Sex and power – Nazism in 1970s cinema

2017-08-15 By aenigma

Tasteless, gratuitous smut or challenging cult classics? In the late-1960s and 1970s a clutch of art-house films by Italian directors found new, confrontational ways to explore the rise of fascism.

The stage was set by Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), followed a year later by Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970). 1974 saw the release of Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter and Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties, with Pier Paulo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976) bringing down the curtain.

1969. Luchino Visconti directing Charlotte Rampling and Reinhard Kolldehoff on the set of The Damned.

Sex and power – sex as a metaphor for tyranny

These are great, if controversial, films with intriguing plots, extravagant drama, superb actors, gorgeous sets and stylish costumes. But their tone is dark and pessimistic, their subject matter grim, transgressive and voyeuristic. They make for thrillingly uncomfortable viewing.

They portray the Nazi regime as evil incarnate. Against a broader historical backdrop, they chart its ascendancy and consequences for individuals, relationships and the body politic. The underlying narrative seems to run something like this…

Capitalism is corrupt and corrupting.
It leads inexorably to power plays, tyranny and repression at every level of society, from the family to the state.
Along with all of this come a range of other perverse behaviours such as duplicity, betrayal and sexual deviance.
Capitalism, tyranny and perversion create a death spiral of paranoia and destruction from which escape, let alone redemption, is all but impossible.
This toxic cocktail finds its ultimate expression in the sado-masochistic excesses of Nazism.

The most striking characteristic of these films is that they equate sexual deviance with tyranny, or “totalitarianism”, to use a word that was much in vogue at the time. Sexual domination is a metaphor for political domination; non-heterosexual desires are a symptom of political depravity. This is troubling, not least for a contemporary audience with a less binary attitude towards sexuality.

1969. The Damned

Luchino Visconti's The Damned is a magnificent failure, an example of a great director working at the peak of his ability and somehow creating almost nothing at all. Surely no one else could have made this film; surely no one at all should have. It is one of the most impenetrable films ever made.
Roger Ebert, 5 February 1970

Luchino Visconti's The Damned may be the chef d'oeuvre of the great Italian director – a spectacle of such greedy passion, such uncompromising sensation, and such obscene shock that it makes you realize how small and safe and ordinary most movies are. Experiencing it is like taking a whiff of ammonia—it's not conventionally pleasant, but it makes you see the outlines of everything around you with just a little more clarity.
Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 19 December 1969

Visconti has always been a master of melodrama, often working with large, operatic gestures (his Senso, in fact begins with an opera), and The Damned, with its numerous early singspiels and cabaret performances (particularly the memorable drag number of actor Helmut Berger [as Martin Essenbeck] impersonating Marlene Dietrich) are often outrageously theatrical.
Douglas Messerli, World Cinema Review, 23 September 2013

1970. The Conformist

The Conformist, an adaptation of the novel by Alberto Moravia, is a superior chronicle film that equates the rise and fall of Italian Fascism, from the early 1920s until 1943, with the short, dreadful, very romantic life of Marcello, a young man for whom conformity becomes a kind of obsession after a traumatic homosexual encounter in his youth.
Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 19 September 1970

A beautifully imagined portrait of moral and political cowardice, it stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as Clerici, a Mussolini-era aristocrat who is so bent on appearing “normal” that he volunteers to spy on his old university tutor for the secret police.
Anthony Quinn, The Independent, 29 February 2008

Bernardo Bertolucci's expressionist masterpiece of 1970, The Conformist, is the movie that plugs postwar Italian cinema firmly and directly into the emerging 1970s renaissance in Hollywood film-making.
Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian, 20 October 2010

1974. The Night Porter

If you don't love pain, you won't find The Night Porter erotic—and by now, even painbuffs may be satiated with Nazi decadence. The movie reunites a former SS officer (Dirk Bogarde) and a young woman (Charlotte Rampling) who was raped by him during her adolescence in a concentration camp.
Nora Sayre, The New York Times, 2 October 1974

The Night Porter is as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering. It is (I know how obscene this sounds) Nazi chic.
Roger Ebert, 10 February 1975

The movie is a splinter torn from a wave of so-called “Nazi chic” that swept across world cinema in the early 1970s, mostly in the hands of directors out of Germany and Italy. I suspect there was a need for movies of this nature at that time, mostly as a therapy to their filmmakers; the fascism that ran rampant through both countries during World War II caused considerable atrocity, and film was used by conflicted auteurs as a way to defuse the past and give it finality, and meaning.
David M Keyes, Cinemaphile, 15 July 2013

