Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood

FABULOUS FACES OF CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

THE LAST HURRAH

My lifelong love of the movies did not start well. Aged five I was taken to see Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday – a middle-aged Frenchman doing supposedly comical silent gags, very slowly – and it nearly destroyed my enthusiasm for seeing any more movies. My mother tried again with a Jerry Lewis comedy film, but he only frightened me, and I had to be hurriedly removed from the cinema. Finally, The Runaway Bus, a year later, starring Frankie Howerd and Margaret Rutherford, invigorated my interest as it made me laugh. From then on, my visits to the cinema increased year on year with growing enjoyment.

In my early teens, I began regularly absorbing the UK’s Film Review magazine, populated with publicity portraits of movie stars, and this is when I began to be fascinated by their faces – particularly those of Hollywood stars. Even at that age, I found most 1950s British films and stars mundane by comparison (that was about to change with a new wave of actors, like Julie Christie and Michael Caine). The first star portrait that I remember mesmerising the thirteen-year-old me was a close-up head shot of Natalie Wood publicising Splendor in the Grass. It made me want to see that and every movie she appeared in – exactly the purpose of these publicity shots – and I did (though I was too young to be able to get in to see Splendor at the time, that treat would have to wait until later).

When I first started working with John Kobal in 1971, I really started appreciating what it took to create these fabulous faces of classic Hollywood stars like Crawford, Garbo, Dietrich, Cooper, Gable and, of course, Natalie Wood.

I learned from John about the Hollywood Studio system and started my lifelong fascination with the movie-making process. Most importantly, I came to appreciate the place in it of the talented photographers employed by the movie studios to create these portraits. At that time, John was working with many of the surviving Hollywood photographers, reuniting them with their negatives so they could make new prints for the many exhibitions he mounted of their work all round the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert in London.

Natalie Wood, 1961, for Splendor in the Grass, Warner Bros., Bert Six

Before I knew it, I was going back and forth between London and Los Angeles spending time with these men: George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Laszlo Willinger and Ted Allan, amongst others. From them, I got a wonderful sparkling stream of oral history of this vital part of the Hollywood studio system.

Stories abounded about the many who failed to make it and the famous few who did. Looking through thousands of portraits over the years, I noticed that every aspiring star or starlet had the benefit of the same level of lighting set-ups and wardrobe that were used for established stars, and they were often posed in front of the same or similar backdrops with similar props featured. It just went to prove that clothing and backgrounds were not enough. If their face did not reach out and entice you to want you to look again … and again … and impel you to go to see them in their movies, then their career was not going to get off the ground. Star quality is difficult to quantify but, as the saying goes, you know it when you see it … and feel it.

The photographers’ stories of these sessions were always illuminating and entertaining. Jean Harlow complaining the photo gallery was too hot and, even though she wasn’t wearing any underwear, dropping her dress to the floor to the bemusement of Ted Allan. Garbo answering a polite query from Clarence Bull – who took most of Garbo’s portraits at MGM – by telling him he could reach out and touch her eyelashes to prove they were real. He dared not do it. She was Garbo after all.

I learned from them about the cameras they used (mainly 10 x 8, large format), how they lit their sessions and about the stars – like Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich – who had an instinctive understanding of how important these sessions were for their careers and how hard they worked to get the best from them.

John Kobal’s museum exhibitions and books were key to raising the profile and reputation of the Hollywood photographers. With his pioneering efforts, their work was no longer regarded as simply memorabilia, but reappraised as part of the history of 20th-century portrait photography, and art; Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, 1967, borrowed Gene Kornman’s portrait for that iconic work of art.

Much later, John, who got to know Warhol, helped him select the ‘Star’ image – Clarence Sinclair Bull’s Garbo as Mata Hari – for his Myths series.

