The look, the lure

During Hollywood’s heyday of the 1930s and ‘40s, stars under contract to the studios were told what movies they were going to make. Part of their contract stated that they would have to report to the studio’s portrait photographers to have glamour shots taken for the movie magazines. It was all part of the publicity machine.

Though all the major studios employed portrait photographers, MGM was in the forefront of these atmospheric black-and-white glamour shots. Known as the “dream factory,” the studio boasted that it had more stars than there are in the heavens.

Thirty-five of these photographs are on exhibit at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum through Jan. 20. “Bombshell: Classic Hollywood Glamour Photography” is culled from the Edward Weston Collection, one of the best-known archives of portrait photography focusing on major film stars from the 1930s and 1940s.

“These are the faces that made Hollywood,” says Weston, who began collecting the Hollywood photographs in the late 1960s.

The carefully lighted, airbrushed portraits gave stars an ethereal quality. They were flawlessly beautiful -- no wrinkles and not a hair out of place.

MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer hired the top photographers -- Clarence Sinclair Bull, George Hurrell, Laszlo Willinger and Ted Allen among them -- to shoot the studio’s superstars, including Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow.

The MGM portrait studio was run by Bull.

“Under him was George Hurrell, who became a prima donna in his own right. Some of the stars didn’t want him to shoot them,” says Weston. “Louis B. Mayer went to Vienna in 1937 and he hired actress Hedy Lamarr, and at the same time he hired Laszlo Willinger, who sort of replaced Hurrell because he went out on his own.”

It would take hours to set up these photo shoots. “These photographers were very finicky. The star would arrive on the set for stills as if you were going to shoot a film,” Weston says. “The first time Bull was shooting Garbo, the lights were very hot and he wanted to get in close.

“Thinking that she was wearing false eyelashes, Bull told her, ‘I can’t get too close with the lights because of your eyelashes.’ Garbo said, ‘Clarence, they are real. Don’t worry about it.’ ”

Most of the stars enjoyed the lavish treatment they got from the photographers. They were treated to caviar and music while waiting for their picture to be taken.

“Bette Davis and Joan Crawford loved it,” Weston says. But a few, including rough-and-tumble Spencer Tracy, hated the whole experience.

Jan-Christopher Horak, curator of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, wanted to do the exhibit because he is a big fan of Willinger’s. The exhibit features several examples of the photographer’s work, including a large-format portrait of Shearer from 1939’s “Idiot’s Delight,” a large-format study of Vivien Leigh in her ballerina outfit from 1940’s “Waterloo Bridge,” a portrait of a young Laurence Olivier sitting in a chair with his shadow looming behind him and a shot of Lucille Ball looking at herself in a mirror.

“I think the way he used light was very distinct,” says Horak. “I also think it’s interesting how he composed his image -- the angles of his shots.”

Willinger, says Horak, isn’t as well-known as Bull because he only worked at MGM until about 1942, when he was drafted into the military. After World War II ended, Willinger spent the rest of his career shooting well-respected portraits of pets.

Some of the celebrity photographs -- deemed too racy to be sent to movie magazines, such as a semi-nude picture of a teenage Jean Harlow that was shot in Griffith Park -- were not widely seen.

“Louis B. Mayer would not have appreciated having those photos in circulation,” Horak says. The same can be said of a portrait of Asian actress Anna May Wong baring her breast.

There’s a wonderful story surrounding a small Hurrell photograph of an audaciously brazen Shearer from 1929. Shearer was one of the biggest stars at MGM and was married to the studio’s second-in-command, boy wonder producer Irving Thalberg. By 1929, she was eager to break out of her good-girl roles and play a sexy vamp in the studio’s high-profile drama, “The Divorcee.”

The problem was, says Weston, that Thalberg “would never allow her to do sexy roles. He said, ‘She’s not sexy enough for films.’ So she begged Hurrell to pose her and shoot her sexy. He made her look very sensuous.”

After looking at the picture, Thalberg apologized for what he said to Shearer and told her to “go ahead and make the picture.” Shearer ended up winning the best actress Oscar for “The Divorcee.”

Several factors resulted in the demise of these type of photographs, from changes in film stock to the end of the studio system to even World War II.

“After the war, this kind of really artificial glamour photography lost favor for much more natural and candid type images,” says Horak.

They never lost their appeal to Weston, though.

“In hindsight, I wish I had bought Man Rays and Mapplethorpes,” Weston says, laughing. “But it’s your passion that leads you in a different direction. I am not interested in what is going to appreciate as a collectible thing. It was what I felt and related to.”

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‘Bombshell: Classic Hollywood Glamour Photography’

Where: Hollywood Entertainment Museum, 7021 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Thursday-Tuesday

Ends: Jan. 20

Price: $8.75 for adults; $5.50 for seniors; $4.50 for students;

$4 for children 5-12; free to museum members and children younger than 5. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Info: (323) 465-7900 or www.hollywoodmuseum.com

Susan King can be contacted at susan.king@latimes.com.