what we want."
Everyone was happy, Nona and Sophie were happy
they finally got me out of the fashion field.
NARRATOR: "Mrs. Vreeland was there,
groaning with delight and looking outrageously chic
in kelly green coat and dress --cocoa gloves--
downstairs on the the back window ledge of her car
I saw lots of photos of fashion pictures--
for the big issue?"
BILL: It was--yes it was Women's Wear,
but that's alright, it was a writer, a reporter.
You know, it was more dignified I guess they thought,
"Anything to get him away from dresses and hats."
Oh, yes.
They tried... from early, when I first, at Bonwit's...
that would have been--
Well, I guess they didn't think it was a profession for a man.
- You see, at the time.
Let's see, John must have started in...
'62, '63, something like that.
It only lasted a year,
and then I realized that wasn't the place for me.
They had another way of approaching things
that I couldn't live with myself.
They were real news people.
You know, they were after a story no matter what the...,
inconveniences and... I just,
I couldn't live with myself that way.
It's just a different way of doing it,
I think theirs is terrifically exciting
and I think mine would be very boring,
to be perfectly frank.
But it wasn't for me, so I just went on my way.
BILL: 1967. It was a little camera.
A friend of Antonio's, the illustrator Antonio...
one time in London I asked him
if he'd take a photograph for me...
it was something we were doing,
and he sent an assistant and they took a photograph.
And then, at dinner that night he gave me a little camera
and he said, "Here, it's an idiot box,
use it like your notebook."
And it was a little Olympus Half-Frame camera.
I tell you guys, that meant you had 72 pictures to a roll.
[laughs]
So you could go on endlessly!
And you almost couldn't get out of focus.
And it was a revelation.
You can't imagine.
[***]
BILL: Suddenly I could photograph
everything I'd ever want to photograph,
inside and out.
[***]
BILL: And here I've used the camera early on,
in the '40s,
because I was interested but, dropped it for other interests,
and never thought of the connection.
But suddenly all the doors open
and everything I'd known I could record.
[***]
BILL: First off the street interested me,
because I've always been fascinated
by wonderfully dressed people.
I was trained that way.
The president of Bonwit's,
back in 1947 when I first went to work there,
always had me go outside the store on my lunch hour
and just observe people.
And she told me at the time, "Now you re-dress them
the way you think they should be dressed,
if you think it's wrong."
[***]
And so all my life I've been doing this.
But now I have the camera, and I can photograph it!
So it was, really, it was great, it was wonderful,
and... it went on from there really.
BILL: Yes--fashion shows
and... everywhere, wherever I went, I never,
I still to this day I carry the camera
wherever I go, I'm never without it.
[***]
["Les Feuilles Mortes" by Yves Montand plays]
BILL: From the post-World War period,
that's from '47 on,
I felt that the fashion world,
to me, was what Hollywood was to another generation.
If people were so excited about Hollywood
from World War I to World War II,
and all the great stars and the films and the imagery
and the dream factory.
See, I felt the dream factory was in fashion.
- Oh yes. Discovery.
You see, the other reason I took to the streets:
I wasn't getting the answers from the fashion shows
of how women would dress for our era to mirror
the times and the era, the epoch that we live in.
So that's... in about the '70s
I took to the streets more and more and more,
because I realized I had to look for answers somewhere else
and I was going to find them on the street.
- And I think I did.
You know, a lot of people might not agree with that, but...
That's what it was, you see when we're looking for answers,
like a journal, looking for something new
but answers that solve problems.
[***]
BILL: No. Every era...
and this isn't just talk,
today is just as exciting as it was in... in the 1940's.
Everyone always thinks, "Oh, it was better then."
Never.
Because fashion is not a frivolous...
it is... it has a vanity and has all of that,
but it's more than that, it makes people feel good.
They get dressed to go out in the morning,
I don't care who you are...
and it just, it lifts the spirits,
it's self esteem, it's every--all of those things,
you can't just wash them them away,
there will always be fashion.
As long as there are human beings there will be fashion.
Because people want to feel good about themselves.
And... when everyone's crying now,
with the, "How could you stay on the streets photographing,
it's terrible. Look at--people look terrible, terrible.
It's a mess."
The streets are reflecting precisely
what's going on in the political world,
in the social upheaval of our times...
it's all right there.
