# Hollywood glamour portraiture

> Publicity portraits of film stars made in the studios' portrait galleries: a face or half-figure, close to the lens, lit by hard spotlights in butterfly or Rembrandt patterns, with a hair light and rim light carving it out of a dark ground. The large negatives were retouched by hand until skin, eyes and hair read as flawless, then printed in black and white with deep blacks. The pictures sold an ideal rather than a likeness, through fan magazines, posters and fan mail; from the late 1930s some were made in colour for magazine covers.

- Period: 1925–1955
- Where it began: The portrait galleries of the Hollywood studios' publicity departments, Los Angeles
- Kind: Fashion & commercial
- Also called: Hollywood studio portrait, Golden Age glamour portrait, star portrait
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/hollywood-glamour-portraiture/

## How the look is made

- Light the face with one hard spotlight placed high: above the lens for a butterfly shadow under the nose, or to one side for a Rembrandt triangle on the far cheek.
- Separate the head from a dark ground with a hair light from above and a rim light from behind.
- Work close with a large-format camera, keep the sitter still for the exposure and let the background fall into black.
- Retouch the negative until skin, eyes and hair read as flawless, then print a full black-and-white scale with deep blacks.
- Direct every pose: chin lifted, head tilted, eyes towards the light, hands, furs or flowers near the face.

## How it is lit

- A hard spotlight high and in front of the face, above the lens, casting a small butterfly shadow under the nose, with a weaker fill from low in front.
- A hard key light high to one side, leaving a triangle of light on the shadowed cheek (Rembrandt pattern), against a dark backdrop.
- A hair light on a boom above and behind the sitter, plus a rim light to separate the head and shoulders from the black.

### The rendered set-up

A hard spot high above the lens (butterfly), a weak fill from low in front, a hair light on a boom and a rim light from behind, against black. Rendered in Blender Cycles on a synthetic clay figure or still life, with the lights exactly where the plan on the page puts them.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: a spot or bare head, from the camera, high, hard.
- Rim or hair light: a spot or bare head, from behind, to the camera’s right, high, hard.
- Fill: a softbox, about 35° to the camera’s right, soft.
- Background light: a spot or bare head, from behind the subject, soft.
- Rim or hair light: a spot or bare head, from behind, to the camera’s left, high, hard.

## Camera settings

45–65 mm · f/8–f/22 · 1/10–1 s · ISO 16–100 (on 8x10), inferred. 8 × 10 view cameras are documented; lens, stop and time are inferred: long lenses, f/11–f/22 for a sharp face under hot spotlights, fractions of a second. A 1941 Hollywood studio study (Mortensen: 4 × 5 Graflex, 7 in Dagor, 1/5 s at f/16) fits.

## Directing people

Pose the sitter close and still: reclining on a couch or leaning on an arm, shoulders turned three-quarter, head tilted, chin lifted to the light or dropped with the eyes raised to the lens; a slow, heavy-lidded, unsmiling gaze, into the lens or up past it; hands shaped and brought to the face, the hair or a fur collar.

## Styling

Studio wardrobe and a full glamour face: furs, satin, velvet drapes or a crisp blouse; sculpted brows, dark glossy lips, lashes, hair set in polished waves (groomed and slicked for men); a dark or graded backdrop, a couch or cushions; all chosen by the studio's wardrobe, make-up and hair staff.

## Before you shoot it

The historical portraits show real, named actors, and the studios' make-up, lighting and retouching set a narrow, unreal standard of beauty. Generate only invented adult sitters, never a lookalike of a real star, and never present a generated image as a vintage studio still; light and retouch every skin tone on its own terms rather than copying the period's norms.

## Photographs

- Clarence Sinclair Bull, Greta Garbo, 1931. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-not renewed). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Garbo_by_Clarence_Sinclair_Bull,_1931.jpg
- Laszlo Willinger, Lauren Bacall, Modern Screen, March 1946. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-no notice). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lauren_Bacall_by_L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Willinger,_1946.jpg
- George Hurrell, Ramon Novarro, The New Movie Magazine, February 1930. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-not renewed). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ramon_Novarro_by_Hurrell.jpg
- Ruth Harriet Louise, Greta Garbo, 1927. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-old-80-expired). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RH_Louise_Garbo_1927.jpg

## Sources

- George Hurrell, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hurrell (MGM head of portraits until 1932, own studio 1932–1938 at 8706 Sunset Boulevard, Warner Bros. and Columbia in the 1940s, Novarro and Shearer sittings)
- Ruth Harriet Louise, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Harriet_Louise (ran MGM's portrait studio 1925–1930; Garbo, Crawford, Shearer; Dance and Robertson, Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography, 2002)
- Clarence Sinclair Bull, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Sinclair_Bull (head of MGM's stills department; Garbo 1926–1941; skilled in lighting, retouching and printing)
- Laszlo Willinger, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Willinger (in the United States from 1937; MGM portrait of Luise Rainer c. 1937; one of the first Hollywood photographers to experiment with colour)
- Portrait photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_photography (butterfly lighting, a favourite of Hurrell, often called Paramount lighting)
- Rembrandt lighting, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt_lighting (the triangle of light on the shadow cheek; DeMille's use of the term in 1915)
- Mary Mallory, Hollywood Heights – George Hurrell, Los Angeles Daily Mirror: https://ladailymirror.com/2020/04/20/mary-mallory-hollywood-heights-george-hurrell-2/ (Hurrell's negative retouching with powdered graphite and a blending stump, about three hours per negative; his retoucher Andrew Korf)
- John Kobal, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kobal (the 1974 V&A exhibition of Hollywood photographs; rediscovery of Hurrell, Willinger and Bull and new prints from their negatives)
- Glamour photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamour_photography (Louise and Hurrell used lighting to glamorise stars; wartime pin-ups)
- Hurrell Lighting, Digital Field Guide: https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/blog/5473 (contact prints from 8×10 film in a view camera; slow shutter speeds so sitters held still; orthochromatic film; key light above and in front of the face; glow from uncoated lenses; retouching on the 8×10 negatives)
- George Hurrell, Joan Crawford, 1931, lot essay, Christie's: https://onlineonly.christies.com.cn/s/photographs-portrait/joan-crawford-1931-47/20807 (a movable boom light lighting the cheekbones with shadows under nose and eyes; radical negative retouching)
- Dennis Morgan, Kodachrome by László Willinger, 1946, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dennis_Morgan._Kodachrome_by_L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Willinger,_1946.jpg (Kodachrome studio portraits in the 1940s)
- Wikimedia Commons file pages of the specimens, with their public-domain tags and the magazines they were scanned from (Movie Classic May 1932, The New Movie Magazine February 1930, Modern Screen March 1946): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Garbo_by_Clarence_Sinclair_Bull,_1931.jpg
- Starlight and Shadow, Virginia Postrel, The Atlantic (July/August 2007): https://vpostrel.com/articles/starlight-and-shadow (Hurrell's movable boom light; working with shadows to design the face; Hurrell: 'When we stopped using those 8-by-10 cameras, the glamour was gone'; heavy retouching)
- International Photographer, September 1941, frontispiece note, Media History Digital Library: https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/internationalpho13holl_0269 (William Mortensen's study: 4 × 5 Graflex Series D, Dagor 7-inch lens, Eastman Super-Ortho-X film, one-fifth second at f/16, 'modified basic' lighting; the same issue's Hurrell interview gives no numbers)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/hollywood-glamour-portraiture/#sheet