1976. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

For all of Mr. Pasolini's desire to make "Salo" an abstract statement, one cannot look at images of people being scalped, whipped, gouged, slashed, covered with excrement and sometimes eating it and react abstractedly unless one shares the director's obsessions.
Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 1 October 1977

Through a panoply of the unspeakable – blood, excrement, torture and murder – Salò comments on the exercise of power, and on a consumer culture where a limitless choice of gratifications disguises an absence of all choice and all resistance.
Gary Indiana, The Guardian, 22 September 2000

Pasolini’s radical political insights regarding Sade, Fascism, and the violence at the heart of all culture came through brilliantly, but the scenes of torture were agony to watch, and, back out on the street after the sun had set, the world itself seemed spoiled upon contact with them. I wondered, literally, how I’d go on living withsuch knowledge.
Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 11 May 2010

Sex and power – products of their time

These films are palpably products of their time and in their own way feel just as dated now as the films noir of the 1940s and the musicals of the 1950s.

They emerged from a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that ran from the late-1960s to the early-1980s and was marked by a wave of left-wing and right-wing terrorist incidents. During the period, nearly 2,000 murders were attributed to political violence in the form of bombings, assassinations and street warfare between rival militant factions.

The films’ political message is rooted in the socialist / communist ideology that had gained currency (particularly in academic and artistic circles) during the 1960s and had erupted on the streets of Paris in 1968 but was increasingly questioned during the 1970s. The Nazis provide the protagonists, costumes and settings for restaging and exploring in the present the historical failure of democracy.

Bear in mind too that for many in 1970 the end of World War II was recent history, just 25 years away – the equivalent for us would be looking back at the 1990s. Visconti, Cavani, Wertmüller and Pasolini had all lived through the war (Bertolucci was born during it) and their films may well have been in part at least a way of coming to terms with events they had witnessed. At the same time a new generation was coming of age who had not themselves lived through the war and its immediate aftermath.

Anita Strindberg and Florinda Bolkan in a scene from A Lizard in a Woman's Skin — 1971. Anita Strindberg and Florinda Bolkan in a scene from A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, a highly regarded giallo. Photo by Antonio Benetti.

At the same time, the permissiveness of the 1960s had loosened the moral code and opened the door for more explicit on-screen sex, torture and other forms of bad behaviour. A parallel development was that of the giallo, a genre of Italian pulp movie nicely characterized by Cheryl Eddie for Gizmodo:

Nearly all [the films] contain gushing gore, erotic themes, a heavy emphasis on visuals (with things like script coherence often taking a back seat), questionable / campy English dubbing, characters gripped by paranoia, gorgeous women in peril, and ruthlessly brutal masked killers fond of sharp objects, rope, and black leather gloves.

Significantly, it was in the mid-1970s that Susan Sontag published a piece on Fascinating Fascism. in which she noted the renewed interest in Nazism and its eroticization. She also observed that “Courses dealing with the history of fascism are, along with those on the occult (including vampirism), among the best attended these days on college campuses.” So clearlysomething was in the air.

Perhaps these films about the rise of fascism were also a reaction to the camp frivolity churned out of Cinecittà during the latter half of the 1960s – movies like The 10^th Victim (1965), Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968).

Whatever the influences, this clutch of films was made possible commercially by the emergence during the 1960s of European art-house cinema as a force to be reckoned with thanks to work by the likes of Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky.

1969. Ingrid Thulin as Baroness Sophie Von Essenbeck in The Damned.

Sex and power – the actresses

These films showcase the talents of some of the leading European actresses of the period. In fact a number of them keep reappearing in these and related films of the period.

Foremost among them is Charlotte Rampling, an English actress, who plays the female lead opposite Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter as well as having an important and very different role in The Damned. She worked as a model before capturing the attention of cinemagoers with her performance in Georgy Girl (1966). She continues to appear in films (not least François Ozon’s Swimming Pool), on TV and on the stage. Outside of the movie world, she features, posing naked on a table at the Hotel Nord Pinus in Arles, in one of Helmut Newton’s most celebrated photographs.

Alongside Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Thulin is regarded by many as Sweden’s female contribution to international cinema. She was one of Ingmar Bergman’s muses and appeared in seven of his films, beginning with Wild Strawberries (1957), for which she won best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival the following year. In The Damned, she is the cold-blooded Baroness Sophie Von Essenbeck, a cross between a latter-day Lady Macbeth and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. She also appears in Tinto Brass’s proto-Nazisploitation film, Salon Kitty (1976).

