Dionne Warwick: Driving in Style Down the Middle of the Road

Dionne Warwick posed in Hyde Park, London in 1965. Photo : David Redfern/Redferns

‘You cannot separate the voice from the heart. Dionne’s music inspired people to see and look forward to the best part of themselves.’
Stevie Wonder

I recently watched an entertaining documentary about the career of sublime singer Dionne Warwick. (‘Don’t Make Me Over’, directed by Dave Wooley and David Heilbroner, 2021)

'Years ago I learned to be totally responsible for Dionne Warwick. I will not wait for opportunities. I will create them.’

Through the ‘60s and ‘70s Warwick performed peerless versions of Bacharach & David songs - classics like ‘Don't Make Me Over’, ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ and ’Walk On By’; ‘Alfie’, ‘A House Is Not a Home’ and ‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose.’ In the ‘80s she successfully re-launched her career, scoring more hits and winning countless awards. And she went on to be an effective activist and campaigner.

‘They’re not gonna tell me what to do.’

Warwick was the mistress of a particular form of American popular song. Achieving sustained mainstream success is deceptively difficult. She teaches us how it can be done with style and grace.

'Anyone who ever loved
Could look at me
And know that I love you.
Anyone who ever dreamed
Could look at me
And know I dream of you,
Knowing I love you so.
Anyone who had a heart
Would take me in his arms and love me too.
You couldn't really have a heart
And hurt me like you hurt me,
And be so untrue.
What am I to do?’
‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ (B Bacharach / H David)

Born in 1940, Marie Dionne Warrick was raised in a middle-class neighbourhood in East Orange, New Jersey. Her mother worked in an electrical factory and her father was a Pullman porter.

'My parents gave me stability and a belief in myself and in all the possibilities life has to offer. I was told the only limitations I would ever face were those I placed upon myself.’

Music was central to Warrick’s life from the start. Her mother, Lee Drinkard, managed a gospel group. Accomplished vocalist Cissy Houston (mother of Whitney) was her aunt and lived in the same family home. Legendary opera singer Leontyne Price was a cousin.

'I come from a singing family, and, as is said, 'the apple does not fall far from the tree.'’

Warrick sang in church where her grandfather was a minister. At the age of 6, when she was invited to stand on some books to perform ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ she received her first standing ovation. At the age of 17 she took the stage at the famously challenging Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater Harlem.

‘If you think it, you can do it.’

Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach at Pye studios in London. 29th November 1964. (Photo by Bela Zola/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

After finishing High School in 1959, Warrick studied at the Hartt College of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut. There she learned to read, play and write music, a technical education that would sustain her throughout her career. At the same time she found work singing backing vocals for recording sessions in New York City.

In 1962 Warrick was spotted at one of these sessions by songwriter Burt Bacharach, and hired to record demos of songs he had written with lyricist Hal David.

‘As long as it doesn’t interfere with my education – because my mother would kill you, and me too.’

Warrick hoped that one of the demos, ‘Make It Easy on Yourself,’ would become her first single release. When she discovered Bacharach & David had given the song to another artist, Jerry Butler, she was not happy.

‘That didn’t sit too well with me. So when I got to New York I kind of let them know: ‘Ahah. You don’t do that to me. One thing I want you both to understand is there’s something you can never do to Dionne – that’s try to make her over. So don’t even think it.’’

Bacharach & David apologised and were inspired by Warrick’s rebuke to write her first hit, 1962’s ‘Don't Make Me Over.’ Warrick's name was misspelled Warwick on the record label and she adopted the new construction thereafter.

'Don't make me over
Now that I'd do anything for you.
Don't make me over
Now that you know how I adore you.
Don't pick on the things I say, the things I do,
Just love me with all my faults
The way that I love you.
I'm begging you.’
‘Don’t Make Me Over’ (B Bacharach / H David)

Touring on the Chitlin’ Circuit in the American South, Warwick experienced the indignities of racism – only being allowed to use Black hotels, restaurants and toilets; not feeling safe to stay in certain towns; performing to segregated audiences.