So, to me, fashion is doing its job today
absolutely on precision.
You see, there are three things:
what are shown--what is shown,
what is written about it, and what is worn.
I had been involved in what was written about it,
and I knew all the loopholes there,
and how much you could believe
and how much you couldn't believe
and all the phoney-baloney and all that stuff.
And the next thing was...
what was worn.
And you see that's what was so interesting
about Mrs. Vreeland, at the Metropolitan Museum.
[***]
As a matter of fact that's an interesting story.
The women from Chez Ninon,
who I lived with for a little while
because when my aunt and uncle got so discouraged
that I was in fashion, I kinda had to move out.
So I lived with them.
They had a maid's room that I used,
that's all there was to it.
But on Sundays, I remember,
there would be lunch
and Carmel Snow would come for lunch
and some other women, Brooks Carstairs,
and as soon as lunch was over, I had to get on my way,
because they would go into the card room
and they would play cards,
and it was very serious business.
And I didn't think much of it.
One time, Diana Vreeland was coming,
and they said, "Oh Bill, you don't want
to come to lunch, you want to go off early."
I said, "Oh no, I'm dying to meet her."
This was sometime in the '50s,
I can't remember when,
and... early '50s,
and--at any rate, I was sent on my way,
whatever I did, went off, and I didn't meet her.
And later I found out that Nona and Sophie
had tried desperately all their lives
to keep me from meeting her.
Because they thought, "If he meets her,
and her eccentric behavior,
he's going to be mesmerized and we'll lose him forever.
That'll be the end of it!"
So I was never allowed to meet her.
[***]
At the Met Museum,
at the first exhibition I met her,
I wasn't volunteer but Stella Blum, the curator,
said, "Oh, come up Bill and document whatever you want."
So I would go up, I went up,
and I would, I went... as long as Mrs. Vreeland was there,
from the first show--
for two weeks while she was mounting the show,
I would photograph everything that her hand touched.
Yes, never printed them but they're, it's just so document--
I love to document.
BILL: No, no.
[***]
NARRATOR: And document he did.
In fact, in addition to these photos here,
Cunningham's vast documentation included tape recordings
and taking copious notes
for the entire eleven years
of Diana Vreeland's mounting of her Met exhibitions.
DIANA: The eyes of Marilyn Monroe
to the Betty Annes.
CROWD: New. New. New. Blue.
And I got to know her...
fascinated by this woman, she was fabulous.
But no one understood, she would come in...
noontime, go to her office and do all the paperwork,
and she would come out into the gallery
at, say, four in the afternoon.
And she would go through the galleries
and I can always remember:
"Hmm, a little quelque-chose here, or there,"
with a--roll her eyes and this and that.
And, "Oh I see the gremlins,"
or what, she had another expression, whatever it was,
"have been at work."
Well what it was, the volunteers and the staff
were researching the old Vogue Magazines, and Harper's,
and they would see,
well Balenciaga showed it this way with this hat,
and with this, and with that.
And Mrs. Vreeland would come through,
"Hmm--"
And, "get rid of this," and she would pull off the hats
and she would pull off all the jewelry
and all the stuff the magazines had on,
and she'd tie a Hermès scarf around the head.
And everyone in the museum was horrified.
What Mrs. Vreeland was doing was showing you
how women really wore these clothes.
And what they wore with them.
They didn't ever buy the things
as they were shown or wear it that way,
no one of taste.
The only show I didn't cover was the Russian exhibit,
and the museum asked me not to come
because they were having such problems
with Mrs. Vreeland and the Russians,
because Mrs. Vreeland had her idea of Imperial Russia
[laughter]
and... the communist Russians who were there
with all the clothes had their idea of--
and... as they said the blood is flowing on the aisles.
[***]
BILL: Yes, oh yes... Wegee photographed my hats.
For Look magazine.
- Yeah, yes. - MARK: He did, really?
BILL: It was in his later years, yes.
I remember him coming, he was an old man then,
great big overcoat and all, but wonderfully creative,
he photographed spring flower hats
but through a frosted shower.
- MARK: Is that right. - BILL: Bathroom shower.
BILL: Oh well he was--that was a real photographer, come on.
No, I'm lightweight stuff.
[***]
BILL: People in the real photography world say,
"Listen, you're an embarrassment to photography."
