Penelope Tree | |
---|---|
Born | [1] | December 2, 1949
Nationality | British/American [1] |
Occupation | Fashion model |
Years active | 1960s onwards |
Known for | Swinging sixties |
Notable work | The Rutles (1978 film) |
Spouse | Ricky Fataar |
Partner(s) | David Bailey Stuart MacFarlane |
Children | 2 |
Parents |
|
Relatives | Jeremy Tree (half-brother) Frances FitzGerald (half-sister) |
Penelope Tree (born 2 December 1949) is an English fashion model who rose to prominence during the Swinging Sixties in London. [2]
Penelope Tree is the only child of Marietta Peabody Tree, a U.S. socialite and political activist, and Ronald, a British journalist, investor and Conservative MP. She is the half-sister of racehorse trainer Jeremy Tree and author Frances FitzGerald, and she is a niece of former Massachusetts governor Endicott Peabody.
Tree's family initially objected to her career as a model, [2] and when she was first photographed at age 13 by Diane Arbus, her father vowed to sue if the pictures were published. [3]
Tree made a striking appearance at the 1966 Black and White Ball thrown by author Truman Capote, wearing a black V-neck tunic with long slashes from the bottom making floating panels, worn over black tights. [4]
The sensation she caused led photographers Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon to work together to make her a supermodel. [5] She was 16 and her father had relented. David Bailey described Penelope as "an Egyptian Jiminy Cricket". [6]
In 1967, Tree moved into Bailey's flat in London's Primrose Hill neighbourhood. [2] It became a social space for hippies during the "Swinging Sixties" who, Bailey recalled, would be "smoking joints I had paid for and calling me a capitalist pig!" In another famous quote, when John Lennon was asked to encapsulate Tree in three words, he replied, "Hot, Hot, Hot, Smart, Smart, Smart!" [7]
Tree has been extensively compared to The Beatles for inspiring the swinging 60's movement and for galvanizing a generation of young American females.[ citation needed ] Scars from late-onset acne ended her career [2] in the early 1970s: "I went from being sought-after to being shunned because nobody could bear to talk about the way I looked." [8] In 1972, she was arrested for possession of cocaine. [7] [8] In 1974, Bailey and Tree split up and she moved to Sydney. She appeared in the British comedy film The Rutles in 1978. [9]
She was married to South African musician Ricky Fataar (a member of The Flames, The Rutles, and the Beach Boys). She has two children: Paloma Fataar, a graduate of Bard College and a student of Tibetan Buddhism and music; and Michael MacFarlane; by her relationship with Australian Jungian analyst Stuart MacFarlane.
Penelope Tree is a patron of Lotus Outreach, a charity which works in Cambodia in partnership with local grassroots women's organisations to give girls from the very poorest families the wherewithal to go to school. [10]
In 1983, English indiepop band Felt released a song called "Penelope Tree", featuring a picture of her on the cover. [11]
In 2011, Tree appeared as an interviewee for a documentary on the life of fashion editor Diana Vreeland.[ citation needed ]
In 2017, she was interviewed for a documentary about Beaton called Love, Cecil
The Rutles were a rock band that performed visual and aural pastiches and parodies of the Beatles. This originally fictional band, created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, later toured and recorded, releasing two studio albums and garnering two UK chart hits. The band toured again from 2002 until Innes's death in 2019.
Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions.
David Royston Bailey is an English photographer and director, most widely known for his fashion photography and portraiture, and role in shaping the image of the Swinging Sixties. Bailey has also directed several television commercials and documentaries.
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as costume designer and set designer for films and the theatre. His work earned him three Academy Awards and four Tony Awards.
Gloria Guinness, previously Countess Gloria von Fürstenberg-Herdringen, was a Mexican socialite and a contributing editor to Harper's Bazaar from 1963 to 1971. She was photographed by Cecil Beaton, Slim Aarons, Alejo Vidal-Quadras; designed for by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint-Laurent; and was also a close friend and inspiration to Truman Capote.
The Swinging Sixties was a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in the United Kingdom during the mid-to-late 1960s, emphasising modernity and fun-loving hedonism, with Swinging London denoted as its centre. It saw a flourishing in art, music and fashion, and was symbolised by the city's "pop and fashion exports", such as the Beatles, as the multimedia leaders of the British Invasion of musical acts; the mod and psychedelic subcultures; Mary Quant's miniskirt designs; popular fashion models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton; the iconic status of popular shopping areas such as London's King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street; the political activism of the anti-nuclear movement; and the sexual liberation movement.
The Innocents is a 1961 gothic psychological horror film directed and produced by Jack Clayton, and starring Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave, and Megs Jenkins. Based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by the American novelist Henry James, the screenplay was adapted by William Archibald and Truman Capote, who used Archibald's own 1950 stage play—also titled The Innocents—as a primary source text. Its plot follows a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that their large estate is haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.
Ricky Fataar is a South African musician of Malay descent who has performed as both a drummer and a guitarist. He gained fame as an actor in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a spoof on the Beatles, in which he performed as a member of the Rutles. He was also a member of the Beach Boys between 1971 and 1974, and has been the drummer for Bonnie Raitt for the last 35 years. Fataar is also a record producer, and has worked on projects scoring music to film and television.
Frances FitzGerald is an American journalist and historian, who is primarily known for Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972), an account of the Vietnam War. It was a bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and National Book Award.
The Grass Harp is a novel by Truman Capote published on October 1, 1951. It tells the story of an orphaned boy and two elderly ladies who observe life from a tree. They eventually leave their temporary retreat to make amends with each other and other members of society.
"You're No Good" is a song written by Clint Ballard Jr., first performed by Dee Dee Warwick for Jubilee Records in 1963 with production by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It has since been covered by many artists, including charting versions by Betty Everett in 1963, The Swinging Blue Jeans in 1964, and Linda Ronstadt in 1974, whose version was a number 1 hit in the United States.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. In it, a contemporary writer recalls his early days in New York City, when he makes the acquaintance of his remarkable neighbor, Holly Golightly, who is one of Capote's best-known creations. In 1961 it was adapted into a major motion picture of the same name.
"A Christmas Memory" is a short story by Truman Capote. Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, it was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963. It was issued in a stand-alone hardcover edition by Random House in 1966, and it has been published in many editions and anthologies since.
The Black and White Ball was a masquerade ball held on November 28, 1966, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Hosted by author Truman Capote, the ball was in honor of The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.
Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree was a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and investor who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Harborough constituency in Leicestershire from 1933 to 1945. He later established the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados.
Marietta Peabody Tree was an American socialite and political reporter, who represented the United States on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, appointed under the administration of John F. Kennedy.
The Rutles is a soundtrack album to the 1978 telemovie All You Need Is Cash. The album contains 14 of the tongue-in-cheek pastiches of Beatles songs that were featured in the film.
"Children on Their Birthdays" is a short story by Truman Capote, published serially in the late 1940s and appearing in A Tree of Night and Other Stories in 1949; it is noted as one of his better quality early short stories.
Edith Maud Olivier MBE was an English writer, also noted for acting as hostess to a circle of well-known writers, artists, and composers in her native Wiltshire.
Zita Jungman, later Zita James, was one of the Bright Young Things.
When John Lennon was asked to describe her in three words he is said to have replied: 'Hot, hot, hot, smart, smart, smart!'