John died in 1991, shortly after starting the John Kobal Foundation, and we have spent the last thirty years perpetuating his work with further exhibitions and books drawn from his archive. The foundation has also engaged with contemporary photography through the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award, which ran for ten years at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In 2018, the foundation sold John’s personal collection of vintage Hollywood prints and related documents to The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. In 2023, his collection of 10x8 original negatives, the work of the Hollywood photographers from 1920–60, was donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. This unique collection of negatives was mostly originally created in Los Angeles. We could not be happier that both important archives will now have a place of prominence with two outstanding American institutions that will preserve and cherish them in a way that it was becoming increasingly difficult for us to do.

Before the negatives went to Los Angeles, our publisher suggested we prepare one last book featuring the fabulous faces of the classic Hollywood years. This presented Robert Dance and me with a unique opportunity. As we no longer had any prints available to us, we turned to the negatives and found many had lain in our files unviewed for decades. We spent days selecting images that we felt were both fresh and largely unseen. In the process, we stumbled on a number of wonderful surprises as well as images that sometimes gave us a slightly different slant on a star.

So, here it is, the last hurrah – a collection of fabulous faces from classic Hollywood delivered to you with respect and affection for the talent of a bygone era.

Simon Crocker Chair Emeritus, The

John

Kobal Foundation

THE FABULOUS FACES

Do we go to the movies to feast our eyes upon a favorite star the way audiences back in the 1930s flocked to the newest Clark Gable or Myrna Loy picture, or in the 1950s when Audrey Hepburn and Marlon Brando were the rage? Sure, Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson and Margot Robbie can practically guarantee a strong opening weekend for any film in which they appear, but motion picture performers, despite stratospheric salaries, don’t have the same hold on contemporary culture as their forebears did in the early and middle years of the twentieth century. Moviegoers today are more likely to rush to the next offering from the Marvel franchise than to wait for a screen appearance by a particular cast member. Current stars lack the sway with the public that Joan Crawford or Gary Cooper had in the 1930s, when millions watched their every move.

This book takes us on a nostalgic wander through Hollywood’s golden age when movie stars were giants. Those larger-than-life cinema titans, from the end of the First World War until the early 1960s, filled theaters. Along with talent, and being photogenic, what separated earlier screen stars from mere mortals were strong, distinctive faces; sometimes beautiful and, sometimes, not. Radiant on screen, those celestial gods and goddesses hold our attention from the opening title until the final credits pass. A fabulous face, during the movies’ first half-century, was a hallmark of motion picture stardom.

Back in 1912, Adolph Zukor—one of the earliest film moguls—named his company Famous Players. He might have been the first to appreciate that great personalities were a key to healthy revenues in the burgeoning new industry. From his humble office in New York, he acquired the rights to distribute a short French feature film, Queen Elizabeth, starring the legendary Sarah Bernhardt. No matter that she was 68 and crippled by the loss of a leg, she was a world-renowned actress; Zukor gambled that her fame was such that it would bring audiences in droves to see for themselves what all the fuss was about. His bet paid off. In 1916, he and a partner bought out a small Colorado distributor, Paramount Pictures, and merged it with his production company. For the next fifty years, Zukor presided as lord over the studio he had founded.

Paramount would grow to become one of the largest and most successful Hollywood studios. From the beginning, it nourished the careers of many actors who would become legendary performers

Clara Bow, 1928, Paramount Pictures, Eugene Robert Richee

including Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, and Claudette Colbert. The movies were looking for talented actors with vibrant personalities. And it didn’t hurt if they were spectacularly attractive.

Movie producers built the industry, created the studios, organized productions, engaged directors and writers, but it was the movie-going public who got the last word. It was the fans who created stars, asserting their authority by purchasing tickets at the box office. Studios responded by shaping projects for their highest wattage players, then promoting them aggressively by emblazoning their names in lights and affording them above-the-title screen credit. MGM’s boss Louis B. Mayer hired Greta Garbo in Berlin in 1925 even though his prize (so he thought) was the director, Mauritz Stiller, who was her mentor. Still, she had shown promise in two European films, so Mayer cast her in a top production to see how she registered with fans. Eighteen months later, after three American films, newly indoctrinated devotees to the Garbo cult determined, by the dollars that they poured into MGM coffers, that she was a star.