But I never said I was a photographer.
I think of myself as a fashion historian.
That's what I'm interested in,
and the camera is another instrument to record it.
BILL: Uh, yeah.
Couple of women came along the street
from a photographic gallery
on 57th Street, yeah.
- And they said that to you? - BILL: Yeah.
People say a lot of things on the street.
[laughter]
You can't imagine, I mean.
I had a woman call the cops and when was it, last year,
and wanted them to arrest me.
She said I was a pickpocket using the camera as a front.
BILL: And she was the head of a perfume company...
I was out photographing,
I was just in front of the Gallery Lafayette
when they opened
and... this woman came along and she said,
"You're a pickpocket!"
I've had a lot of people yell things
so I didn't pay attention,
I figured they were another, you know, another crazy.
And about five minutes later
she came back with the police to arrest me.
- BILL: Yeah!
But that's not the first time, I've had that happen to me.
And she thought the camera was a front.
And all I can remember saying to her,
"God... if you think that,"
I said, "and you're educated, then I'm really worried."
[laughter]
It was strange.
Yeah... and I wouldn't have known but she gave me her card,
I don't know what she gave me her card for. [laugher]
I have no idea. I still have it, but that was a curiosity.
- Yeah.
And they said, "Well, you can't, madam,
you know he has a right to take pictures,
it's if he uses them in the wrong way...
then you can do something."
She said, "Well, it isn't the pictures,
he's using the camera as a front and he's a pickpocket.
My handbag was stolen on this corner last week."
And I said, "Well I see handbags being--
I see the pickpockets all day long up and down here."
[indistinct conversations]
I met an English photographer in Paris
who... documented Paris.
And his name was Harold Chapman.
He was photographing the collections
for the New York Times.
He was the biggest influence on my life, photographically.
Here was a real photographer,
in the mood of Fox Talbot or Cartier-Bresson.
This is the real thing.
I mean, I'm talking about serious, knowledgeable,
discrete, and he taught me to be invisible...
he said, "Stop waving that camera around like a fan."
That was his expression.
And... I think it's best that way,
to just be in the background as much as you can
and not ever disturb the action.
And never set anything up.
Oh!
Because first off you don't get a picture.
You know, people immediately go,
give you some Vogue look or some nonsense.
BILL: Oh absolutely. Not a photographer.
BILL: Oh, I wouldn't have a clue.
Well I'm not a real photographer.
I'm a fashion historian.
That's what I'm interested in:
how clothes are made, how they're cut,
how they're worn, how they make women look,
what they do to the figure, and all of that!
You know.
BILL: No, no, no, no...
I'm embarrassed by that, it's pretty stupid that I...
I've often wanted to go to school
and I've thought about it, and then many people said,
"Oh don't go, you'll wreck-- don't, you mustn't go,"
and... I still-- every day I think that.
And I'm--and the other point is, you see...
it's hard for you to understand
but I'm properly, basically very shy.
And sometimes it's very hard for me to go out on the street.
You know...
[Bill fidgeting]
You know...
when you photograph on the street,
you're photographing the public.
The street life,
as we all know, and you go around with a camera.
I see pictures that I don't take that I know I should take.
But I don't have the guts to put up the camera and take it.
And... you know, their privacy is involved
and you don't run up like a thug.
You know, in a way, in a funny way,
I have this feeling that I'm stealing their shadows.
I'm not stealing their handbags!
I'm stealing their shadows, and...
yeah, I have a very uneasy feeling about it,
but I suppose I'm so driven
to record and document this that...
that I do it, you know,
and that's why if someone isn't dressed with some style,
I wouldn't... it has no interest to me.
BILL: Oh, they weren't-- they weren't allowed.
No, they wouldn't let cameras in.
There used to be people who would bring trick cameras
in the head of a cane,
or all sorts of things.
No, they didn't allow photographs,
you would see the show and then...
they would make arrangements to photograph one model
at an appointed hour afterwards.
[***]
NARRATOR: So fervently committed was Cunningham
to never crossing the line in his role as a journalist
and fashion historian
that he was known to not accept so much as a glass of water
when offered, even at any of the thousands of events
and fashion shows he covered in his lifetime.
While other journalists traveled first class to Paris
and stayed at the fanciest hotels,
Cunningham traveled coach.
