Customer Reviews

Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography (Santa Barbara Museum of Art)

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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I had expected tons of large photos / portraits in this book. That was not the case. It is a fasinating read though. Peppered with photos. Just thought I'd tell others incase they expected a mostly photos book too.

Very well documented story of Ruth Harriet Louise. The author makes every attempt to describe each illustration fully. Selection of photographs is breathtaking. The immense difficulty of being one of the very few Hollywood female portrait photographers is fully realized.

This is an excellent book that highlights the career / work of this very talented {and relatively unknown} photographer during the early period {1925-1930} of MGM's rise as the premier movie studio in Hollywood. There are great pictures, most which I had never seen before that are coupled with a very informative / lucid text. Ms. Louise was hired less than one year after MGM began and from inititally Ms. Louise was in constantly in conflict with older more established MGM staffers resenting her sex and talent. However, by dint of her ability and determination she managed to carve a place for herself doing the photo still's for the most important stars and lesser lights at the studio. The authors have obviously has done a great deal of research on MGM during this this period and their interconnecting of the MGM stars career trajectories to Ms Louise's photographic style is very interesting and well done. The chapters on her how she photographed and dealt with the insecurities and quirks of Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies and espically Greta Garbo highlight how Ms. Louise to get good photographic results depended as much to establish a special rapport with each of them as to knowing their facial and body strengths and weaknesses. She was less interested in glamour and more into showing the subjects as much as characther studies as much as their beauty. Her stills of Joan Crawford are particularly daring and interesting. With Greta Garbo,her efforts to create something special shows Ms.Garbo as a more human and accessible "Goddess" than her later 1930s still photos by George Hurrell would show. However it was George Hurrell's "glamour in soft focus" photos that would be more in step with the sleek and sophisticated MGM image of the 1930s and 40s and he would replace Ms. Louise as MGM's chief still photographer at the beginning of 1930. Hurrell was able to photograph Norma Shearer as a sexy siren and the photos he took of her got her the role of The Divorcee" which was a huge box office hit and got her the Academy Award for the best actress of 1930. Ms. Louise was not a "political" employee and did not form alliances with the power brokers in the studio. She was more of a technical craftsman and when she started to slip in late 1929 she had no allies to rally to her defense and her contract was quietly allowed to lapse. Ms Louise continued her photographic career but after she married in 1932 her career came second to her family. She was only 37 years old when she died in childbirth in 1940.This book is an overdue homage to a very talented and neglected photographer during the transition period of American studio's from silentto sound films. I highly recommend this book with a strong 4 ½ star rating.