I lived with Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, he later became her
husband, from late 1941 until after the end of the war. It was sort
of a ménage à trois, but Roland was in the British army, and so the
ménage à trois became a ménage à deux. After the liberation of
Paris, Lee and I lived together in the Hotel Scribe in Paris. I had
encouraged her to become a correspondent. She said, “For Vogue?”
I said, “Sure.”
Lee and I were mostly inseparable. We were together at the
liberation of the concentration camp Dachau. Then we moved into
Hitler's headquarters in Munich. Lee and I found an elderly gent who
barely spoke English, and we gave him a carton of cigarettes and
said, “Show us around Munich.” He showed us Hitler's house, and I
photographed Lee taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub, which is a
fairly memorable picture in the book The Lives of Lee Miller.
Had she photographed you in Hitler's bathtub?
She did, but I don't know what became of the picture. We were
continually swapping cameras. I used her camera for the photograph
of her in the bathtub. Quite frequently, my pictures would come out
in Vogue and her pictures would come out in Life.
We joined the 15th Infantry Regiment, where Lee was very well known
and went with them to Berchtesgaden [Hitler’s country estate]. There were SS
troops in the woods all around, and we were scared to death
that we were going to get sniped by the SS. We were looting as hard
as we possibly could. I looted everything I could lay my hands on,
including a complete set of Shakespeare with Hitler's initials, in
gold, on the binding, which I sold a few months ago, for 10,000 bucks.
I took Shakespeare because I was interested in books. Roland
Penrose still has a big gravy boat of silver, which Lee liberated.
After the war, Penrose was awarded a knighthood for his work on
behalf of British art, and Lee, a girl from Poughkeepsie, New York,
became Lady Penrose, which delighted her.
(David E. Sherman, Interviewed on August 15, 1993.)
Lee Miller, my new project.