Binkie Beaumont

Hugh "Binkie" Beaumont (27 March 1908 – 22 March 1973) was a British theatre manager and producer, sometimes referred to as the "éminence grise" of the West End theatre. Though he shunned the spotlight so that his name was not known widely among the general public, he was one of the most successful and influential manager-producers in the West End during the middle of the 20th century.

Beaumont was brought up in Cardiff, where he joined the staff of a local theatre at the age of fifteen. From there he built a career in theatrical management. His company, H. M. Tennent, which he co-founded in 1936, was based at the old Globe Theatre (now the Gielgud Theatre) in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. His success was based on lavish productions, starry casts and plays calculated to appeal to a West End audience. Among those with whom he was closely associated were Noël Coward and John Gielgud. His successes included new plays, revivals of classics, and musicals.

With the rise of state-subsidised theatre and avant-garde plays from the mid-1950s onwards, Beaumont's genre of opulent productions of safe repertoire started to seem conventional. He recognised this by serving on the board of the new National Theatre during the last decade of his life.

Throughout his life Beaumont was evasive about his background, given, as one biographer wrote, "to disseminating fanciful accounts of his origins". It was not until a 1989 biography by Richard Huggett that the facts became widely known. He was born Hughes Griffiths Morgan, in Hampstead, London, the son of Morgan Morgan, a barrister, and his wife Mary Frances, née Brewer. Morgan divorced his wife for adultery when the boy was two. Mary Morgan then married the co-respondent, William Sugden Beaumont, a Cardiff timber merchant, whom the young Beaumont was brought up believing to be his real father. The boy was formally known as Hugh, but was generally called "Binkie". The origin of his nickname is uncertain; John Elsom in a 1991 book Cold War Theatre suggests that "Binkie" was Cardiff slang for a black child or a ragamuffin. William Beaumont died while Binkie was still a boy. Mary Beaumont then let rooms to a lodger, Major Harry Woodcock, a former Army Entertainments Officer and latterly general manager of the Cardiff Playhouse.

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