French actress Dominique Sanda was 18 years old when Bernardo Bertolucci asked her to play the part of Anna in The Conformist. The same year Vittorio De Sica cast her as Micòl Finzi Contini in his movie about the fate of a Jewish family in 1938 Italy, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). She was subsequently recruited by Luchino Visconti for an uncredited role in Conversation Piece (1974) and again by Bertolucci to play the ill-fated Ada in 1900. She won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in The Inheritance (1976).

Bernardo Bertolucci cast Stefania Sandrelli in the two great historical films about Italy that he made in the 1970s: The Conformist and 1900. Her breakthrough film was Divorce Italian Style (1961) – she was just 15 years old at the time. In the 1970s she worked with director Ettore Scola as well as Bernardo Bertolucci before, in the 1980s, making a name for herself as an erotic actress in Tinto Brass’s The Key (1983).

Ingrid Thulin

1951. Ingrid Thulin attended Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theatre’s acting school in Stockholm from 1948 to 1950. She subsequently spent two seasons at the theatre itself. This photo dates from that period in her career.

Ingrid Thulin

1962. Having made a name for herself on the European cinema scene, particularly in the films of Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin was recruited by MGM to star in their remake of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, for which this photo is a publicity shot.

Ingrid Thulin

Mid-1960s. By the mid-1960s Ingrid Thulin’s brief excursion to Hollywood fizzled out and she had returned to Europe to work again with Ingmar Bergman and also with other directors including Alain Resnais and Luchino Visconti. Photo by Franco Pinna.

Dominique Sanda

Around 1970. Dominique Sanda’s career took off like a rocket. The Conformist and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis were her second and third films, following on from her success in Robert Bresson’s A Gentle Woman (1969) the previous year. Photo by Walter Carone.

Charlotte Rampling

Late-1960s. Charlotte Rampling began her career as a model although acting quickly became her main focus. Almost 50 years on, in 2014 she was announced as the new face of NARS’ Audacious Lipstick Collection and in 2017 modelled for Lowe.

Charlotte Rampling

Around 1970. On beauty: "I think you have to earn it. You can use it or abuse it however you want when you're young. It's a God-given gift. You have a visiting card - you can go into any room and someone will come and talk to you." (The Independent, 2014).

Charlotte Rampling

Around 1970. Charlotte Rampling’s career and collaborators bear out a comment she made in a recent BBC interview: “I’ve always liked danger. I like risk, otherwise I tend not to do things as it’s too easy.” Photo by Richard Polak.

Stefania Sandrelli

Around 1965. On working with the likes of Bertolucci and Scola: “I have always considered myself like a member of an orchestra, who in order to play well needs first and foremost a good conductor. And that’s what all those directors were, in part because they managed to charge their work with a passion that you could completely sense on the set as well.” (2016 interview) Photo by Angelo Frontoni.

Sex and power – the reception

When these films were released, the savagery of the Nazi regime and the horrors of the Holocaust were still fresh in people’s minds, so the subject matter was always going to be controversial.

The Damned opened to worldwide acclaim and was the tenth most popular movie at the French box office in 1970. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and was named Best Foreign Film by the National Board of Review, with Helmut Berger was singled out for particular praise.

1974. Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter.

The Conformist dropped quickly from sight after rave receptions at several film festivals. It got only a very, very limited run in the US after the likes of Francis Ford Coppola urged Paramount to release it. Nor was it a big hit in Italy because it provided audiences with an uncomfortable reminder of fascism’s comparatively recent popularity. It is now something of a cult movie and regarded by many as a masterpiece.

The Night Porter provoked mixed responses. Liliana Cavani was praised by some for having the courage to deal with the theme of sexual transgression but many couldn’t accept the Holocaust setting. Elite-critic Roger Ebert was far from alone when he called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering.”

Seven Beauties upset many with its graphic depiction of Nazi concentration camps as the context for a sick joke about its leading character’s survival. In spite of that, it did well in the US and was nominated for four Oscars, including best director.

Not surprisingly given its graphic portrayals of rape, torture, and murder, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom was widely regarded as obscene and banned in several countries. In some the ban remains to this day. The film has never reached a mass audience but many critics now see it as an important work and required viewing for serious cinephiles.

