Part 2 – Margaret’s Critical and Commercial Success

Outside of this main point of contention in their relationship we learn surprisingly little about Margaret and, in this film that celebrates her as an artist, we see hardly any of her art. In one scene we see her hurriedly put away a self-portrait she’d been working on when Walter, like a line-manager at a factory, enters the painting studio. ¹. The implication being that her art was secondary to the lucrative waifs. Walter objects to the new style of her painting and worries that the lie of him not being the principal artist responsible for all their great success would leak out. She appeals to him to “please just let me have this.”²

However, this dramatisation belies the fact that Margaret’s work wasn’t some trifulling sideline enterprise. It was helped by the exposure Walter’s marketing gave the waifs but it should be noted that Margaret was a painter with commercial and critical success of her own during the height of their fame as a painting duo.

A string of high-profile celebrities commissioned Margaret – not Walter – to paint their portraits, among them: Dean Martin, Red Skelton, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Kim Novak, Adlai Stevenson, and Joan Crawford. Her painting was not a clandestine operation. A celebrity gossip column describes how Liberace had asked Margaret to do his portrait in the lounge of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel so that his fans could admire him (and presumably also her) during the process. Newspapers described her as a “well-known”³ artist whose painting was compared with Rembrant while on more than one occasion in the press Walter was described simply as “also a painter.” ⁴ In a 1962 column we learn that “Celebrities who once bought only Walter’s paintings of wistful young children with the trademark of big eyes, are now asking Margaret to do their portraits.”⁵

Elsewhere, in the artbooks the Keanes published there are photographs of Margaret posing alongside her recently completed commissions, her standing with Natalie Wood, and beaming next to Jerry Lewis, his, wife Patti and the large family portrait that also included, and as Margaret would like to remind us four dogs and three cats. It was reportedly completed over “12 zany sessions.” ⁶

The Keanes shared the media spotlight. A 1957 newspaper story includes a photograph of the whole family: Margaret, Walter and their daughters Susan, from Walter’s previous marriage (he was recently divorced when he met Margaret in 1955) and Jane, from Margarets’, descending the stairs of an aeroplane in Chicago where they were to hold an exhibition of their artwork as a family. “WE NEVER pushed the children in to art”⁷ Walter would tell the press. This may have been true but for the brand KEANE over the next few years they would all feature in similar newspaper photographs; the two girls prominent, each with their own canvas, Walter pallet and brush in hand with a half finished waif on his easel and Margaret similarly at work on one of her distinctive portraits.

In many ways the Keanes wielded a media savvy ahead of its time in an era predating reality television. Walter boasts of this skill to LIFE magazine’s Jane Howard, “…this being the age of transportation and communication. We’ve used television [guest shots] more than any other way of getting ourselves known.”⁸

Even when they didn’t have a product to sell Walter ensured the Keane name was still in the news, for example he’d appear in the Food Section of a newspaper advertising a recipe for “Macaroni for four”⁹ the perfect soul food for a family of hardworking artists.

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It’s notable that a former US president – who wouldn’t begin to craft his own persona via the media until his first television appearances in 1980 – shares a number of traits with Walter Keane. Both were commercial real estate brokers, both charismatically manipulated the media, using good press and bad to hone a fictional public persona. Both talked about themselves in the third person, “nobody could paint eyes like El Greco and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane”¹⁰ Walter brags. Both always portrayed themselves as the victims of conspiracy. When his “Masterpiece” Tomorrow Forever was given a stinging negative review by New York Times art critic John Canaday and rejected for exhibition at the World’s Fair in 1964,¹¹ Walter took to the press to express his rage at an artworld that was rigged, “manipulated by a few museum directors and art critics.”¹² At the end of Burton’s film we are told that Walter died “bitter and penniless”, he never accepted defeat in his court cases with Margaret, nor did he take responsibility for his actions. A similar admission or expression of remorse seems equally unlikely from the former president.

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Summary

• Margaret was a successful and critically well-recieved portrait artist in her own right
• The Keanes’ used the media to promote themselves as well as their art

Continue to Part 3 – Margaret’s Inspiration Went Unexplored

Footnotes

1. Big Eyes (2014) [48:30]
2. Big Eyes (2014) [50:00]
3. ‘Artist Margaret Keane Prefers Midnight Oils, The Courier-Journal, 2 April 1961
4. New Gift Painting For Brooks The Commercial Appeal, 25 July 1965
5. Noted American Artists Will Exhibit Here ,The Daily Telegram 20 July 1965
6. A family portrait Jerry Lewis and his wife, Patti, Margaret Keane at right, The Peninsula Times Tribune, 17 Sept, 1962.
7. Painting Keanes Are on the March, The San Francisco Examiner, 13 January 1960
8. The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes, LIFE, 27 August 1965
9. Artist in Another Role, Redwood City Tribune, 30 January, 1963
10. The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes, LIFE, 27 August 1965
11. World’s Fair vetoes Walter Keane’s painting, Palo Alto Times, 3 March 1964
12. Keane Charges ‘Art Business Is Manipulated, The Lincoln Star, 28 June 1970