Photos by Hurrell

George Hurrell sits in the darkroom of his San Fernando Valley house, working on his latest assignment—a photographic portrait of a Texas oil baron and his wife. With an X-acto knife, he scratches away at the gigantic 8" x 10" black-and-white negative, actually removing part of the man's cheeks, making him look slimmer, younger and, well, more glamorous. It's painstaking work—one slip will ruin the negative and send Hurrell into a sputtering rage—and it seems out of place for Hurrell to be doing it himself. He is, after all, one of the most famous men in photography, the legendary king of the Hollywood glamor photographers for more than 56 years, a man who can easily afford to have someone else do the drudgery—the developing, the retouching, the prints themselves.

Not Hurrell. Never mind that his work hangs in galleries all over the world or that people pay thousands of dollars to put a framed Hurrell original on the wall. He has farmed out work before, only to have it end up in the hands of young technicians who lacked his drive for perfection. So, at 78 years of age, he is still taking pictures—lots of them, in fact—and still maintaining the attention to detail that made him famous.

Since he shot his first portrait of a celebrity—Ramon Novarro, in 1927—Hurrell (text continued on page 172) Hurrell (continued from page 164) has taken some of the most memorable pictures ever to come out of Hollywood. The subjects' names alone are synonymous with film's golden era: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Jane Russell, the Barrymores, Humphrey Bogart and hundreds of others. His style, which combines his distinctive use of an 8" x 10" camera with creative lighting designs—using spotlights instead of strobes—has not changed for more than half a century. While the rest of the world clicks away with 35mm motor-driven cameras, Hurrell uses the old techniques to impress a new audience, including a spate of rock stars who have hired him to shoot their album covers. Not a small achievement for a man who started back with the talking picture.

Take what happened to our own Shannon Tweed. Hurrell, who seldom photographs nudes, thought Shannon would make a perfect subject; his instincts, as you can tell by these photos, are still impeccable. She came away from her photo session in awe. "He knew just what he was doing," she says. "His techniques are his own. No one can copy him." Shannon also got a quick lesson in the value of a Hurrell portrait. "I put one of the Hurrells in my portfolio and Lina Wertmuller took it," she explains. "She was supposedly doing a movie in Rome, starring Sophia Loren, that she wanted me to be part of. The movie's since been canceled, but she was so fascinated with the photograph that she took it. She doesn't speak English very well and I didn't have the nerve to say, 'Please don't take my Hurrell.' She was so impressed with the picture that she was going to show it to Fellini that evening at dinner."

Wertmuller has an eye for art. Some Hurrell photographs are priced as high as $20,000 each.

Now that he's 78, Hurrell works mostly at home. The man who defined glamor for several generations lives with Betty, his third wife, in an unassuming part of the San Fernando Valley—"a good old flat, ordinary part of the valley," he says, where you're more likely to find Laverne and Shirley than the girls Moon Unit Zappa sings about. It's about as close in spirit to Beverly Hills as New Jersey is to Manhattan.

His living there is not a matter of economics. It's just that Hurrell is so caught up in his work that he tends not to dwell on the incidentals of his life. He's not sure when he married his present wife (it was in either 1954 or 1955) and he sometimes has trouble remembering the ages of his six children, but he can easily recall minute details about a photo he took before World War Two. "If you're like me, you don't pay much attention to anything except getting the work out," he says.

There's another telling fact apparent in the house. "When my friend Helmut Newton was out here one night, he looked around and asked, 'Where the hell are your photographs?' " Indeed, the walls feature only oil paintings, all originals by Hurrell and only one of them finished. The others could be considered works in progress—except for the fact that there is no progress. An unfinished portrait of his daughter—partially sketched, partially painted—has stayed that way for several years, and a still life that is a mere outline was begun in the Forties. The only photo to be seen is a snapshot of George and Betty in a perfect-posture pose outside a local restaurant. It's the kind of shot you can take with an Instamatic and get developed at Fotomat.

