The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers, 1925-1940

From dust jacket notes: "...John Kobal, one of the world's leading film archivists, has during the last twenty years discovered, collected, and studied a photographic treasure overlooked by the Hollywood for which it was created: the negatives and original prints of these remarkable 'glamour photographs' that were made in the 1920s and 1930s. Their function was publicity; they were sent out as 'glossies' - as 8 x 10s - to newspapers, to fan magazines, to the multitudes of fans themselves, in order to set in the minds of the audience (in accordance with the studio's strategy of the moment) the image of the Star. These portraits were the work of such photographers a George Hurrell (he dared to photograph the great faces of the screen without makeup and knew before anyone else how to achieve the 'glamour' photograph; Norma Shearer demanded that he alone photograph her; Loretta Young adored him)...Robert Coburn...Ted Allan...Josef von Sternberg (he directed and controlled every Dietrich portrait sitting until 1935)...Eugene Robert Richee...Ernest Bachrach (he headed the photographic department at RKO from its inception in 1929 through 1950; Gloria Swanson said of him: 'There was no other photographer in the world)...Laszlo Willinger (one of the foremost European photographers)...and the only woman among them and a notable pioneer, Ruth Harriet Louise (she headed the first portrait gallery at MGM when she was only nineteen; 'Her photographs were magnificent,' Lillian Gish said. 'I took orders from her as I would have from D.W. Griffith.'). One hundred and fifty of the portraits these artists made are seen here in their original magnificence - each reproduced from the photographer's original print or negative, among them: Marlene Dietrich...Jean Harlow..Joan Crawford...Katharine Hepburn...Rita Hayworth..."