THE ART OF FRED BANBERY: ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL

“Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.”

– Alfred Hitchcock

Boy, were these fun! For a while in the mid-60's, the name Alfred Hitchcock was ubiquitous in the media. Besides his hit TV show, he was producing and directing movies by the parcel and sidelines such as radio shows abounded. One of these was a series of children's "scary" books (or, at least, books intended for a young readership!) that carried his name. ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL (published on September 1, 1961) is subtitled on the cover, “NINE COOL STORIES ABOUT HAUNTED HOUSES AND  GHOSTS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS". The stories are all pretty harmless for a kid, but they provided plenty of nighttime reading shivers nonetheless. It was edited by Robert Arthur, a frequent writer for Hitchcock books (including the Three Investigator series), and who most probably wrote the introduction to this book even though it is signed by Hitch. The stories were further helped along immensely by the spooky visuals provided by illustrator Fred Banbery.

Frederick Ernest Banbery (1 September 1913 – 7 March 1999) is best known as the artist that brought Michael Bond's famous Paddington Bear to life in the character's second series of publication. Following is a short biography from the Chris Beetles Gallery website:

The versatile draughtsman Fred Banbery made an important contribution to the development of the immortal character of Paddington Bear. During the early 1970s, he drew on his wide range of experience as illustrator and cartoonist to produce images to accompany texts simplified by Michael Bond from his original ‘Paddington’ stories. These variants, published over a decade after the initial book, A Bear Called Paddington (1958), were aimed at the under fives and known collectively as the ‘Young Set’. Their picture-book format placed much greater emphasis on the visual element than had the original form of publication. So Banbery had much greater scope than his predecessor Peggy Fortnum, not only through the formal potential of size and colour, but through the need to delineate personality and narrative. Given a free hand by author and editor, Banbery was able to act as creator as well as interpreter, to the degree that his widow can detect strong elements of self-portraiture in his portrayal of the bear. Ultimately, he determined the quintessential look of Paddington.

Fred Banbery was born in Pimlico, London, on 1 September 1913, the son of a publican. He was educated at Westminster City School, where his artistic talents were encouraged by his art master; while there, he won a number of prizes for drawing, including a copy of W Outram Tristram’s Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, with illustrations by Hugh Thomson and Herbert Railton, a volume which would later prove an important influence on his career.

From 1930, Banbery worked as a commercial artist, while studying in evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1931-33). He received regular commissions from several companies, including J Weiner Ltd, Printers (1932-34) and Dorland Advertising Ltd (1934-37). Then, in 1938, he left England for Bombay in order to become a staff artist for The Times of India; his success was marked in the following year when the newspaper awarded him its Medal for Graphic Art. During the Second World War, he drew propaganda images for the Government of India at New Delhi (1939-41), even as he began to serve as a pilot in the Royal Air Force (in India and then in Europe between 1940-46). He also found enough spare time to produce sufficient cartoons to be collected in book form as Who Said Blitzkrieg?

Following the war, Banbery settled in the United States, and worked as a commercial artist and illustrator for H Watts Associates, New York (1946-50). His first commission was as a book illustrator for Simon & Schuster who, in 1949, used him again to illustrate a special, highly successful edition of the Pickwick Papers. (His drawings for the project, inspired in part by Tristram’s Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, were exhibited at the Arthur Newton Galleries, New York). In the same year, he began to contribute to numerous periodicals, including Collier’s Magazine and Holiday Magazine and won the Institute of American Engravers Prize. Moving to Philadelphia, he worked for N W Ayer & Son Advertising (195-53), and continued to develop a reputation, garnering a number of awards, from the American Institute of Graphic Art (1950), the New York Art Directors Club (1951) and the Philadelphia Art Directors Club (1953, 1954 and 1955).

From 1954, Banbery worked increasingly for London clients, and especially The Sunday Times (1954-57) and Murray & Phelan Advertising Ltd (1958-61). However, he retained his American contacts, with the result that he contributed to The New Yorker (from 1958), illustrated books for Random House, Simon & Schuster and Viking (1961-67), and received an award from the American Institute of Lithographers and Printers (1958).

The most lasting contribution made by Banbery to British illustration, before his death in London on 7 March 1999, also originated in an American connection. During regular stays at Aspen, Colorado, when it was as much a centre of culture as a ski resort, he had met and befriended the Olympic skier, Evie Chance. It was she who suggested to Adrian House at Collins Publishing that he would be an ideal choice of illustrator of the new picture-book variants of Michael Bond’s ‘Paddington’ stories (1972-75). So he succeeded Peggy Fortnum, the much admired original illustrator, and successfully emphasised the visual identity of the little bear from Darkest Peru.

Banbery evolved an ideal approach with which to present Paddington to small children. The line that he employed is tighter than that of Fortnum, yet just as sensitive, so establishing an image that registers easily and comfortably with young eyes and minds. The details of appearance that he included, such as Paddington’s hat and duffle coat, are defined and codified in order to aid recognition and memorability; thus he seems to have understood that the experience of looking, especially at an early age, should be at once educational and pleasurable. The positioning of Paddington within an image reveals his interest in affirming an immediate rapport between readers and character: the bear is often to the fore, looking out and gesturing, even waving. So he mediates between the reader and the large, if quiet and subdued, environment of Britain in the 1970s. Banbery almost transformed Paddington from an amusing outsider to the baby of a family. In the attempt he made Paddington the child within us all.

No mention of Banbery's work on the Hitchcock books here, so enough with cute little bears; let's talk about his great drawings for ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL! This was the first of several books aimed at a young readership and contained reprints of ghost stories that had appeared over the years in any number of collections. Introduced by Hitchcock, but more probably written by editor Robert Arthur, the contents provided a wide variety of frights for youngsters:

• Let’s Haunt a House by Manly Wade Wellman
• The Wastwych Secret by Constance Savery
• Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons by Walter R. Brooks
• The Mystery of Rabbit Run by Jack Bechdolt
• The Forgotten Island by Elizabeth Coatsworth
• The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall by John Kendrick Bangs
• The Red-Headed League by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Treasure in the Cave by Mark Twain
• The Mystery in Four-and-a-Half Street by Donald Peattie & Louise Peattie

Two of the stories in Hitchcock's HAUNTED HOUSEFUL had been previously published a year earlier in editor Nora Kramer's collection, ARROW BOOK OF GHOST STORIES (Scholastic Book Services). The first, "Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons" by Walter R. Brooks was also included in the children's LP ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOST STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE (Golden Records, 1962). The other, "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs, was simply titled, "The Water Ghost" in the Arrow book.

"The Red-Headed League" is of course, a Sherlock Holmes tale by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and "The Treasure in the Cave" is an excerpt from Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer".

Hitchcock was known for his gallows humor and this was not lost on Banbery -- he depicted the ghosts in his drawings with the unmistakable face of Hitchcock!

This and the other books in the series have been looked at fondly by readers who discovered them in the 1960's and 1970's, and are memorable in large part for the images by Fred Banbery that accompanied the stories.

Here are the complete illustrations from the book. So far as my research took me while writing this, I found many sites that recycled the same images, but none that I found had all of them.

Front cover of dust jacket.

Front cover "self-cover".

Inside front cover illustration.

Inside back cover illustration.

Back cover illustration.