Sex and power – the legacy

In the political arena, the message of these movies about the Nazis failed to make an impact. By the late-1970s / early-1980s the dominant ideologies were those of the free-marketeers (as personified by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) and the anarchists (as embodied by the punks).

Das Schwimmbad by Bob Carlos Clarke — Around 1980. Das Schwimmbad – Nazi chic by Bob Carlos Clarke.

Perhaps for all their sensationalism these films failed to appeal to a broad enough audience. More likely, they turned out to be a late flowering of 1960s thinking, and by the time they were released the pendulum had already begun to swing in another direction.

Ironically, in the cultural / artistic arena these films ended up spawning a whole sub-genre of exploitation movies – Nazisploitation. Nazisploitation films appropriated the lavish decadence of The Damned, the psychodrama of The Night Porter or the S&M of Salò to create a sensationalist cocktail of sex and violence. The most celebrated product of the genre is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975). But there was clearly something in the air – Love Camp 7 (1969) was released the same year as The Damned.

In mainstream cinema, the most obvious progeny of these films about the Nazis is Cabaret (1972). In stills photography, Nazi chic is implicit or explicit in the work of Helmut Newton, Chris von Wangenheim and Bob Carlos Clarke. And, by extension, is it going to too far to discern a link between these films and the broad-shouldered, power dressing that took the fashion world by storm in the late-’70s?

Want to know more about sex and power?

A good starting point is Samm Deighan’s article for Diabolique magazine: Post-War Perversion in Italian Cinema: From Visconti to Pasolini, Part One and Part Two. To go deeper, take a look at Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy by Sabine Hake or Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture by Elizabeth Bridges.

Photo research – how to discover the stories behind photos

2017-06-26 By aenigma

Certain images grab our attention and stick in our minds. And in almost every case, the more we know about a photo, the more fascinating and special it becomes. That’s where photo research comes in.

“Just a story” Part 1

This scene from Shooting the Past features two of the leading protagonists: Marilyn, the manager in charge of the archive; and Christopher, the president of the company that’s proposing to dispose of it. To prove the archive’s value, Marilyn shows Christopher a series of photos and tells him the story her archivist Oswald has pieced together.

“Just a story” Part 2

As the title suggests, this is a continuation of the previous scene.

Nowhere is that brought more powerfully to life than in Stephen Poliakoff’s riveting TV drama, Shooting the Past. It tells the story of a US property developer planning to renovate a London building containing a vast photographic archive, and how the archive’s employees’ try to thwart him.

Since my early days of collecting photos, one of my favourite pursuits has been playing the sleuth, trying to unearth the stories that would bring to life the images I’ve acquired. There’s a real kick to be got out of tracking down the date a photo was taken, the identity of the photographer, perhaps the magazine(s) in which it was published or the movie it promoted. In the case of fashion shots, the challenge might be to discover who the model is and who designed the clothes.

From there it’s a small step to watching movies, reading biographies and leafing through old magazines… And creating aenigma.

Photo research: 1941 Hollywood Halloween party. — 1941. Hallowe’en in Hollywood. Click on the photo to read the story.

Photo research – the back of the print

The back of a photo may be less glamorous than the image itself but for the collector it can be just as interesting. It may help to validate the print’s authenticity as a vintage piece. And it may provide invaluable information – perhaps a photographer’s credit stamp, a caption, a newspaper clipping or all three. There may be archive or library filing annotations or handwritten notes about the subject, the sitting, the date.

The party photo here is a case in point. The label identifies the five people posing in the foreground and a couple of ink stamps indicate that the print was received/published/filed on November 16 1941 and December 16 1941. The witches’ hats and cats’ masks in the background reveal the occasion – we’re looking at a Hallowe’en party. All that’s needed are a few online searches to find out more about the five subjects (Alan Gordon was the most challenging) and what they were up to that year. And it’s fascinating!

Often it takes a bit more detective work to get to the bottom of things. Over the years, I’ve discovered a number of sources and techniques that have yielded results.

Photo research – reverse image searches

My first line of attack when it comes to photo research is usually to do a reverse image search. This involves uploading a photo to one of a number of search engines (Google, TinEye and ImageRaider are the leaders) and asking them to find similar images. They then use proprietary algorithms to try to find a match between your image and those in the databases they have built by crawling the Internet. AkshatBlog has an excellent overview of the Best Reverse Image Search Tools, Apps & Browser Addons.

