George Hurrell's Hollywood: Glamour Portraits 1925–1992

Light and shadow; goddesses of the silver screen; Jean Harlow's white hair, white skin, white dress on a polar bear rug; Joan Crawford's perfect angles; Bette Davis's eyes: images of the Golden Era of Hollywood, long ingrained in American culture and memory. The master behind some of the most iconic photographic celebrity studies was George Hurrell, who started off in a small studio in Los Angeles in the 1920s, whose career lasted—with the usual ups and downs—until his death in 1992 and whose works are now valuable, sought-after collectibles. Photographer and writer Vieira (Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood; Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince) intertwines the twists and turns of Hurrell's life with hundreds of images of his best work, some published here for the first time. The author, who penned a previous work on Hurrell (Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits), takes a second look at a fascinating subject and, once again, writes a compelling, well-researched narrative that is as absorbing as the pictures that accompany it.