Hurrell: The Kobal Collection

HURRELL The Kobal Collection

tony nourmand and phil moad

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Contents

Foreword Introduction Adolphe Menjou Alexis Smith Ann Sheridan Anna May Wong Barbara Stanwyck Basil Rathbone Bette Davis Buster Keaton Carole Lombard Clark Gable Conchita Montenegro Constance Bennett Dolores del Rio Dorothy Lamour Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Edward G. Robinson Edwina Booth Erich von Stroheim Errol Flynn Ethel Merman Frances Farmer Franchot Tone Fred Astaire Gene Tierney George Raft Ginger Rogers Greta Garbo Humphrey Bogart James Cagney James Stewart Jane Russell Jane Wyman Jean Harlow Jean Parker Jimmy Durante Joan Crawford John Barrymore John Garfield John Gilbert John Payne Johnny Weissmuller

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Judy Garland Katharine Hepburn Laurence Olivier Leslie Howard Lilian Bond Linda Darnell Lon Chaney Loretta Young Luise Rainer Lupe Velez Madge Evans Maria Montez Marie Prevost Marlene Dietrich Maureen O’Sullivan Myrna Loy Norma Shearer Patricia Morison Paul Muni Ramon Novarro Rita Hayworth Robert Montgomery Robert Taylor Rosalind Russell Tallulah Bankhead Thelma Todd Veronica Lake Wallace Beery Warner Baxter William Haines

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Appendix

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Master of Light

by Phil Moad

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It was 1981 at Christie’s East in New York City when the hammer went down on a portrait of the late silent movie star, Ramon Novarro, for a record breaking $9000. It was the first time a movie photograph had ever achieved such a price, and consequently the photograph was accepted into the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It was also the highest price a photographic portrait had reached by a living photographer. The photographer was George Hurrell.

Five years previously, in 1976, George Hurrell’s name had started appearing in the press in Los Angeles when an exhibition imaginatively called ‘Dreams for Sale’ opened at The Municipal Art Gallery. It featured many George Hurrell photographs that had not been seen since the time they were taken. Ramon Novarro gazed down on the museum guests with other more recognisable names and faces like Jane Russell, Joan Crawford and Humphrey Bogart. However, it is Ramon Novarro’s portrait session with Hurrell that began what we now know as Hollywood glamour photography.

Hurrell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on 1 June 1904. At the age of five, he moved with his parents and siblings to Chicago to start up a shoe manufacturing business. His parents were religious and encouraged their children to take up vocation in the church in some form. Hurrell split his time between the church and painting and when he was sixteen applied to join Chicago’s Quigley Seminary to become a priest and the Chicago Art Institute to study painting. To his surprise, he was accepted into both and after some deliberation, decided his future lay in the arts.

Hurrell spent the following years deep in the study of painting both landscapes and portraits.

He learned how to capture light, shadow and colour on canvas and combine them to create one outstanding painting after another. In his final semester in the summer of 1925, Hurrell was fortunate to attend a special lecture by the famous landscape painter Edgar Allan Payne. Payne reviewed the students’ work, including Hurrell’s, and was so impressed that he encouraged the young artist to join him and his wife on the Californian coastal art colony of Laguna Beach. Hurrell packed his bags and on his arrival began his painting in earnest. In the need of income, he took a job photographing various prominent artists and their work for publicity and publication. He photographed the colour paintings in black and white and soon learned how different colours and shades looked when reprinted in

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Basil Rathbone 1937

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Edwina Booth 1930

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Jean Harlow 1932 – 1935

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Johnny Weissmuller 1932

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Marlene Dietrich 1936 – 1937

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