When aspiring artist Margaret Ulbrich left an unhappy marriage in the early 1950s and fled from Tennessee to California, she couldn't believe her luck when she met a free-spirited fellow painter named Walter Keane.
Margaret KeanePhoto: Getty Images
"He was the most charming person you'd ever meet. He just had so much charisma," she says of Walter, who praised her paintings of waiflike children with disproportionately large eyes ("the windows to the soul," she told him when he asked about them). "He could have sold anybody anything."
Before long, he had proposed and they were living together, along with Margaret's young daughter Jane. She seemed to have found the perfect man — until one day she discovered he'd let someone think one of her paintings was his.
"Well, I was horrified," Margaret, 87, tells The Post. "I said, 'Don't do this again!' Those paintings were a part of me. They were so close to me; I identified with them so much. I couldn't bear the thought that he would take them away."
The process by which Walter did exactly that — and turned the miscredited paintings into some of the best-known pop art in American history — is the subject of Tim Burton's new movie, "Big Eyes," in which Amy Adams plays Margaret and Christoph Waltz, Walter.
"I grew up in the era when those paintings were very present," says Burton. "They were considered suburban art — people had Keanes in their offices or living rooms, not Picassos or Matisses. I found them quite disturbing — you'd think, 'Why do you have that weird image of a child hanging in your house?'"
The prints of the paintings sold like hot cakes — but what none of the purchasers knew was that "artist" Walter Keane was a fraud, and that Margaret had been secretly churning out works for him, after he had convinced her no one would be interested in a female artist.
"He took every advantage he could to tear down my resistance," Margaret says. "Women then weren't in business, and they didn't paint, they didn't do all the things they do today — they mostly stayed at home and took care of the kids."
Caving in to pressure from Walter, who promised her they'd both get rich if she went along with the scheme, Margaret painted in solitude, telling no one — not even her own daughter — about the ruse.
"No one seemed to suspect," says Margaret, "except Jane. I kept denying that I was doing the painting, but she says she knew. I kept trying to protect her, and lying about it, and it was tearing me apart."
Amy Adams plays Margaret Keane, left, in "Big Eyes."Photo: Zumapress.com
Meanwhile, Walter was fast becoming a household name. The paintings, which were first exhibited in a San Francisco restaurant, picked up sales via word of mouth about the enchantingly creepy images.
Walter, a natural networker, built a thriving studio for the artwork, realizing that the public would buy cheaply-made reproductions of the work.
Natalie Wood and Joan Crawford reportedly commissioned portraits. Critics complained that the art was hackish, but their words had little impact on the runaway fame of Margaret's sad-eyed waifs.
"I always felt like it must have been so weird for her to be complicit in this lie, not being able to take credit for it — but also getting blamed for it!" says Burton. "She's having to stand there and listen to someone tear her art to shreds, and she can't even say it's hers. It must have been really strange for her."
But, eventually she did stand up to Walter — when his "other side," as she refers to it, became increasingly scary. In the film, he begins flicking lit matches at Margaret and her daughter — but this, as Burton says, is an amalgamation of incidents. "He could be quite dark and aggressive and crazy," says the director. "He did threaten to kill her."
Keane paints in her studio.Photo: Getty Images
When she finally took him to court, the judge ordered them both to paint a picture to ascertain who was telling the truth, in a move that seems almost too cinematic to be true. "That's the way it actually happened!" says Margaret. "Walter said he had this sudden pain in his shoulder, and he didn't paint anything. I was so happy to actually have it finally and legally proved that I was the real artist."
In her own way, says Burton, Margaret was "one of the most quiet feminists you've ever met."
But he cautions against viewing her years as a secret painter with pity: "You could easily portray her as a victim, but she's not. She went along with it — she was complicit. And when she went to court, she didn't go out of vindictiveness. She just felt she needed to release the truth."
Margaret moved to Hawaii and continues to paint. When she saw Burton's film, she says, "It was such an emotional impact — it was a traumatic experience. I guess I wasn't prepared to see it up there so large. They made it so real! I actually was in shock for about two days afterward, and so was my daughter."
As for Burton, he sees in her story "a kind of extreme version of most relationships," he says. "People — myself included — we all go through these things, like, 'How did I let this go on for so long? How was I in this relationship for so long?' It's like a weird dream, and I think we all get caught up in things like that."
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