His luggage consisted of plastic deli bags
with his clothes stuffed inside,
and he stayed at a tiny
and decidedly un-chic Paris hotel.
BILL: Oh, to me it's vitally important.
First, by nature, I think.
See, my mother was a very shy person,
very very shy and very discrete, and...
so it probably comes natural to me.
My dad was the opposite,
he wouldn't ring the doorbell,
he'd just go on in and say, "Hi," you know.
[laughter]
So I... I have conflicting feelings that way,
but I think that we're not the story, that's it,
and you have to understand that,
and you're out just to capture the story,
and you can't ever... disturb the story.
The minute you disturb it...
there's nothing there, then it's something else, it's fake.
So what I try to do is, just as quietly as possible,
get around before people start acting up
or playing up to the camera,
if you will, or whatever it is, you know...
and I feel that, you know, it's...
it just doesn't--it isn't help, the filament's not flattering...
it's just not real, I just think that...
to stay in the background
and do your job and do it as best as you can...
Oh, the freedom of going out and every day
you've got the whole world before you in New York,
it's all there... to discover.
Everything!
No matter where you go,
I mean, I get on my bike and I go downtown, I go here--
you can't imagine what it is.
Everyone thinks I'm told to go here--
I'm not told to go anywhere.
I go by instinct.
I mean, that's what I'm talking about, discovery,
in this city.
Everywhere you go: the Lower East Side,
you go down into SoHo, or the Village areas.
Look at the streets.
[***]
Now I know I photograph it, but discreetly,
the bag people and the homeless people.
You look at the shapes and the forms,
it's like being in the Middle Ages of Germany.
It's right here in New York.
Dusk is setting on the streets and you'll see figures hunched
with great packs on their backs going by
and digging in trash cans,
all of that, I mean this city is extraordinary.
The things that are... here...
people say, "Don't you want to travel?"
Hell, I don't want to travel!
I don't want to leave this place,
I can't wait to go out in the morning,
I can't wait to run out in a snowstorm,
I can't wait to run out in a rainstorm...
[***]
the cold or the heat where people react differently
and dress differently.
I mean it's fantastic.
Oh, I don't think of it as work.
I go out and enjoy myself. With a camera.
BILL: Oh yes.
I don't know if you'd call them pictures
but I go out and snap the camera, yeah.
I don't think so.
I... no, I don't know, I don't think so.
It's just I always carry the camera with me
and no matter where you go in New York City,
you see something marvelous.
Oh, I repair them. I have all the old stuff--
in fact, when the truck ran over me in October,
the first thing that the guys at the photo lab said was,
"Oh god! I hope the truck ran over those cameras!"
[laughter]
Well it didn't.
The cameras were all perfect,
they were in shape and I'm still using them--
they were so mad, they've been dying to throw that stuff out,
it was really a hoot.
[***]
BILL: I was under the truck wheel
and all was thinking while he was driving down the street--
I thought, "Oh, you dope!
You don't have health insurance!"
[laughter]
And the other thing I was thinking was,
well I was on my way to a job, and I thought,
"Well I've got enough pictures
to fill the two pages in The Times."
You see, for this kind of work: out in the rain,
out in the zero weather, out in the snow--
electronic cameras are too sensitive.
They're for studio, they're for different...
you know, different reasons.
These are like tanks!
These are all second-hand Nikons.
Here in Carnegie Hall
I got a whole bunch of French photographers studios.
Back in the '60s,
those kids used to give me all their old cameras.
And one of them, he was...
the most encouraging of all,
fellow by the name of Pierre Houlès...
and he was fantastic, he gave me lenses,
and--if someone's going to rob me on the street
and I had Pierre's body and those lenses,
there'd be a fight to the death
because I wouldn't give those up, for nothing.
Of course I use them!
They were... are good luck also.
["Hot Shot" by Karen Young plays]
[song continues]
BILL: The other night, at the Public Library,
one of the curators of the photograph--
I don't know what, who they were really,
came up to me and said, "One of our young men you told
you have documented the Gay Pride Parade
since the first one."
I said, "Yes I have, as a matter of fact.
But I've never published a picture."
And they said, "Would you care to let us have the pictures?
We'd be interested in having them for the library."