Fans rarely had the chance to meet, or even see a star in person, so they figured out ways to feel close to what was happening in Hollywood. One way was to possess a photograph or, better still, a collection of photographs of their favorites. Millions of letters were mailed to the studios requesting photographs—signed if possible. Every studio had an active portrait gallery out of which those glamorous images, many of which appear in this book, were created. The studios had offices devoted to opening, processing, and responding to these requests; millions of photographs were mailed, typically in the 8 x 10 or 5 x 7 inch format. There was no cost to fans, a small price for the studios to pay in return for dutiful allegiance and the promise that lines would form for the next Crawford or Davis picture.

Along with photo requests, fans wrote letters dreaming of the possibility of a personal response. Most stars ignored this barrage, figuring it was too voluminous to tackle, although some could be persuaded to sign their letters personally—a task typically left to secretaries. Crawford was among the few who enjoyed reading and answering her mail and understood better than any of her contemporaries that the ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls sitting in the dark were paying her salary.

Fan magazines, filled with recent portraits and scenes of actors at work, kept movie enthusiasts up-to-the-minute with star news and promoted upcoming releases. Our grandmothers might dutifully have cut clippings out of Photoplay, Silver Screen, and many others, and pasted them into scrapbooks providing a chronicle of Tinseltown romances and who was about to appear in an upcoming feature.

Joan Crawford, 1928, MGM, Ruth Harriet Louise

Stars not only acted in pictures, but they provided two generations with a template for fashion and manners. When Clark Gable appeared without a tee shirt, soon men were foregoing a previously essential article of underwear. Crawford’s dresses were copied as soon as her latest picture opened, and ladies could purchase cheap knock-offs in department stores while her movies were still playing in theaters. Garbo and Dietrich made smoking appear glamorous and probably did more to promote cigarette sales than any magazine advertising campaign.

There were (and still are) few authentic movie stars because only a small handful of people photograph well enough to be tested for the screen. And of those, only a tiny fraction possesses the combination of striking appearance and acting ability to merit a chance in the movies. Plenty of beautiful women and handsome men lined up at the studio gates (or, today, at casting directors’ offices), but most lacked the spark required for success. Long ago the writer Elinor Glyn popularized the notion of a woman or man having “it,” referring to the magical combination of a captivating personality infused with a certain sex appeal. Clara Bow starred in the film It in 1927 and Hollywood could hardly have found a better personification of the concept. She was young, gorgeous, and energetic with a lovely radiant face and she appeared ready for any sort of fun. But most of all it was her charismatic persona that beamed out into theaters back in the silent days. Bow didn’t need to be heard to be adored. Even before the movies started to speak, Bow could convey a completely realized character by the force of her ebullient personality. So too could Ramon Novarro, who among the silent era’s men best personified “it,” after the premature death of Rudolph Valentino. Both Novarro and Valentino appeared shirtless for the delight of female fans back in the days before the motion picture code cleaned up films by insisting that even chaste showing of skin, male or female, had better be germane to the story and not a sensual treat for audiences.

Some stars, and their faces, survive as cinema icons even though they were far from being classically attractive. Charlie Chaplin remains, and will probably forever be, one of the most beloved and recognizable personalities of the twentieth century. That the little tramp was homely is hardly considered in the enormous wake of his dazzling screen persona. Like Chaplin, at first glance Fred Astaire can hardly have seemed a strong candidate for stardom, but his talent overrode a plain face, and he came to personify the notion of debonair. The music of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, as well as ballroom and tap dancing, may seem old-fashioned today, but Astaire and his frequent partner Ginger Rogers were the epitome of elegance and set a standard for style that has never been bettered.

