Oversized Portraits Of Pre-Code Hollywood Stars
Walter Film recently acquired a remarkable collection of studio portraits of some of the major stars of Pre-Code Hollywood. These oversized black-and-white double weight glossy silver gelatin portraits of the following:
John Barrymore, Cary Grant, Gretta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Joan Crawford, Will Rogers, Norma Shearer, Maurice Chevalier, Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich, and others, were captured by the studio photographers of the time. The following photographers went on to established themselves as major portrait photographers of Hollywood’s Golden Age and for many years thereafter: George Hurrell (Hurrell), László Willinger, Ernest Bachrach and Russell Ball.
Hollywood’s Premiere Portraiture
These oversized black-and-white double wide photographs were expensive to produce and were released in a very limited quantity. Therefore, the following portraits are a rare sample of Hollywood’s premiere portraiture during an era in the American film industry that occurred between the widespread adoption of sound in film in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines (popularly known as the Hays Code) in 1934.
Pre-Code Hollywood
While the Hays Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor, and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934, with the establishment of the Production Code Administration. Before that date, film content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion than by strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. As a result, some films in the late 1920s and early 1930s depicted or implied sexual innuendo, romantic and sexual relationships between white and black people, mild profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence, and homosexuality.