But, I don't think they would,
you know because there's nothing indiscrete in them.
Well I don't know whether they're looking for,
couple of guys kissing or holding hands or...
you know, something like that.
I wouldn't do that, because I wouldn't disturb the guys.
I just documented it because I thought,
"in our era, in our time,
this could happen no where else in the world.
Certainly not in Europe!
Or anywhere, I mean, when people despair of America,
think what goes on in America
that couldn't happen anywhere else.
I mean, the luckiest thing we have is to be
Americans and working in America,
as far as I'm concerned...
I know everyone says you shouldn't say that
but I think it's fantastic.
["Hot Shot" continues playing]
[song ends]
Oh well, I was a newspaper delivery boy as a kid.
So I'm used to bicycles, and I used to deliver...
my hats on the bike. [laughter]
Then, when there was a strike in the '60s,
there was a Metro strike,
I just got a bike to ride around and...
I just love it,
it's wonderful to get around.
And you see things, you see.
And you can jump off the bike and photograph,
and you're not down in the Subway where you can't--
where you see other things in the Subway.
But this way you're up and you're free like a bird.
Everything is free to be free.
You know what I mean?
So you're not tied, so you can see.
BILL: Oh no, the cheapest, the better.
Cheaper the better. They're only gonna steal it.
I've had... I'm buying a new one right now
since the truck wrecked the other one...
and this will be my twenty-fifth.
In what, maybe 25 years.
[distant siren]
And incidentally, earlier, you asked me what my--
one of the most important fashion memories were.
[***]
It was the fashion French and Americans at Versailles.
That was a once in a lifetime event.
Because you had
six of the top French designers at the peak of their career.
And six Americans,
at the peak, especially Stephen Burrows.
Here came this young, black fellow
with dresses like you'd never seen,
on models like the French had never seen,
and when they walked across the stage with
their hair pulled up tight and...
a stripped ostrich bone
going through their hair, the audience nearly went crazy.
[***]
And Beth Hardison was one of the models
and she shot them her policewoman look.
And that's when they went bananas.
Oh, stern, and--it was just at the time of... was it, Watts,
so the French were all aware of the American trouble,
and here were these empresses,
these marvelous black models,
Ziegfeld would have put a show together right there.
It was all there for the making.
BILL: Oh, there's no question about it.
And the Stephen Burrows, it was fabulous.
Everything about it.
Kay Thompson, the way she choreographed the show.
Liza Minelli, singing Dancing in the Rain.
No sex, no props.
The French were all covered with props
and everything else-- oh, it was fabulous.
It was raw, pure, raw talent
pressing on the wrong raw nerve of the time,
which was the social change on the streets of America.
Oh, it was right there.
That's why, the tiaras
were falling off their heads practically.
They were running back stage afterwards.
You never saw such a thing.
But it was the emotion because it had touched
all the wrong nerves.
[***]
BILL: I'm waiting now for the next Courrèges
to take us into a new modern era,
and we're on the threshold right now.
- Oh!
Gonna happen any minute. Any minute.
Someone, somewhere, the whole fashion world
is just ripe for something new to happen.
Someone will come with this marvelous idea and lead the way,
and then others will come and develop it...
expand on the idea, but oh yes, it's always one person.
BILL: Well actually, I've been in the fashion world
a little over 50 years.
And... anyone could be around in something a long time
but what have you done in 50 years?
I don't know if I've done very much.
God. I'm just a normal guy
going off... working at something I...
I'm fortunate that I can do what I want,
because I live in a very tiny way...
you saw, I live in a cave!
But that doesn't matter to me.
The point is to... and I just enjoy it,
I suppose it's the greatest luxury,
to be able to do that and--
Well, I'm not talented, if that's what you mean,
that's for sure...
no matter what anyone says.
I don't know, I just have--
I love documenting with a camera, that's all.
BILL: No.
Who would ever want to retire?
I'm having too much fun!
Oh no, I love my work, I love...
that's what's so wonderful about The Times.
Each week, they give us that space,
I'm presented, it's like a white canvas.
The Times is very generous, just realize that--
those pages every week they give me to
just put things that I see that I love
that I think the reader might be interested in--
hopefully will be interested in.
Oh no, ideas are the easiest thing to me.
It's what I have the most of.
That's the easiest thing, I have tons of--
Oh... spelling.
