Jazz Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston (Hardcover)

by Robert Hudovernik (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...sumptuous sepia-toned portraits, their subjects humming with erotic energy under a single, pitch-perfect light source." -- Playboy, March 2006

"...these silent-film era stars appear in Johnston's delicate, elegantly composed images like beautiful ghosts." -- Nylon, June/July 2006

Product Description
Despite Prohibition, the '20s was the decade of jazz, flappers and hip flasks. While some took their vote and joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement, others, well, took liberties. Compiled here for the first time are more than 200 publicity stills and photos of some of America's first "It" girls—the silent film-era starlets who paved the way for the cacophony of Monroes and Madonnas to follow. Accompanying these iconic images are the stories behind them, including accounts from surviving Ziegfeld Girls, as well as ads featuring them that helped perpetuate the allure of It girl glamour. When rare and striking portraits of these women surfaced on the internet in 1995, author Robert Hudovernik began researching their source. What he discovered was the work of one of the first "star makers" identified most with the Ziegfeld Follies, Alfred Cheney Johnston. Johnston, a member of New York's famous Algonquin Round Table who photographed such celebrities as Mary Pickford, Fanny Brice, the Gish Sisters, and Louise Brooks, fell out of the spotlight with the demise of the revue. A sumptuous snapshot of an era, this book is also a look at the work of this "lost" photographer.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Universe (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789313812
• ISBN-13: 978-0789313812
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #78,235 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating Vintage Beauties, November 26, 2006

By	Arturo G. Zaldivar "Professional Photographer" (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a longtime admirer of early celebrity portraiture, this book brings to light the works of a nearly forgotten master. Although I own over 40 books and numerous original images covering photography of 1890s-1930s, I have seen very few of the images in this book reproduced elsewhere. The text is accurate enough to give one a sense of the historical background in which Johnson worked, with one very minor error regarding Theda Bara and Bill Tilden. However, the text is brief and the book is just loaded with wonderfully reproduced images of stunningly beautiful women. Many are clothed as Ziegfeld Showgirls, the predecessors to today's Vegas Showgirls. Some images are of early film actresses. All are captured in Johnson's signature style which certainly influenced Clarence Sinclair Bull, George Hurrell, Harriet Ruth Louise, and other great movie studio photographers. If you appreciate early 20th Century photography, early film and American Theater of the period, you will love this book. And if you just like to admire beautiful natural beauty (not surgically enhanced), this is the book for you.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One for your collection, January 15, 2007

By	Terry Norman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As one who enjoys movies from the 30's, this book helped me to enter the world of early Ziegfeld and movie beauties and their way of life. Of the photographic books I have, this one has to rank at the top. The first 62 pages (and few at the end of the book) contain text with photographs. Photo collections with text usually bore me, but this one was so interesting with details of the stories behind the women and that era, that I was dissapointed when the text ended. I have one other photo book containing women of the 20's but the photography, poses, and beauty of the women in this book surpasses the other book by a long shot. The strict physical characteristics that Ziegfeld had for his women are evident in this collection. Included in this collection is Miss Universe from 1926. I wondered to myself if they stripped her of her crown for posing nude? This book also provides excellent examples of the use of lines when posing the female subject. The book refers to it as the "Line of Beauty". If one enjoys the history and images of that era, this is a must have book that won't dissapoint. A superbly bound hardbook with mainly full page images of excellent quality.
My one sad point of the book was to learn that there are boxes full of more of Johnston's images that someone is holding on to with plans to sell individually and deny the world to see them as a collection.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars jazz age in the digital age..., October 29, 2007

By	K. Slamen "creative imagination specialist" (Montreal, Quebec. Canada) - See all my reviews

This is a delightful book for any photographer or photo enthusiast as it showcases the feminine mystique so eloquently captured by Alfred Cheney Johnston, but my one quip about this book is that some of the images have obviously been re-sized for print. There are not many of them, but as a photographer, I was horrified to see distorted pixelated photos of what could have been some very beautiful pieces. Perhaps this was an oversight by the author, but if you're going to make a book about photography, at least be aware of the aesthetic and final product as a whole