George Hurrell; Celebrity Photographer

Photographer George Hurrell, whose celebrity portraits over six decades helped dozens of Golden Age Hollywood stars achieve seeming physical perfection, has died.

Hurrell, whose clients ranged from Ramon Novarro in 1928 through Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich in the 1940s and 1950s and on to Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas in the 1980s, was 87.

His son, George Jr., said Tuesday that his father, praised for his interpretation and technical mastery, had been working until several weeks ago when he started chemotherapy for the cancer that claimed his life Sunday in a San Fernando Valley hospital.

Unlike today, Hurrell labored in an era when celebrities aspired to appear flawless. While the current crop of actors strive for an earthy unpretentiousness, it fell to Hurrell to light his subjects so they appeared mysterious and aloof, bigger than life and much as they seemed on the motion picture screen.

Hurrell’s female subjects--Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn--were all radiant, while his male subjects--Spencer Tracy, Bogart, Tyrone Power--were impeccably clothed and seemingly well mannered, even if some posed as gentlemen rogues.

Born in Cincinnati, Hurrell studied painting and drawing at the Chicago Art Institute. But he credited instinct rather than formal training with his initial successes. By 1925, he had moved to Laguna Beach, where he turned a friend’s small shack into a darkroom.

His early clients included writer M. F. K. Fisher and her sister Anne for what were then called “social portraits.”

Florence (Pancho) Barnes, the woman flier whose saloon in the Southern California desert was to become an oasis for many of the giant figures in pre- and post- World War II aviation, introduced him to silent screen star Novarro.

Hurrell took several pictures of the star of “Ben-Hur,” who showed them to actress Norma Shearer, whom he also photographed and who was then married to MGM Vice President Irving Thalberg.

Hurrell joined the MGM staff as a still photographer in 1930 and began the odyssey that ended only with his death.

Hurrell wasn’t above acting to break the tension of his photo sessions. He said he played jazz in the background, “jumped and hollered, fell down and carried on because I had to get reactions. . . .”

But he wanted to shoot all the stars, not just those on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot, and soon had opened his own studio on the Sunset Strip. He tired of the business world, however, and returned to the studios, this time Warner Bros., where Bogart, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis and James Cagney worked.

He said in a 1991 Times interview that he found Bogart “charming in a rough way,” Harlow “a joy,” Hepburn “a glib extrovert,” Gable “a real human being” and Greta Garbo “a stone statue.”

Hurrell--who always retouched directly on his negatives, a difficult task seldom done today--went to work for Columbia in 1942, then became part of the First Motion Picture Unit that made training films for the Air Force in World War II.

After the war, he worked out of a studio in Beverly Hills, went to New York on magazine and advertising assignments and finally formed a commercial department at Walt Disney’s studio (his second wife was a niece of Disney’s.)

Through the 1960s and ‘70s Hurrell photographed publicity stills for such top TV shows as “MASH,” “Gunsmoke” and “Star Trek” and such films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.”

By then signed vintage prints of his pictures were bringing from $10,000 to $15,000.

His final assignments included photographs of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening for the publicity campaign for “Bugsy” and pictures of Natalie Cole for her best-selling “Unforgettable” album.

David Fahey, the owner of a gallery that represented Hurrell, said last year “there is a cliche in photography about photographers ‘painting with light.’ George Hurrell . . . is the Rembrandt of photography.”

Besides his son, he is survived by his third wife, Elizabeth, five other children and several grandchildren.