At one such gig Sam Cooke advised her before she went on stage: ‘Do not turn your back on the white folk.’

Young Warwick wasn’t willing to comply.

‘First thing I did when I went out there, I walked straight to the band and turned my back and played to the ones that looked like me.’

On another occasion Warwick made a point of adapting the lyrics to Ray Charles’ ‘What I Say’.

'Tell your mama, tell your pa, we're gonna integrate Arkansas.'

She was warned by the police that she had minutes to get out of town.

'I refuse to allow prejudice to defeat me.’

Bigotry couldn’t stop Warwick’s progress. She scored hit after hit in the US and abroad, touring Europe to great acclaim. Marlene Dietrich announced her on stage at the Paris Olympia and introduced her to the world of couture.

‘She took me shopping, much to the chagrin of my accountants.’

Warwick was not a raw-voiced R&B or gospel artist in the traditional sense. Rather her singing was light and elegant. Her voice floated above and around the instrumentation. It could be delicate, soft, and then startlingly robust. It was always under complete control.

Warwick’s technical skills enabled her to navigate Bacharach’s complex compositions. Indeed she inspired him to write more challenging tunes.

‘To sing Bacharach’s melodies you almost had to have a music education, just to read what he wrote – different registers, time signatures. The man marched to his own drummer. If you wanted to be part of that, you had to march with him.’

With her high cheekbones and elegantly arched eyebrows; with her immaculate hair and chic wardrobe, Warwick was a class act. Her success took her to places that few Black performers had been before – to Vegas and prime time TV shows, hosted by the likes of Ed Sullivan, Perry Como and Danny Kaye. Some critics responded to her sweet voice, clear articulation and pop material by labelling her crossover or middle-of-the-road. Some underestimated her talent.

What strikes me about the Warwick story is that, while it’s relatively easy to stay niche and narrow in your appeal, it is incredibly hard to succeed in the mainstream. She demonstrates that to drive in the middle of the road, you need a rare combination of talent, technique and tenacity. Yes, she sang with poise and grace. But she was precise and meticulous in her delivery, strong and resolute in her engagement with the industry.

'I am an outspoken person. I believe in what I say.’

The mental toughness that helped get Warwick to the top was also very much evident in her later career.

With the chart dominance of disco in the late ‘70s, Warwick considered retirement. She was persuaded back to the recording studio by Clive Davis at Arista.

'You may be ready to give the business up, but the business is not ready to give you up.'
Clive Davis

There followed another string of hits, including ‘I’ll Never Love This Way Again’ and ‘Heartbreaker.’

‘I’m a messenger and I’m carrying messages of love and hope.’

Warwick was one of the first voices in the music business to speak out about the AIDS crisis, recording the benefit single 'That's What Friends Are For' for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) (alongside Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder). Appointed a health ambassador by Ronald Reagan, she prompted him to say the word AIDS in public for the first time.

‘My guide is the bible. Everybody is your brother’s keeper. Everybody. I don’t care who you are – white, black, green, orange and different. You can be striped and you’re still my sister or brother – by the rules of god. And I’ve got to do what is right to help you.’

Warwick subsequently addressed the issue of misogynist lyrics in gangster rap, taking to task the likes of Snoop Dogg, Tupac and Death Row Records’ Suge Knight.

‘You don’t call me out of my name. You don’t know me that well.’

In a 60-year career Dionne Warwick has sold over 100 million records, she has had 56 chart hits and won 6 Grammy Awards. She has been a model of mainstream success – tender, technical and tough. No one dared make her over.

