Preserving the Stars’ Images : Photography: Some of the work of artist-turned-archivist is on display at Photomation Photo Lab in Anaheim.

Most anyone today who takes a look at Frank Powolny’s famous pinup shot of Betty Grable or Edward Steichen’s shot of a veiled Gloria Swanson would recognize them as classic photographs that captured both a star and an era.

But while treasured now among historians and collectors, such images were considered no more important when they were shot in the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s than the press releases that accompanied them. Their sole purpose was to sell the stars and their latest films.

Consequently, only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of celebrity images shot during the Golden Age of Hollywood survive.

If it weren’t for Sid Avery, himself a veteran Hollywood photographer who has devoted much of the last decade to locating, identifying and cataloguing these stills, the number of images in existence would be smaller still.

“Unfortunately, many of Hollywood’s greatest images have been lost forever,” Avery said in an interview at a luncheon Thursday in Anaheim, “and much of what remains is badly damaged.”

Avery was in Orange County to attend the unveiling of the “Sid Avery Wall” at Photomation Photo Lab, which is contributing to Avery’s preservation efforts by donating many of the copy prints and negatives to the archive he has established.

In turn, Photomation created the permanent display of Avery’s work to honor his more than 50 years of photography in the motion picture industry.

The repository for much of what Avery has unearthed is the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archives in Los Angeles, which Avery established in 1988 as a collection point and clearinghouse for celebrity stills.

“I started this primarily to preserve the works of Hollywood photographers. I know that when I started looking for my own work, 95% of it had been lost,” said Avery, 72. (He started the archive in 1983 as a nonprofit institution called the Hollywood Photo Archive. The name changed, as did its status to a for-profit endeavor, five years later.)

Many original negatives were destroyed as studios relocated, ownership changed and the star contract system died out.

The same was often true for the up-close-and-personal magazine photos that fans loved to see. After the pictures were published, negatives were frequently filed away haphazardly.

The archive that Avery created has a number of functions, he said, but the primary one is to collect Hollywood photographs as a key element of the overall preservation of Hollywood’s colorful heritage.

Avery explained that when he locates a stash of images, perhaps in an attic or a closet of someone who had a friend or relative who worked in the entertainment industry, he tries to buy them or, better yet, have them donated.

In many cases, there is no indication when they were taken, for what purpose or who the unrecognizable people in them are. Those details are left to Avery and his staff of four to dig up.

There are already nearly 100,000 images in the archive’s files, which are primarily used for research and reference purposes. Most are copies of prints and negatives. The archive does not retain original images or negatives, unless the archive is in the process of assembling a specific project, such as an exhibit or a book.

Customarily, Avery catalogues and collates the shots and then turns the originals over to a facility such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or other academic bodies.

“Every year I donate somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000, sometimes as many as 15,000, photographs,” he said.

While that sounds sizable enough, it’s only a drop in the bucket when judged against the millions of frames snapped over the decades.

As West Coast contributor for the Saturday Evening Post and, later, as an independent photographer, Avery alone has shot some 350,000 images documenting the behind-the-scenes activities of many of the top names of the heyday of Hollywood.

Since his first professional assignment, shooting Laurel and Hardy, he photographed virtually every major star. His shots of Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Kim Novak, Jack Benny, Steve McQueen, just to name a few, have been seen around the world. Though he said he was not generally taken with celebrities, Avery admits to asking two stars--Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly--for their autographs. “But that was much later in life,” he added.

While other big-name Hollywood photographers such as George Hurrell and Laszlo Willinger primarily took a glamour approach in their work, Avery was known for catching his subjects at their most human. A shot of James Dean lighting a cigarette; a session with Marlon Brando at home, including some shots of him taking out the garbage; a series with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward that makes them seem like any other 1950s couple, all helped humanize the images of the stars.

His open manner and friendly personality helped make many of the shoots successful, but persistence sometimes made them possible. Repeated attempts to persuade Humphrey Bogart to pose failed, but Avery kept trying. Finally, tiring of being dogged, Bogart relented to a brief session early the following morning. An agreed-upon five minutes turned into two days of shooting. Bogart even invited him along to Romanoff’s for dinner and to go sailing with him the next day on the family yacht.

Interest in Avery’s work has been growing steadily in recent years. A show of his work started a four-year European tour in Paris this week, and he will also be staging an exhibit for the Cannes Film Festival.

Sid Avery’s work can be seen at Photomation Photo Lab, 2551 W. La Palma Ave., Anaheim. Open weekdays 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Information: (714) 821-3200.