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Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits

(Hurrell posed Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone on a couch in her living room, then used only one light to illuminate them.)

This book presents in depth the work of George Hurrell, the photographer who more than anyone else was responsible for inventing the Hollywood "glamour" portrait - the essential publicity tool for the major studios during the Golden Age of the movies. The book traces his immense impact on the portrayal of the leading stars year by year, from his arrival in California in 1925 until his departure in 1943. During that time he photographed all of the greatest personalities, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and Columbia as well as independently.

It was Hurrell, with his Rembrandtesque lighting and his daringly dramatic poses, who transformed the Hollywood star, not simply into a figure of high fashion, but into a kind of erotic icon - a romantic being presented in such exalted terms as to seem almost godlike. The visual power of his portraits shaped the careers of many stars as much as did their actual films.

One of Hurrell's most notable collaborations was with Joan Crawford, and he helped that restless, driven actress to invent new faces for herself year after year. He also worked extensively with stars as diverse as the patrician Norma Shearer and the down-to-earth Jean Harlow. Among his most famous photographs are the notoriously provocative shots of Jane Russell for Howard Hughes's Outlaw.

These and dozens of other stars from Hollywood's glory days are seen in this book in some of their most evocative Hurrell portraits. The prints come from the Chapman Collection, one of the most extensive archives of original Hurrell photographs in the world, and they include a number of rarities and surprises. Although some photos by Hurrell are familiar and frequently reproduced, most of the images in this book will come as a revelation, since they have not been published in over half a century.

The genesis of the pictures is examined in a remarkable text by Mark A. Vieira, himself a highly regarded portrait photographer, who came to know Hurrell well during the photographer's later years. Vieira explains in detail Hurrell's technical feats of lighting and retouching. And drawing on firsthand accounts, he vividly re-creates the lively interplay between the photographer and his subjects at the shooting sessions in which these portraits were taken.

(from the dust jacket of the hard cover)