Holy Hurrell...

I finally found a local library that had a copy of Mark Vieira's Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits book - before I shelled out the bucks to see it sight unseen. Holy wow wow. I hate to say it again, but Hurrell's pics are what movie stars are supposed to look like. There's a great example of before and after retouching for Joan Crawford (looks like she had freckles).

Not as many Bob pics in the book as I would have like to have seen. I did see Jean Harlow's nipple, which I could have done without. Let me grab some of the captions from the Bob stuff:

"By the end of his first month at M-G-M, George Hurrell was so well liked that he was invited to the set of Free and Easy to shoot production stills. "I invited him there," recalls Anita Page, seen here with directory Edward Sedgwick and co-star Robert Montgomery."

The size of the photo in the book (above) doesn't do it justice. If you really look at it, you can see Anita's face reflected in the movie camera lens. That & Bob's eyes look like they're on fire. Here's another photo that I think is Hurrell (to the right.....it's the shoes).

"In 1979, Robert Montgomery told Yankee magazine, "When I signed with M-G-M, they gave me a big pitch about how I was going to play opposite Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford. I didn't have any idea whom they were talking about. I had actually seen only two films when I went to Hollywood in '29."

"Hurrell used George Bellows prints to accent this March 1932 portrait of Robert Montgomery for Letty Lynton. Montgomery was the most intelligent, versatile - and unimaginatively cast - actor at M-G-M. The monolithic studio could be a frustrating place to work." (below photo)

If you look at a few of Hurrell's other RM pics, you can see the same art deco sculptures...