Greta Garbo, 1928, for Mysterious Lady, MGM, Ruth Harriet Louise

So indelible are the faces and personalities of comic legends Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy that they remain instantly recognizable, probably even to many who have never seen one of their films. Marie Dressler and Lon Chaney—respectively over sixty and over forty when stardom called (and neither was likely much of a looker even in youth)—were two of cinema’s greatest character stars. They had miraculously plastic faces that could as easily make us laugh as cry, and both were box office giants, Dressler even commanding the number one spot in 1933. It is a pity that their films are rarely screened today.

Garbo’s thrilling beauty made her one of the signal faces of the 20th century. During her career, her face was seemingly everywhere: on posters, lobby cards, and photos sent out by the tens of thousands to her admirers. Garbo was among the most popular of the stars who graced the covers of fan magazines during the inter-war era, publications whose subscription bases rivaled the nation’s most popular journals and populated the racks of newsstands across America and globally. Though her career was short—she stopped making pictures in 1941 when she was a mere 36 years old—Garbo’s image was indelibly imprinted on cinema-goers’ minds around the world. After retirement she was mostly invisible, which only added to her allure. She stepped in front of the camera only for passport photos or, in one case, as a favor to a friend; those informal photographs were plastered on the front covers of magazines worldwide. Yet, it was her MGM portraits, works by the great masters Ruth Harriet Louise and Clarence Sinclair Bull that truly defined her image. These photos were reproduced continually throughout her working years, and still appear today. Garbo—the star and her image—reigned supreme to the end of the last century, although her fame has now dimmed. The faces of a few of her contemporaries have more resonance in the twenty-first century.

Among women, at the top of the list would be Joan Crawford. Her image was seared into the minds of mid-century audiences, and a half century after her death she is still instantly recognizable: her broad shoulders, perfect carriage, and commanding presence, but most of all that magical face. Early photographs of Crawford suggest that she was not destined to be a movie star. The remarkable personality and beautiful visage emerged only after she had spent a few years in Hollywood, a combination of maturity and her tremendous force of will. The iconic Crawford face received its final polish not through make-up but under the scrutiny of the lens of George Hurrell’s camera. Dramatic lighting allowed the skillful photographer to turn the landscape of her face into a totem of art deco style.

Marlene Dietrich, 1942, for The Lady is Willing, Columbia Pictures, A.L. ‘Whitey’ Schafer

Along with Crawford, Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis are still familiar to people who were born long after their careers were finished. Both are regarded as among the great film actors of the last century. And their long careers ensured that they are remembered for portraying young, middle-aged and older characters. Hepburn routinely places first on lists ranking stars from the classic era. Her strong aristocratic features and no-nonsense personality have delighted her admirers for decades.

Davis was never ranked among Hollywood’s beauties, so she had to settle for two Oscars from ten nominations. She was, however, distinctive in manner and voice, and no one else could have turned Dark Victory and Now Voyager into motion picture classics. Rather unexpectedly, she found a slot in late 20th-century popular culture: ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ (“All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes…”) was a chart topper and Grammy winner for Kim Carnes in 1981 (and had a renewed life with Gwyneth Paltrow in 2001), and still is played over the radio and regularly streamed. Her face, those Bette Davis eyes, and a list of grand performances during which she often played spiteful, malignant, and just plain mean characters, made her a screen favorite.

Even the most ardent movie fan probably forgets the first line of the song, “Her hair is Harlow gold”, which refers to another star of the 1930s. Jean Harlow was the first undisputed sex goddess of the movies; crowned with platinum blond hair, she was clad in shimmering and revealing gowns so tight they looked like a second skin. During her short career she was not only a huge star but also involved in one of the era’s biggest scandals: the death of her husband of less than two months, producer Paul Bern. Harlow herself was not implicated in his death, officially declared a suicide. Soon after his death the studio discovered he also had a common-law wife, who likely murdered Bern, and who took her own life the next day. At the time the public was spared these details. Five years later, at only 26, Harlow died of kidney disease. Her reputation has not endured as mightily as some of her contemporaries, but her face—soft as velvet and surrounded by white-blonde locks—is an emblem of her era.