'If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry each time we meet,
Walk on by, walk on by.
Make believe
That you don't see the tears,
Just let me grieve
In private, because each time I see you
I break down and cry,
And walk on by.’
‘Walk On By’ (B Bacharach / H David)

No. 416

Cecil Beaton: Preserving the Fleeting Moment

Cecil Beaton by Paul Tanqueray, 1937. National Portrait Gallery, London. © Estate of Paul Tanqueray

‘I exposed thousands of rolls of film, wrote hundreds of thousands of words, in a futile attempt to preserve the fleeting moment.’
Cecil Beaton

I recently watched a splendid film documenting the life and work of the photographer, designer, artist and writer Cecil Beaton: ‘Love, Cecil’ (2017) by Lisa Vreeland.

Beaton recorded the flamboyant lives of the Bright Young Things. He took glamorous photographs of Vogue fashion models, Hollywood movie stars and British royalty. He supported the war effort with touching portraits of people in peril. He designed fabulous costumes and sets for stage and screen. He was an aesthete and a modernist, a dandy and a diarist. He was a man on a relentless quest for beauty.

‘I think that beauty is only static for so long. And then we move on.’

Let us consider what Beaton has to teach us.

1. ‘Wander in the Labyrinth of Choice’

A portrait of Baba Beaton, the photographer’s sister. Photograph: Cecil Beaton/National Portrait Gallery/PA

Cecil Beaton was born in 1904 in Hampstead, England. His father was a timber merchant and he had a comfortable middle-class childhood. From an early age he collected cinema magazines, theatre programmes and postcards of stage performers. At 11 he was given his first camera, a Box-Brownie, and taught how to use it by his nurse Ninnie. He refined his skills by photographing his two sisters, Nancy and Barbara, arranging them in the elegant fashions and poses he’d observed in his magazines.

Beaton did not enjoy school. He was a poor scholar and was bullied - by Evelyn Waugh amongst others. 

‘I learned a lot at school, but nothing to do with the things I should have learned.’

At Cambridge University he dedicated his time to the Amateur Dramatic Club and to his love of the arts. 

‘I set about becoming a rabid aesthete. I took a passionate interest in the Italian renaissance, in Diaghalev’s Russian ballet, and of course in the theatre and in photography.’ 

Beaton left Cambridge without a degree. A brief period in the family timber business didn’t work out, and he was a source of some frustration to his father.

Interviewer: What was it that made it difficult to get on with your father?
Beaton: Well I think it was very difficult for my father to get on with me.

Beaton had many creative interests, but was at a loss what to do with himself.

‘Some people tend to know their vocation instinctively and follow a single path their whole lives. Others wander in the labyrinth of choice.’

 2. ‘Attempt to Preserve the Fleeting Moment’

The Bright Young Things

Interviewer: What were your ambitions at that time?
Beaton: To be able to demonstrate that I was not just an ordinary, anonymous person.

Through his friend Stephen Tennant, the son of a Scottish peer, Beaton gained access to the group of patrician socialites popularly known as the Bright Young Things. 

Beaton photographed this hedonistic set at Bloomsbury costume parties and charity pageants; at country house weekends and on treasure hunts. He photographed them in glittering gowns against sequinned curtains; with feathered fans, beaded skullcaps and strings of pearls; in medieval, regency and nautical fancy dress; against backdrops of flora and fauna, of gypsophila and cellophane. Here’s Rex Whistler playing a wandering minstrel; Tallulah Bankhead with a witch’s ball; Georgia Sitwell with her borzoi; Lady Loughborough under a bell jar. 

‘Our activities were all done with zest and originality. What a rush life had become.’

In his images Beaton created an escapist realm of dreams and fantasy, tinged with surreal strangeness. He sought not to reveal the world as he found it, but as he wished it to be. Above all he endeavoured to capture fleeting moments of beauty.

‘What a marvellous thing great physical beauty is. It’s nothing less than a living miracle. It’s not the result of achievement, skill, patience or endeavour. It’s just a divine happening.’

Beaton’s society photographs helped to build his reputation, and in 1928 he travelled to New York where he got a job with Vogue that sustained him for the next ten years. 

