Word: becher
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bernhard Becher is one of the few people in the world who hate to see a bright sunny day. Before his blonde wife Hilla even pouts on the morning tea in their Düsseldorf apartment, she looks outside, hoping to see the kind of lead-gray overcast for which Germany's Ruhr Valley is noted. Becher's concern with the weather is not a matter of whim. He is a photographer, his subject the collieries, mills, water towers and other rugged structures of Europe's coal and steel industries. Only a dull diffused light...
...haul to the coal fields of Liège, Belgium, or the grimy Bassin du Nord of France, they ply a favored route leading from Düsseldorf into the heart of the Ruhr, home of Germany's coal and steel industries. Before a visit to Oberhausen recently, Becher had made contact with one of the plant offices, cajoled plant guards with a few cases of beer, and cut down a few shrubs on a nearby slag heap. When he returned, photographic equipment in hand, he found a splendid view of an awful sight. There, in the foreground, were...
Anonymous Sculpture. The Bechers' interest in photographing what most people prefer to forget has understandably raised many a questioning eyebrow. "The hardest thing when I first started was getting permission," says Bernhard. "They thought I was crazy." Descended from coal miners and steel workers, Becher came to his interest in industrial relics naturally. At first he pursued a painting career, soon found that the sights that captivated him were factories, machinery, construction sites...
...bounderish British blend of sad sack and pukka sahib: busby brows that shoot up in startled innocence or beetle down with Mac the Knife malevolence; lugubrious eyes rocketing around like apoplectic billiard balls; a Scotch-sodden thatch of mustache, and, of course, those two front teeth, gaping wide as Becher's Brook. Wherever he takes a stroll, from Soho to Sunset Boulevard, Terry-Thomas is stopped by little old ladies who ask him to smile. When he obliges, they always exclaim: "It's real...
...astonishingly modulated performance based on a remarkable gift for subtle timing and inflection. I cannot imagine another player's surpassing this feat, which is destined to be a classic. Miss White is most ably supported by Edward Finnegan's Willie; indeed Finnegan is more piteous than was John Becher in the original production...