[laughter]
Getting the names and getting them right.
Oh, it's treacherous, you can't imagine what a horror.
Fridays, when I'm there putting together--
but The Times is marvelous,
it's filled with wonderful people...
there's a camaraderie where they all stand behind,
they help you get the-- oh you can't imagine.
Oh, that's a horror trip.
[laughter]
- Yes. - MARK: Okay.
[sniffles]
The...
AIDS has been so... tearing apart.
[weeps]
And so... what I think is that you go out
and you find something wonderful
and something to inspire some way.
And you just, really, you pick up where a lot
of these extraordinary talents that we've lost
have left off, and you try to carry on for them.
And I think that's our job.
[***]
NARRATOR: In 1994, when this interview took place,
the AIDS epidemic was in full throttle.
So many talented people were dying
and those that lived through it were greatly affected.
[***]
Among his closest friends was his neighbor,
the great artist and illustrator, Antonio Lopez,
and his boyfriend and collaborator, Juan Ramos.
When Lopez became ill in 1987,
his workload rapidly diminished and he had no health insurance.
Cunningham offered to buy
one of Lopez' paintings for $130,000.
He gave Lopez the money,
and then immediately returned the same painting to him
so he could sell it once again.
Over his lifetime,
Cunningham would quietly donate
millions of dollars to AIDS charities,
as well as the Catholic Church.
When I go off, now, each morning I think,
as Pierre used to say... work well.
I do that for--
I think that all the time now, and...
[Bill sniffles]
[***]
NARRATOR: Over the next 24 years,
Bill Cunningham went on
to purchase 20-plus new bicycles
while documenting his beloved New York and Paris.
In the late '90s he discovered
his trademark blue uniform,
worn by Parisian sanitation workers,
and finally had something to wear
that wasn't from a thrift shop
or a socialite's dead husband's closet.
Despite his assuredness that the French would never bestow
an honor to a lightweight like himself,
he was awarded as an Officer of Arts and Letters
by the French Ministry of Culture in 2008.
His longtime friend, photographer Jean-Luce Huré,
pictured here with Cunningham and designer Coco Chanel
in Paris, circa 1971, presented him the honor.
[***]
Over the years Cunningham developed
a very keen and purposeful knack
for keeping the many facets of his life separate.
[***]
NARRATOR: There's little doubt
that Bill Cunningham led a most frugal life,
but given the vast size of his archives
and his quiet generosity,
he clearly knew what was valuable.
Since the early '60s,
he would amass a collection of artwork,
illustrations, and diamonds
he bought in Paris with his paycheck.
He stored them in pillowcases,
tucked away in his tiny cave at Carnegie Hall Studios.
He could sometimes be quick to snap,
or be firmly and loudly dismissive if being questioned
or interrupted by anyone while doing his work.
But ask most anyone
of their encounters with Cunningham,
and they will remember precisely where they were,
what they were wearing, and especially
whether or not they made or didn't make his Sunday pages.
[***]
While the attention that was brought to him
via a growing number of accolades
and a popular documentary in 2011 may have brought him
some degree of lifetime achievement,
it is more likely he regretted it.
On the night the documentary premiered in New York,
he stayed outside, on the street of course,
took photographs, and never saw the movie.
When he died in June of 2016,
it was as if New York stood still.
As if everyone that ever knew him,
of him, or had their photograph taken by him,
lost a good friend.
Father Kevin Madigan eulogized that,
"It was the mission of Bill Cunningham
to capture and celebrate beauty wherever he found it.
His whole life was dedicated to that single pursuit."
[***]
Like any true artist,
he helped people to see in a new way,
see what might otherwise have gone unnoticed
in the hurried pace of city life.
[***]
NARRATOR: A famous quote about Cunningham
by longtime American Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour,
pictured here over the years in photographs by Cunningham,
once said,
"We all get dressed for Bill."
[***]
Many now wonder
if there will ever be anyone like Bill Cunningham
to dress for again.
[***]
Well this is all off the top of my head!
I didn't really think about things to speak to you about,
I thought we were only gonna go something for about ten minutes,
this thing has gone on for hours, I mean.
MARK: So, and again, let me just--
[tape rewinds]
[street chatter]
["Lift Me Up" by Moby plays]
[song continues]
[***]