Marlene Dietrich, 1930

Employing the same techniques of artifice and allure that he had applied to the Bright Young Things, Beaton photographed Hepburn, Welles and Dietrich; Gary Cooper, Judy Garland and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr; fashion models surrounded by flowers, masks, hat boxes and hat stands, interacting with newspaper headlines, artists’ illustrations and expressionist shadows; set against polka dots, chiffon and lace.

Buoyed up by his success, in 1930 Beaton leased Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, where he set about entertaining a glittering circle of artists, actors and aristocrats.

 3. ‘Appreciate Beauty in Very Much Wider Fields’

Eileen Dunne in The Hospital for Sick Children, 1940. (detail) by Cecil Beaton

In 1938 Beaton's time with Vogue came to an abrupt end when he inserted a small-but-legible anti-Semitic slur into an illustration for a magazine piece about New York society. The issue was withdrawn. Beaton was forced to publish a statement of apology and then fired. He left New York in disgrace.

Back in England, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Beaton was offered a job at the Ministry of Information. 

‘It was clear that in anything connected with soldiering I would be a real sad sack. But I wanted to be useful.’

Beaton captured compelling images of the City in ruins after the Blitz; a woman welder at a shipyard; a sailor repairing a signal flag; a pilot in the cockpit of a Wellington bomber; an injured child in hospital holding her teddy bear. He travelled to Burma, China and Egypt and photographed troops in gasmasks; soldiers sharing a consoling cigarette; contorted tank wreckage buried in the sand.

‘In the hangers of an aerodrome I found more thrilling sets than in the Hollywood studios.’

Beaton had grown to appreciate that visions of beauty can be found in the ordinary and everyday; in times of crisis and despair.

‘I think with experience, looking around in life, the photographer gets to appreciate beauty in very much wider fields.’

Gradually Beaton rebuilt his reputation. His rehabilitation was further assisted by royal patronage. In 1937 he had taken the wedding pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and in 1939 he was invited to photograph Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother). He went on to record the birth of Prince Charles and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In all, he photographed some 30 members of the British royal family.

4. Be Neither Bored Nor Boring

Audrey Hepburn on set for the film of My Fair Lady, 1963

Beaton patched up his relationship with Vogue, and after the War he received a stream of commissions for fashion spreads and celebrity portraits. In 1947 he bought his own home and gardens, Reddish House in Wiltshire.

'All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left.'

Beaton turned his attention to designing sets, costumes and lighting for the Broadway stage. His theatre work led to assignments on two Lerner and Loewe film musicals, ‘Gigi’ (1958) and ‘My Fair Lady’ (1964), each of which earned him the Oscar for Best Costume Design. ‘My Fair Lady’ was particularly memorable for the way that it presented an enhanced, contemporised vision of the Edwardian grandeur of his childhood. 

‘The visual really guides my life more than anything.’

Beaton had boundless energy for work and play, a restless visual appetite. Through the ‘60s and ‘70s he continued to seek out new and interesting talent, creating memorable images of Warhol and Hockney; Jagger and Streisand; Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree.

‘I have always complimented myself on my stamina, and can wear out even my younger friends when it comes to work or play. I can still think of myself as a rather appealing Bright Young Thing.’

Mick Jagger

Beaton compiled scrapbooks of visual delights and published six volumes of diaries, covering the years 1922–1974. He had affairs with both men and women, and he once proposed to Greta Garbo. But ultimately he was unhappy in love. He was of course a social climber. He could be snobbish, insecure and vindictive, and he was always falling out with people. His list of adversaries included George Cukor, Noel Coward, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

‘He gathers enemies like other people gather roses.’
Truman Capote

Occasionally, in more reflective moments, Beaton expressed a note of regret.

‘I think perhaps I’ve been much too outspoken on rather trivial subjects.’

In the twilight of his career Beaton’s contribution to photography, theatre, film and fashion was celebrated in exhibitions at the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery, and in 1972 he was knighted. 

Two years later Beaton suffered a stroke. He died in 1980 at home at Reddish House, four days after his 76th birthday.

'Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.’

