"Jane Wyman"     Gelatin silver print     George Hurrell 1940s

Many of our favorite Hollywood stars­Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell in that haystack­remain in our memory based on a Hurrell image. During his career from 1928 to his death in 1992, George Hurrell's photography, simply, "made" a star. He gave the looks to the Legends. In the 1930s, his glamour portraits gave the country a respite from the realities of the Depression. In the 1940s, his portraits kept the rumblings and realities of the war at bay, making stars of heroic drama, beauty and strength. They, like the Hollywood films they reflect, represented the nation's determination to achieve victory while maintaining a "normal" way of life.

Hurrell's pin-ups became the voluptuous sweethearts of homesick soldiers everywhere. Here, Jane Wyman is shown in a vintage gelatin silver print of 1943. Hurrell's portraits of Jane Wyman are of her early years in Hollywood when the Warner Bros. kept casting her as a dumb blond or as the "next Joan Blondell." Finally her "tearful" potential was recognized when she was cast as the worried fiancée of the alcoholic, Ray Milland, in The Lost Weekend (1945). Thereafter she became one of Hollywood's great suffering actresses, winning an Academy Award in 1948 as a deaf-mute victim in Johnny Belinda. Other '40 films include The Yearling (1946) and Magic Town (1947). In 1951, she and Bing Crosby won a Best Song Oscar for "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" in Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom.

Hurrell's still-shot imagery during the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s created the quintessential Hollywood style, full of close-up drama, deep mysterious shadows, and come-hither allure. His look mirrored the characteristics of film noir, predominant at the time. An archive of Hollywood photography was created as part of the Museum's permanent collection in the 1990s through the donation of 70 photographs by George Hurrell and 30 portraits by other Hollywood photographers as a generous gift from actor, Allan Rich.

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