Photograph by Rachel Bottomley
If you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning, perhaps you’re doing it all wrong. Here are ten famous people and characters who did some of their best work in bed.
Ernie and Bert (Sesame Street)
These two puppets shared a home and bedroom, in which they had single beds, each displaying their initial. Most of their most famous scenes took place in these beds where their escapades, from Ernie dropping cookie crumbs in Bert’s bed, to Bert putting up with Ernie’s ever louder attempts at drowning out the sounds of a dripping tap, helped teach pre-schoolers the value of compromise and getting along.
The Grandparents (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Charlie Bucket’s four grandparents, Grandpa Joe, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina, share one bed in Charlie’s parents’ house and have done for 20 years. They exist entirely in that one bed, enjoying Charlie’s visits and living vicariously through him… until Charlie wins the golden ticket and Grandpa Joe immediately and miraculously leaps out of bed, despite his apparent immobility. So in fairness, they didn’t get a lot done but it’s a pretty iconic bed… possibly even magical!
Truman Capote
Best known for In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffanys, Truman Capote did all his writing lying down, with coffee and a cigarette always to hand. He described himself as “a completely horizontal author” and always wrote the first and second drafts of his novels lying down surrounded by pillows before typing them up on a typewriter - also in bed.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
OK, probably not Lennon’s ‘best’ work, but he and Yoko certainly made their bed in the Amsterdam Hilton famous when they took to it for a week in March 1969 in a non-violent protest for peace and an end to the Vietnam war. It was such a success that just two months later they did it all again in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal. At the end of the second bed-in, they made a spontaneous recording of ‘Give Peace a Chance’, right there in room 1742.
Tracey Emin
Possibly her most famous installation, Emin’s ‘My Bed’ was originally installed in the Tate gallery in 1999 when it was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. The bed was one she had stayed in for four days, consuming nothing but alcohol during a dark time in her life, and infamously featured bloodied underwear, condoms and various other edgy detritus. Safe to say it was pretty divisive. It was at one stage owned by Charles Saatchi and sold at auction in 2014 for more than £2.5 million. While many feel it could be the most important installation ever to hit the art world, others were less impressed. When critics pointed out that “anyone could exhibit an unmade bed”, Emin said simply “But they didn’t, did they?”
Morecambe and Wise
Much like Ernie and Bert, some of the most loved skits from ‘The Morecambe and Wise Show’ featured Eric and Ernie sharing a bed. Eric Morecambe was at first said to be uncomfortable with the idea, but the writer of the sketches, Eddie Braben, convinced him to do it by reminding him that the tradition of comic partners sharing a bed had started with Laurel and Hardy. Morecambe agreed, reluctantly, but insisted on smoking a pipe throughout the scenes “for the masculinity”.
Florence Nightingale
Proving that not being able to leave one’s bed is no indicator of being workshy, Florence Nightingale spent many years of her life bedridden, particularly after she returned from Crimea, having contracted disease. From her bed she wrote some 200 books, reports and pamphlets and 12,000 letters, driving reform for healthcare and military sanitation.
Frida Kahlo
Following a near-fatal bus accident and many operations, which meant months at a time spent in bed, Kahlo’s mother set her up with a custom-made easel and mirror canopy to enable her to paint in bed. That famous bed featured in her painting ‘The Dream’ and became a central part of her work. Just a few months before her death, she was carried to the opening of her own exhibition in that four-poster, which she had decorated with pictures of her political heroes. Friends and fans encircled the bed and sang Mexican ballads with her till past midnight. Less than a year later she died in that same bed.
Edith Wharton
A famous ‘bed-writer’ Edith Wharton is said to have worked in bed because it enabled her to take off her corset, and therefore free her thoughts. It’s said she wrote mainly in the mornings, working in long hand on paper, and dropping each sheet on the floor for her secretary to collect and type up.
Mae West
Mary Jane (or Mae) West wrote several of her own screenplays, including ‘Diamond Lil’ from her bed and claimed her bed sparked her creativity. Known as a sex symbol and for her love of double-entendres, West famously declared that “Everybody knows I do my best work in bed.”
If you’re tempted to take to your bed for a day’s work - or even just enjoy a duvet day - you might enjoy our My Place pages this month, which focus on beautiful bed nooks, such as the one pictured above belonging to Rachel Bottomley.
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