The good news is that, at least in the case of movie stars (not in the case of fashion), there’s a reasonable chance you will get at least one or two matches. Then it’s a matter of going to the pages in which the matches are embedded to find out more.

The bad news is that more often than not the pages contain no useful information. The Internet is littered with images, often poor reproductions and copied from one website to another. The top “hit” is typically Pinterest, wading through which can be quite a task.

Always try to trace the image you’re presented with back to the original source. Evaluate the source before concluding that any identification/attribution is trustworthy. One of my aims with aenigma is to provide a reliable resource for researchers and collectors, which is why I always cite date stamps, photographers, etc when I’ve been able to identify them.

Photo research: Lana Turner by Bert Six — 1955. Lana Turner, promotional portrait by Bert Six for The Sea Chase. This photo found at MPTV.

Photo research – photo libraries

Reverse image searches miss at least one potentially important source – photo libraries. Unfortunately there’s no way (at least none that I have yet come across) of searching multiple photo libraries simultaneously, so you have to search each one separately. To make things more time-consuming, in most cases you have to search manually, ie by subject, photographer, year, etc.

Much the biggest and most important online library when it comes to researching movie stars, celebrities and events of the past is Getty Images. It is an amalgam of many photo archives acquired, digitized and consolidated since 1995 when the business was set up. Acquisitions include, for example, the Hulton Deutsch/Picture Post Library (whose purchase, I believe, was an inspiration for Shooting the Past) and the Paris Match archive.

Other photo libraries I have found useful from time to time include:

Movie Stills Archive – a growing collection of movie stills, organized by star. To date there is no additional information (eg year, photographer).
Image Collect – a collection of over 7 million celebrity photos.
MPTV – an agency founded by photographer Sid Avery and specializing in entertainment photography.
Camera Press – a London-based agency founded in 1947 by photographer Tom Blau.
The Edward Quinn Archive – Ed Quinn lived and worked on the Côte d’Azur in the 1950s, photographing the movie stars and celebrities who congregated there.
Magnum Photos – a photographic agency formed after World War II by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour.
Publifoto – an Italian image library with a searchable database of photos dating back to 1952.
Archivio Cameraphoto – another Italian archive, based on material from Interphoto, an agency set up by photographer Dino Jarach.

The great thing about photo libraries is that as well as the subject they often identify the photographer and the year the photo was taken. Having said that, don’t assume that this information is correct. In my searches through Getty Images I’ve come across lots of material dated January 1 1900 – which seems to be a code for “date unknown.” Similarly, a date of January 1 of any year in most cases seems to mean that the archivist believes they know the year but not the precise date.

Photo research: Marisa Pavan in Vogue, January 1955. — Vogue (UK), January 1955. I tracked down my photo of Marisa Pavan by Jean Howard to this article on “Rising stars on the screen.”

Photo research – vintage magazines

Vintage magazines are both fascinating and invaluable for photo research. Often photos have captions identifying the photographer, while the article they illustrate provides information about the subject. In the case of fashion magazines, you’re likely to learn the month as well as the year of the photograph, the photographer and the garments being modelled although more often than not the model isn’t named.

The archives of Vogue (US), Vogue Italia (from 1964) and Harper’s Bazaar (US) have been digitized by a company called Proquest. The archives are fully indexed and searchable. But to use them you’ll either need to have a personal subscription (deep pockets required) or to belong to an institution (such as a major library or university) with corporate membership.

I visit the British Library, which provides access to the Vogue (US) archive, and quickly discovered I could search by date, photographer, subject/model and designer (there are lots of other search options as well). For example, one of my searches was for photographs of Veruschka by Franco Rubartelli, with the results sorted by date. Clicking on a result takes me to the beginning of the article, with forward/backward arrows to navigate the pages. When I find a spread of interest, the system enables me to email the .jpgs to myself along with a transcript of the associated text. Awesome! It’s also possible to browse the magazines.

If the Proquest archives are out of your reach, then there’s a much smaller but still useful offering at My Vintage Vogue.

If it’s movie stars you’re interested in, the place to go is Fan Magazines Collection, which has scanned editions of vintage rags including Modern Screen, Photoplay and Screenland. The runs are incomplete but still extensive and available for free – a truly magnificent resource for photo research.

Less specific but no less fascinating is Google’s browsable Life magazine archive. Alternatively, if all you want to do is search for a photo, go to Google image search and type in your search word(s) followed by “source:life”. For example, to find photos of Hazel Brooks published in Life magazine, enter “hazel brooks source:life”.

