Sunday, July 19, 2015

Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, publicity for "Ball of Fire", photographs by George Hurrell*, 1941



***

Simply put, "Ball of Fire" is one of our favorite movies of all time...!

While putting together this group of publicity pictures, I noticed that Stanwyck's makeup in some of the photographs is very light, giving her a much softer look than she has in the film. Probably too soft for a character named "Sugarpuss" O'Shea. Hurrell was known for asking his actresses to wear little or no makeup during his shoots - he supplied the Hollywood perfection in the retouching process - so perhaps that's the reason for her lack of glamorous varnish.

* I'm not entirely certain that all of these are by Hurrell; aside from makeup inconsistencies, there are stylistic ones as well.


1 comment:

  1. I absolutely agree that some of these are not Hurrell's work. There was a carefully static aspect to his imagery, even though it was often powerfully sexy at the same time.

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