Why no Hurrell photography? "There's no place to put it," he insists. "So much of my work is just people; after you've looked at them half a dozen times, you just get tired of looking at them.

"I don't have a super ego inside my belly," he says, patting his ample girth. "If I have a special talent, it's because I work hard at it and try my damnedest. Maybe it's mostly sweat." Lest that sound like false modesty, it should be pointed out that Hurrell is not necessarily a modest man. He can beam with pride while showing you some of his recent work. It's as if he's gained a certain wisdom with age that keeps the various aspects of his life in perspective.

As Shannon said after meeting him, "You want to sit at his feet and learn everything he knows."

Meanwhile, his paintings stay unfinished because he can't find the time to put down his camera and pick up his palette. "All I ever wanted to be was an artist," he recalls. "I always thought I'd give up photography and go into painting. As I went along, I kept finding out that I could paint only for fun. If you want to paint seriously, you have to do nothing but paint. I would have been happier if I had done it and probably had a more exciting life, too."

It was his desire to paint—plus bad health—that made Hurrell leave Chicago in 1925 for the burgeoning artists' colony in Laguna Beach, California. Laguna was also a summer playground for the rich from Los Angeles, and since he wasn't selling many paintings, he made extra cash by taking photographic portraits of the well-heeled vacationers.

At least one customer was satisfied enough to recommend Hurrell to Ramon Novarro. Novarro, who was under contract to MGM, wanted to become an opera star and thought a new set of portraits, giving him a more artistic image, would help. He was so pleased with the results that he showed them to Norma Shearer, another MGM star and the wife of the studio's reigning production genius, Irving Thalberg. Shearer, too, was in the market for a make-over: Despite her obvious connections, she found herself relegated to light, ladylike roles and wanted to make the switch to heavy drama.

"She was trying to get this sexy role that her husband didn't think she could handle," recalls Hurrell, who was pleased to find a second celebrity seeking an image-altering portfolio. "I made her look like what was considered sexy in those days—a leg showing, a little shoulder. Today, it would be so tame you'd laugh at it."

Shearer didn't laugh. Neither did Thalberg, who was so impressed with the pictures that he gave his wife the part she wanted and asked Hurrell to come to work full time at MGM as a still photographer. America was entering the Depression and Hurrell was a starving artist. When he found out he'd make $150 a week at MGM, he jumped at it.

MGM's slogan in those days was "More stars than there are in heaven," and Hurrell photographed them all. As the years passed, he bounced from studio to studio as the staff photographer or free-lanced from his own small studio on the Sunset Strip. His life was a parade of stars and his work was seen in newspaper rotogravure sections and magazines around the world.

Hurrell's success came from a combination of artistry, technique and unusual antics. Full of boundless energy and a quick-witted charm—both of which he still has today—he played music to get his subjects into the desired mood. If that didn't work, he'd jump around the room like one of the Three Stooges, even standing on his head to get a spark out of his more sobersided subjects. Other times, when he was dealing with some of the more naturally outgoing stars, the results were surprising. Mae West showed up for a photo session at Paramount one evening in 1934 with (concluded on page 234) Hurrell (continued from page 172) 50 negligees. Hurrell would pick out the color he wanted and Mae would put it on and pose. Then, with a mischievous glint in her eye, she'd let the negligee drop to the floor, leaving her, in Hurrell's words, "naked as a jay bird" while the shutter kept clicking. Hurrell would pick out another gown, West would put it on and, somehow, the damned thing would slip off again. "The publicity man who was sitting there went pink, yellow, green and blue all over," laughs Hurrell. "He locked the door, he was so scared."

With Jane Russell, it was the press agent who insisted that Hurrell shoot nudes. In both cases, Hurrell watched as the studios confiscated the negatives, either to keep them under wraps or to use them overseas and in South America, where nudity was more acceptable.