Also worth a look, with subjects ranging from WWI and WWII to sports and music, fashion and the Titanic, is Old Magazine Articles, another free online resource.

Photo research reveals this photo of Audrey Hepburn was taken for Love in the Afternoon. — Audrey Hepburn holding a gown. The production code number 382 reveals that the photo was taken during the filming of Love in the Afternoon (1957). 525 is the number assigned to the individual still.

Photo research – movie production codes

From the 1920s onwards, production, distribution and marketing stills were controlled by an accounting process known as “production codes.” Studios would assign a code to each of their films as a way of tracking its progress through production. This helped to avoid confusion if, for example, the name of the movie or its director changed. It also turns out to be a huge boon for anyone with an interest in photo research.

During a movie’s production, the stills team would take all sorts of photos: movie stills, behind-the-scenes shots, portraits, and so on. The studio’s publicity department would review the resulting contact sheets, choosing the best shots, from which they would create a “key set.” Images from the key set would be distributed to magazines and newspapers in order to promote the movie or the star.

Crucially for collectors, each of the images in the set would be marked with the assigned production number together with an individual still number. Individual stars might also be allocated their own “production codes” for portraits not associated with a specific film.

So if you have a mystery photo with a production code, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll be able to track it down. All you need is a list of production codes and the movies or stars with which they are associated. Fortunately, Ed and Susan Poole, the undisputed authorities on this topic and authors of Production Code Basics, have invested a huge amount of time and effort in producing just such a list (it is a work in progress). It is available in the two-volume Movie Still Identification Book Ultimate Edition available from their website store. Alternatively, you can subscribe to their research service.

In using production codes to identify photos you need to bear in mind a couple things.

First, each studio had its own numbering system and the systems weren’t always that systematic. So in many cases the same production code has been used for multiple movies. Fortunately, it’s usually pretty straightforward to identify which of the movies on the shortlist associated with the production number is relevant to your photo by studying the stars and figuring out a rough date.

And second, the production codes are sometimes just wrong. The guys who inscribed them on the negatives were human beings and prone to making mistakes – whether through carelessness or by misreading the code they were supposed to be transcribing. So watch out!

Photo research identified the subject as Virginia Walker. — The dedication reveals that the actress is Virginia but in spite of all my efforts that was all I knew about her. Then, a second reverse image search, months after the previous one, threw up a match on eBay. The copy for sale there had been used to promote A Royal Scandal (1945) in which Virginia Walker starred as a lady in waiting to Catherine the Great.

Photo research – specialist websites and blogs

Aenigma is just one of many websites and blogs created by enthusiasts to share their interests and provide an outlet for their research. Any attempt at compiling an exhaustive list is doomed to failure as the landscape is constantly changing and everyone will have their own specific areas of interest.

So here are a few places I find myself returning to (mainly for background information, stories and insights rather than to find specific images):

Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen – a website dedicated to the private lives of some of the most glamorous actresses of the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.
Those Obscure Objects of Desire – a blog about unknown actresses of old Hollywood.
Cult Sirens – a tribute to gorgeous and provocative actresses, primarily from the 1950s onwards.
Forgotten Hollywood – a blog about the unique relationship between Hollywood’s Golden Age and American history, and including useful links to related websites.
You Must Remember This – a series of storytelling podcasts about the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.
Streamline – the blog aimed at film aficionados.
Cinephilia & Beyond – a highly rated website for filmmakers and film lovers.
Vintage Movie Star Photos – a blog for discussing vintage photographers and celebrity subjects. It’s one of the best sources of information about Hollywood photographers of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
The Red List – an online database of 100,000 images and 6,000 profiles covering the whole world of visual arts, with brief illustrated biographies of photographers in the fields of both fashion and cinema.
The Ned Scott Archive – a fascinating compilation of material from the estate of one of the great photographers of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Photo research – other resources

There’s an ever-changing wealth of material available on eBay, and particularly on ebay.com. Most of the photos are later prints and many sellers don’t provide much or even any information about what’s on the back of the print they’re selling. But some do; and if you find those sellers and watch their auctions, you will learn a lot over time and may even spot some images you want to bid on!

And then there’s Instagram. As with eBay, there are many pearls to be found among the mass of dross. And again, it’s a matter of finding photo-streams that specialize in the kinds of images that appeal to you and provide reliable information about them.