Why are 1930s icons Crawford, Garbo, Hepburn, Harlow, and Davis still worthy of discussion decades after they stopped working? What made them “fabulous faces” whose reputations endure to this day? Each generation chooses the faces they want to view on the screen. Would 1920s headliners Mary Pickford, known for her innocence and curly hair, and Gloria Swanson, the first glamorous screen siren, become legendary stars if each began her career today? Probably not. Stars, like books and fashion, reflect a moment in time. Every era considers itself modern and stylish. It is only

Jean Harlow, 1932, for Red Headed Woman, MGM, Clarence Sinclair Bull

the passing of the years that makes spats and crinolines seem outdated. Why did early audiences fall for dashing Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore—once standards for masculinity—yet their children become transfixed by Gable and Cooper? A magical combination of the right look at a particular historical moment is necessary before an intriguing star image can be discerned. Once the magic was discovered, the studios groomed the new talent and then carefully plotted how he or she should be introduced to the public. A successful introduction was often the first step towards stardom, although for others the road was long and sometimes arduous. Before Hollywood turned a lens toward them you might hardly have taken a second look at Crawford, Garbo, Hepburn, Harlow, or Davis if they passed by on the street. Garbo and Hepburn were thought to have promise after screen tests and portrait sessions revealed potential; both scored positively with fans and critics right away, and remained captivating performers for their entire careers, short in the first case and long in the other. Davis, Crawford, and Harlow had extended apprenticeships graduating from small parts to leading roles before finally clicking with audiences. Once certified stars, each of these women developed a unique screen personality and, critically, a fan base who followed them from role to role. In only a small number of cases could their scripts have been interchangeable. Can you imagine Hepburn playing any of Harlow’s characters? We continue to be fascinated by these actors because each has left a body of superb performances, and their faces have entered the cinematic pantheon as signal images of the last century.

So too has that of Louise Brooks, who with her sleek, closely cropped, almost jet-black bob has now come to help define the Roaring Twenties, although her iconic image towers over her largely forgotten films, except for two German masterpieces directed by G.W. Pabst. Myrna Loy continues to be a TCM and revival house favorite. Among dozens of roles that ensured her popularity then and now, she is best remembered for her portrayal of stylish Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, the woman who could keep up with William Powell, martini for martini. Tuxedo-clad Cary Grant defined class in scores of films during the 1930s and ’40s, and he had the good fortune not only to be one of the most successful actors of his century but also one of the most handsome men who ever lived. One often hears a new leading man referred to as the new Cary Grant, but so far no one has bested the original.

If the 1920s and ’30s gave moviegoers an endless array of glamorous productions, the years around and during World War II saw changes in both narrative and stars: saucy stories set in exotic

Clark Gable, 1930, MGM, Clarence Sinclair Bull

Parisian salons were replaced by homespun domestic dramas, and jewels, feathers and tuxedos by sensible shoes and overalls. Earlier films were headlined by Europeans, or the glamorous figures born in America and re-shaped in Hollywood, such as Kay Francis or Mae West. The films from the 1940s saw a wave of new faces. Mickey Rooney was the world’s number one box office champ from 1939 to 1941. His boyish exuberance was exploited in sentimental stories, and he proved a superb song and dance man. Rooney was often cast with young Judy Garland to headline what became exceptionally popular musicals for MGM. It was not purely Garland’s glorious singing that made her one of cinema’s legends, but that voice in concert with her charming though vulnerable personality made her beloved by generations of fans right down to this day.

Along with Judy Garland, who is rightly counted among the legends of the last century, MGM nurtured the careers of two young women who also became household names: Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. Both started out playing the girl-next-door, but each matured into a glamorous woman—of the all-American variety. At Columbia, the great female star was Rita Hayworth. She’d had a mediocre movie career under her real name Margarita Cansino, before adopting her mother’s maiden name and dying her dark brown hair red. She went on to become a musical and dramatic star of the first order, appearing in over sixty films, and becoming another twentieth-century icon.

