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| When the image is enlarged, the rather crude retouching of Miss Lawrence's slightly less than aristocratic nose is quite obvious. |
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| The two relevant pages from Vogue. (In the above, it's clear that, for publication, the nose in question has been re-retouched.) |
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| Two images of the We Were Dancing gown "in action." This photograph credited to Vandamm. |
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| Photograph - presumably for Shadow Play - by Sasha (Alexander Stewart). |
Retouching to flatter the client, as was done at the royal courts of Europe by court painters of royal portraits. A large nose made smaller, a double chin disappears, the corpulent made slimmer and so on. An example of this were some portraits of the Hapsburg monarchs of Austria and Spain.
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Oh, certainly! Retouching came in almost at the same time photography, itself, did; the "truthfulness" of the photographic image was just too much of a shock for some! ; )
DeleteI had other photographs from that sitting by Horst which were lovelier- I used to stay with him and Nicholas on long Island. Those were taken at the time of the Broadway production of Tonight at 8-30- Hartnell changed some of his designs , in fact many of them for New York, they were smarter and better cut . Gertrude Lawrence gave a fashion show of all her outfits - Hartnell said he would never have taken off in the USA if it hadn't been for the publicity Gertrude L gave his clothes for Tonight at 8-30. She had fallen out with Molyneux over bills due to her bankruptcy in 1935. Molyneux had always clothed Cowards productions from 1923. But they had to find someone else and Hartnell had already done some clothes for Lawrence in 1932. Timothy Morgan-Owen
ReplyDeleteThank you, Timothy. Very interesting. And, yes, Miss Lawrence was famously reckless where her finances were concerned; her charm was doubtless insufficient to quash the bitter feelings of the many "tradespeople" she left in the lurch.
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