Photo research – what about you?

I’ll update this article as I discover new resources, and I’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions I could add. So please do contact me with your ideas.

Martha Vickers – the starlet who dared to upstage Lauren Bacall

2017-06-22 By aenigma

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep — Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian (Lauren Bacall) discuss what to do with the delinquent Carmen (Martha Vickers) in The Big Sleep (1946).

Martha Vickers was one of the most tantalizing actresses of the 1940s. Today, she’s remembered for her firecracker portrayal of Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep and for her turn as the third of Mickey Rooney’s eight wives.

The story of Martha Vickers’ early career is told in an article published in the October 1945 issue of Pic magazine – available for you to read as a separate, illustrated article on aenigma.

What’s so intriguing about Martha is what might have been. In The Big Sleep (1946) – Howard Hawks’ great film noir based on Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name, she is fabulously slutty as Carmen Sternwood, Lauren Bacall’s out-of-control, drug-addicted, nymphomaniac little sister.

Indeed, according to Martha’s brief biography on Turner Classic Movies, Raymond Chandler claimed that she gave such an incredible performance that she upstaged Lauren Bacall. Since the movie was intended as a vehicle to promote the Bogart Bacall chemistry that had been such a success for Warner Bros with audiences of To Have and Have Not (1944), many of Martha’s scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Martha Vickers, pin-up

1945. Martha Vickers' costume, a kind of cross between a bustier and a swimsuit, and the setting carry overtones of...

Martha Vickers, dream girl

Around 1945. Dream, baby, dream. Martha Vickers gets into the zone for Jack Woods, as the caption on the back...

Martha Vickers, bathing beauty

Around 1945. Martha Vickers models a lurex bathing suit that might be suitable for sunbathing but might not survive a...

Martha Vickers, babe

Around 1944. For some reason, photographers seem to have a penchant for shooting Martha Vickers supine – which with a...

Martha Vickers, cover girl

Around 1946. That made-to-measure, body-hugging, ruched top that Martha Vickers is modelling is quite something. It's the perfect foil for...

Martha Vickers, tomb maiden

1944. Seated in a tomb and flanked by a pair of Egyptian statues, could Martha Vickers be an offering to...

Martha Vickers, porn star

1945. Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep sits beneath a lowering Buddha. She’s come for a pornographic...

Martha Vickers, menace

1945. Martha Vickers' character in The Big Sleep, Carmen Sternwood, is a loose cannon. Here, pistol at the ready, she...

Martha Vickers, baby doll

1945. Martha Vickers is irresistibly cute in a sequined and feathered costume. The caption on a variant of this photo...

Martha Vickers, blonde bombshell

Around 1947. It looks like Martha Vickers has been on the receiving end of a decision by Warner Bros that...

So how did an apparently unremarkable, albeit very attractive, ingénue come to threaten to steal the show? The anecdotes that swirl around the making of The Big Sleep offer some revealing insights. In Hawks on Hawks, the director recalls:

We had a great start for that little girl, where Bogart said, “Somebody ought to housebreak her.” I made her sit around almost a day trying little things, taking a piece of hair and bringing it down and looking at it, you know. Because I didn’t want her to be Stella Stevens or somebody like that. I wanted her to be a well-dressed little girl who just happened to be a nymphomaniac.

1. Marlowe meets Carmen

In the opening scene of The Big Sleep, private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the mansion of General Sternwood where he meets his provocatively flirtatious daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers).

2. Carmen off her head

Marlowe breaks into the house of Arthur Gwynn Geiger, where he finds Carmen doped up to the eyeballs with a corpse at her feet. The quality of the video doesn't do justice to the quality of the scene.

3 The eye of the Beholder

In The Eye of the Beholder (1953), Richard Conte plays Michael Girard, who is viewed by the other characters as everything from a philanderer to a murderer, and we see the story played out from each of the character’s point of view. It’s worth a watch but if you’re pressed for time, fast forward to 21:40 to see Martha Vickers in the dénouement. Don't be put off by the lip sync!