The American model was the vogue during the 1940s. One of the few exceptions was the ravishing, Austrian-born, Hedy Lamarr, who briefly became a sensation, providing a thrilling last glimpse back to inter-war glamor, albeit in a radically toned-down manner compared to earlier European stars like Dietrich and Garbo. Lamarr’s heritage was never discussed publicly as, at the time, being Jewish was an obstacle to appearing on the screen in roles other than comedic. Another import was Swedish Ingrid Bergman who did not let her fabulous good looks get in the way of becoming one the movies’ greatest dramatic actors. While Lamarr’s career was mostly over by 1950, Bergman continued acting into the 1980s.

Humphrey Bogart might seem an unlikely candidate to become a movie star and through many films in the 1930s it seemed he wasn’t going to become one. He was a master at playing tough guys, and successful in second leads. But then he made The Maltese Falcon, quickly followed by Casablanca, and the movies had a new kind of top male star. Crinkly-faced Bogart could not only carry a film but could romance Mary Astor and Ingrid Bergman convincingly. Looking at photographs of

Hedy Lamarr, 1942, MGM, Eric Carpenter

Bogart today, we don’t ask ourselves whether or not he is handsome. He is simply Bogart, an icon of cinema. The same was true of Jimmy Cagney: short in stature and looks, but long in dramatic and musical talent. Warner Bros. realized that he could sing and dance as well as act; he was one of the few performers who could play tough guys (The Public Enemy) and make musicals (Yankee Doodle Dandy) with the same ease, and he never disappointed fans in either guise.

Among Hollywood’s many tall, dark, and handsome men in the post-war years, Gregory Peck and Burt Lancaster were awarded the plum parts romancing the screen’s first ladies. When fans are ready to declare an actor a star, they move quickly, as they did for Peck after his second film, Keys to the Kingdom, and Lancaster after his first, The Killers, co-starring with Ava Gardner. John Garfield received an Oscar nomination for his debut, Four Daughters (1938), and remained a star until his early death in 1951. In contrast, another menacingly attractive film noir favorite, Robert Mitchum, didn’t achieve stardom until he had made more than two dozen films, but when he clicked in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, he joined the top ranks of Hollywood’s leading men.

Perhaps the last great moment of fabulous faces in the movies was the 1950s. Imagine the Oscar’s red carpet with Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Grace Kelly strolling by along with the Italian screen goddesses Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. As escorts we might have seen Jimmy Dean, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, and Paul Newman. It was a memorable period in motion picture history, when great beauty and superb acting routinely bonded in a single dynamic performer. Do we watch Giant today because it is a thrilling narrative, or to stare transfixed at the leads, Taylor, Dean and Hudson?

In the next decade, the studio system that had bound performers to exclusive contracts would finally come to an end, and the old-line studios would be dissolved or re-imagined in radically new ways. Independent producers would now dominate the industry, and films would be financed one at a time. As Hollywood was on the cusp of changing forever, a final crop of extraordinary talent emerged—Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, Peter O’Toole, and Sidney Poitier—among the last of the stars to be nurtured under the protective guidance of the studios. Each of them would soar to great artistic heights under the new regime. They were successful because they were tremendous performers who could be counted on to entertain. But none had a frenzied following. Teenage girls by the ten thousand were not writing their producers for photos. That era was almost over.

Ingrid Bergman, 1945, for Spellbound, United Artists, Madison Lacy

Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood takes us on a nostalgic wander through Hollywood’s golden age when movie stars were giants. Along with talent, and being photogenic, what separated earlier screen stars from mere mortals were strong, distinctive faces; sometimes beautiful and, sometimes, not. Radiant on screen, those celestial gods and goddesses hold our attention from the opening title until the final credits pass. A fabulous face, during the movies’ first half-century, was a hallmark of motion picture stardom.

FACES