Who's Who on the Screen pt 2

Add a Comment

Comment by Luke McKernan on January 24, 2009 at 8:11pm

I agree that there's an informality, a human-ness which comes out of variety, plus some great names (Wedgewood Nowell wouldn't have been allowed for a film actor ten years on). They are very communicative, in part through the range of photographic styles employed. I'm also intrigued by the biographical descriptions, which though formulaic emphasise interesting things. It was clearly important to be seen as athletic. There is scarcely an actor who hasn't stressed their earnest paricipation in sports. Was there a fear that to be an actor might be to taken as a slouch, or was it simply that healthiness equalled attractiveness?

It's a bit of a slog working through the album - I'm about halfway through, but worth it for the gallery effect, some biographical gems, and a sense of the motion picture business at a turning point - just before the heavens, as you say.

Comment by Deac Rossell on January 24, 2009 at 7:34pm

These are really wonderful photographs, from a very broad range of actors. And they are clearly all formal portraits; no candids, no on-set, all exactingly lit and well-posed. Yet it still strikes me how different they are from, say, 1930s portraits as issued from the major studios, and most work taken later. Here, there is still a strong sense of individuality even within the formal settings: the photographers have tried to bring out the essence and the particular style of each actor, and the ideas of 'glamour', or of 'aspiration', or of 'stardom' takes second place, or even third place, to the particularity and distinctiveness of each player. Later work seems to me to idealise and to perpetuate samenesses, myths, in a different way than these images. Dare I suggest that even a brilliant portraitist like Annie Leibowitz, whose work I have admired greatly for a very long time now, and who always tries to reach out to distill the individuality and special character of her subjects, actually looks rather mannerist in comparison to the images here? These portraits are produced within boundaries, with strong elements of the formal rules of the day, yet they still seem very communicative, very human and distinct; the stars have not yet reached the heavens here, and are all the better for it.