We spend a good deal of time nowadays celebrating authenticity and gritty realism; endeavouring to reflect the world as it truly is. Beaton reminds us that sometimes it is appropriate to suspend disbelief; that there is also merit in artifice and romance, glamour and fantasy, taste and style; that there is value in seeking and preserving beauty in its purest forms.

‘Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.’

'Every duke and earl and peer is here.
Everyone who should be here is here.
What a smashing, positively dashing
Spectacle: the Ascot opening day.

What a frenzied moment that was!
Didn't they maintain an exhausting pace?
'Twas a thrilling, absolutely chilling running of the
Ascot opening race.’

Ascot Gavotte, ‘My Fair Lady’ (A Lerner / F Loewe)

No. 344

Bad Timing: It’s Not Enough to Be Right, You Need to Be Right at the Right Time

Film still: Shanghai Express

‘If you’re thinking of reforming me, you might as well save yourself the trouble.’

In the 1932 movie ‘Shanghai Express’ an eccentric crew are thrown together in the First Class carriage of a train travelling through civil war torn China. They include an English missionary, a French veteran, an American gambler, a German opium dealer and a Chinese spy. 

Marlene Dietrich plays the elegant and enigmatic Shanghai Lily. She discovers that a rather reserved British army doctor, Captain Harvey, is a fellow passenger. Five years earlier they were in a relationship, but they separated when she tested his faith in her.

‘I wanted to be certain that you loved me. Instead I lost you.’

Lily has since adopted the life of a courtesan.

'It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.'

It becomes clear that Lily and Harvey still carry a torch for one another. Will they be able to rekindle their romance despite everything that has happened?

Director Josef von Sternberg uses ‘Shanghai Express’ as a vehicle for Dietrich’s extraordinary beauty. He employs a raft of lighting techniques and costume choices to draw our gaze.

We see Dietrich in the dark, in torchlight, emerging from the shadows; Dietrich behind a lace veil, in a feathered cap, her face framed by fur. There’s Dietrich in a long silk dress, in a chain-mesh collar, in a kimono; Dietrich with a blonde bob, backlit. Big eyes, hooded lids, hypnotic gaze. Dietrich walks through steam, peers through glass. She smokes a cigarette. We are fascinated by her angular cheekbones, her elegantly trimmed eyebrows, her sad sombre voice. Dietrich in jewels, in the Captain’s hat, in tears, in prayer. 

As the train makes its way across China the two former lovers confront each other. Harvey professes his enduring commitment to her. Lily is confused.

'When I needed your faith, you withheld it. And now, when I don't need it, and don't deserve it, you give it to me.'

Film still: Shanghai Express

Lily’s frustration will resonate with many people watching. Bad timing has arrested many budding romances before they can blossom. Bad timing can cool passion, frustrate affection, dampen enthusiasm. The moment passes, the opportunity evaporates, circumstances change. If only things had been different…

It’s true of business too.

Looking back over my years in advertising I can recall sound appointments that failed for being premature or belated; promising careers that floundered because engagement was misaligned; robust initiatives that ran aground for being ahead of their time or behind the times. Too late into digital, too early into content, too soon with media planning… 

Arrive before there’s Client appetite or commercial need and you’ll not be properly appreciated. Come too late and you’ll miss the boat. It’s not enough to be right. You need to be right at the right time.

As the Shanghai Express progresses across China, it is hijacked by rebel soldiers. Lily saves her former lover’s life, but he once again misinterprets events. 

Dietrich turns the light out and is alone with a cigarette. 

Finally, to everyone’s relief, Harvey sees sense. He catches up with Lily on a crowded Shanghai Station platform.

‘There’s only one thing I want to tell you… How in the name of Confucius can I kiss you with all these people around?’

'Now what am I supposed to do,
When I want you in my world?
How can I want you for myself,
When I'm already someone’s girl?

I guess I'll see you next lifetime.
No hard feelings.
I guess I'll see you next lifetime.
I'm gonna be there.'

Erykah Badu, 'Next Lifetime'

No. 223