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Focusing on Lens Men Who Focused on Hollywood Stars : Studio Photogs in Spotlight at LACMA Exhibit

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When Ted Allen got the job at MGM in 1933 as Jean Harlow’s exclusive still photographer, he knew exactly what to do.

“Harlow was the type of gal who only wore outer garments and could change clothes in five minutes,” Allen recalled. “I had the photo studio all set up with four different scenes--like a wind-swept hillside or a Spanish villa--so when she came in for a shoot, I was ready for her.

“She knew how to stand to make the most of that voluptuous figure of hers,” Allen added. “I was conscious of that. . . . I appreciated her capabilities,” said the 77-year-old photographer.

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Evidently, the admiration was mutual. Though Harlow’s death at 26 put an end to their association after two years, Allen created some of filmdom’s indelible images of the sultry star--cheek to cheek in separate stills with Clark Gable, Robert Taylor and Cary Grant, for example. Yet, despite the widespread familiarity of the photography, the photographers who did the actual work are relatively unknown--Allen being only one example. Organizers of an exhibit running Sunday to Feb. 21 at the County Museum of Art hope to change all that.

“Our primary aim was to recognize the people behind the scenes who contributed significantly to creating the image of Hollywood,” said David Fahey, co-curator with Linda Rich of “Masters of Starlight: Photographers in Hollywood.” (The show opens simultaneously with the related exhibit “Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film.” See story on this page.)

“It’s easy to underestimate the impact of the press,” where the work of many of these photographers often appeared, Fahey said. “But the American film star came to represent something very positive. Especially during the Depression, movie stars were idolized; they provided inspiration and an escape, and people would cut out and frame their pictures and hang them on their walls. These stars were personified in the photographs of the gentlemen in this exhibit.”

The show features 200 photos by 44 photographers and spans the crucial years from 1913 through the early 1970s, from a demure Mary Pickford to a devilish Jack Nicholson.

Hollywood’s iconic Betty Grable pinup is there, along with shots of Harlow by Allen and others, plus photos of Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda, to name a few. Viewers may recognize some of these photographs, but most have never been published or exhibited.

Many of the show’s photographers worked for motion picture studios of the 1930s and ‘40s, some were free lancers, and others had jobs at various publications, including such movie magazines as Motion Picture, first appearing in 1911, or in general interest magazines like Look, Saturday Evening Post and Life.

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Fahey, co-owner of the Fahey/Klein Gallery on La Brea Avenue, and Rich obtained many of the exhibit’s images from the Hollywood Photographers Archives, a local organization led by photographer Sid Avery (whose work is part of the show). In putting the show together, Rich and Fahey said they sought to document the stylistic differences among the photographers and how they contributed to the history of photography.

Allen is one of a handful of Hollywood’s pioneer photographers who is still alive. When he went to MGM, he replaced George Hurrell, one of the industry’s most noted portrait photographers.

Allen “adhered to the portrait photographer’s mandate,” the exhibit’s catalogue notes, to “make mere men and women into objects of fantasy . . . with poses and dramatic lighting,” and with a talent for “retouching.” That skill Allen acquired as a teen-ager while enhancing stars’ photographs with oil paint for lobby displays.

“Harlow liked my ability to retouch”--as well as his speed--said the energetic, white-haired photographer during a recent interview at his home in the Hollywood Hills, where he has lived for 55 years.

Carole Lombard, John Barrymore and Eleanor Powell are among the other legendary figures Allen photographed before he signed a nine-year contract as Frank Sinatra’s photographer and then ran the photo department at CBS studios for nine years, among other jobs. Today, he photographs “up-and-coming” actors.

“Carole Lombard was a favorite of mine,” said Allen, who was nicknamed “Rembrandt” at MGM. “She was real down to earth. She was the first movie star I ever heard use a four-letter word.”

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Eleanor Powell, whose photograph by Allen appears in the exhibit, was a favorite too, he said with a smile.

“She liked my pictures so much that she proposed marriage. I said, ‘That’s all well and good, but I don’t think my wife would understand.’ ”

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