If anything else happened during those late-night photo sessions, Hurrell isn't saying. The usually loquacious photographer finds himself stammering if you ask about his romantic involvement with any of the stars. "Whatever went on was just between them and me," he says, ending the discussion.

Despite his popularity and success, Hurrell would wake up every so often with a realization: "I'd get bored with Hollywood and bored with movie stars. They're all a pain in the ass. So I'd go to New York. I wouldn't know what I was going to do, but I would get there and figure it out."

What he usually ended up doing was commercial photography—pictures of soap and cold cream—for which he was extremely well paid. But it wouldn't be too long before he'd get a familiar nagging feeling.

"I'd get bored with New York," Hurrell says, "so I'd move out to the suburbs. I'd get bored with the suburbs and move out to the country. I'd get bored with that goddamned train ride in and out every day, and then I'd just get bored."

In retrospect, his bouts with boredom revitalized him. "I would rejoice in the thing that I had turned away from and love it again," he says. "I would only get bored doing the same thing constantly, and I still am that way. I have to move. I have to circulate."

Hurrell never circulated too far from photography, however, despite some tempting offers. "Joan Crawford wanted me to become a motion-picture cameraman, but I couldn't stand it," he recalls. "I was too energetic, too nervous. All a motion-picture cameraman does is sit on his big, fat butt—day in, day out, month after month, year after year. I lasted two and a half days. Today, I could probably manage it. Age has slowed me down, so I can sit still once in a while."

He may have slowed down a bit—though he claims he's far from retiring but the biggest change in his life was the end of the glamor era in Hollywood Studios that no longer had actors under contract didn't have a vested interest in building stars. Photographers such as Hurrell were too expensive to keep or staff, and there was no one to teach the up-and-coming actors and actresses how to act, talk, dress and pose—in short how to behave like stars. As a result, Hurrell finds the new crop of actors unappealing, boring, impatient and often difficult to work with.

"I've watched that big guy Tom Selleck," he complains. "His picture is all over the magazines. Jesus, there's a guy; if he only had some training, he'd be a dynamo. As an actor, he's the worst. I've never seen anything as bad."

He is equally feisty when it comes to Jane Fonda. "She's a good actress," he says, "but I think she limits herself. I think she could be a glamor gal if she went out and worked on it. It's just like the night of the Oscars. She looked like she had picked that dress off a Salvation Army-store rack and her hair looked like she hadn't combed it in a week. Even her make-up stunk."

Of course, Hurrell has photographed his share of the new breed of star, from Dustin Hoffman and Alan Alda to several seasons' worth of disposable TV stars. He's even done the Osmonds. But his work today is more wide ranging, such as the commission from the Texas oil baron who paid $5000 for Hurrell to shoot three pictures of him and his wife or that from the clothing designer who flew in from Japan just to have a portrait by Hurrell. Geo sent him to Hawaii to capture Clare Boothe Luce; and Playboy, of course, commissioned him to photograph Shannon Tweed.

Lately, however, Hurrell's work has been most visible on album covers for such artists as Aretha Franklin, Melissa Manchester, Chevy Chase, Keith Carradine, Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac. If Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger's girlfriend, has her way. Hurrell will eventually photograph The Rolling Stones. Hurrell and Hall met when he shot her for a French Vogue fashion layout and they got along so well that she gave him tickets for the Stones' concert at the L.A. Coliseum so that he and Mick could get to know each other. The meeting never came off: Hurrell had to spend the day shooting Fleetwood Mac. "I've been kicking myself ever since." he says.

"There's no getting away from it; it's gratifying," Hurrell says of his newfound fame in rock circles. "There are only about 10,000 photographers in this town, and all of these guys are calling this old fart to make pictures for them. I'm enjoying life now more than ever"

"Hurrell, who seldom photographs nudes, thought Shannon would make a perfect subject."

"Hurrell would pick out a gown, West would put it on and, somehow, the damned thing would slip off"