It must have been quite an experience for the inexperienced Martha Vickers, as this anecdote related by Sheila O’Malley reveals:

Howard Hawks had an idea for one of the scenes – where Marlowe (Bogart) comes into the house, and finds Vickers sitting, all dressed up in the empty house – drugged out, sexed up, in the aftermath of some sexual event. Marlowe can immediately tell that obviously some kind of porno photo shoot had been going on. And Marlowe comes upon her, she is high on drugs, and completely out of it. Anyway, Hawks had an idea for this scene (which ended up not making it into the movie – no wonder, with the censorship of the day!): He wanted Vickers to simulate an orgasm, as she sat there, looking up at Bogart. He wanted her to be in that quivery zone where you basically don’t even need physical contact to “get there” – he wanted her to be the kind of woman who lives in that state.

So Hawks asked her to do so. He gave her this piece of direction in front of Bogart, Regis Toomey (who plays the DA – wonderful stolid character actor), and a couple of other people, members of the crew, etc. You know, moviemaking has a mystique about it but there is also a no-nonsense quality to it that I find refreshing.

Hawks said, “Sweetheart, what we want here is for you to simulate that you’re having an orgasm.”

Martha Vickers asked, “What’s an orgasm?”

Nobody spoke. Nobody knew what to do. They all just stood there, awkward as hell, stunned to silence. Hawks, Bogart, and Toomey – grown men – standing there with a teenage actress – who was asking them (in all innocence) what an orgasm was. Dead silence. Hawks called a 10-minute break. (hahahaha) I mean – what else could you do? Hawks then pulled Toomey aside and asked Toomey to please go and “explain to Miss Vickers what an orgasm is”. I love that Howard Hawks, supposedly the most macho guy in the universe, couldn’t bring himself to go explain it to her – he had to have someone else go do it.

Toomey, who apparently was a good-natured fellow, married with a bunch of kids, the product of a strict Irish Catholic upbringing, gamely went over to Martha and explained to her what an orgasm was. (Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.)

Toomey said later to Bogart, “The girl didn’t know anything. I asked, ‘Are you a virgin?’ ‘Uh yes.’ ‘Do you know what an orgasm is? Mr. Hawks wants you to be having an orgasm here.’ ‘No, I don’t know what it is.’ ‘You don’t know what an orgasm is?’ ‘No.’ And so, dammit, I explained to her what an orgasm was. And she got the idea all right. Howard liked the scene very much.”

Martha Vickers and Louis Jean Heydt in The Big Sleep — Carmen (Martha Vickers) threatens Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt), a gambler who has been blackmailing her father in The Big Sleep (1946).

How embarrassing was that? Still, judging by her performance, Martha was a quick learner. But perhaps only on quite a superficial level. She would go on to make another 11 movie appearances including in three more noirs, but in none of them would her performance come anywhere close to what she achieved in The Big Sleep. Luck and the vagaries of the Hollywood studios no doubt played their part but it seems that Martha Vickers needed a great director to conjure a great performance from her. That is certainly the impression given by Hawks in an interview with John Kobal:

Now … in The Big Sleep I used a little round-eyed girl to play a nymphomaniac … Martha Vickers … I think she married Mickey Rooney at one time … Lovely. And I made her cut her curls off and gave her … a kind of close … boyish haircut and I taught her two or three things. She played a nymphomaniac, and the studio signed her for a long-term contract with more money than she’d ever gotten. … Okay, she got her first salary check and went down and bought a lot of girly dresses with a lot of … little bows and ruffles and … She started playing a nice girl, and they fired her after six months. And she came to me and said, “What happened?” I said, “You’re just stupid. Why didn’t you keep on playing that part?” “Well, that was a nymphomaniac.” “Look, it’s only a nymphomaniac because I told you so. They liked you on the screen. And you did such a great job of it because you weren’t trying to get sympathy or anything. You were a little bitch. Why didn’t you keep doing that?”

Too bad Martha Vickers didn’t get to work again with Howard Hawks and we never get to see more of her undoubted talent.

Want to know more about Martha Vickers?

The two Howard Hawks quotes are from Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride and People Will Talk by John Kobal. You can find the orgasm anecdote at The Sheila Variations. The best source for the reported facts of Martha Vickers’ life is Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen and there’s a nice appreciation by Jake Hinkson of her performance in The Big Sleep at criminalelement.com.

Martha Vickers – a good bet for stardom

2017-06-15 By aenigma

Martha Vickers, like many other starlets, came to the attention of the Hollywood studios because of her looks.

With her cascade of brown-blonde tresses, blue eyes and svelte figure, she had no problem turning heads, as evidenced by the photos here.

An article about Martha Vickers in the October 1945 issue of Pic magazine, no doubt promoted by Warner Bros as part of their publicity drive for their upcoming movie, The Big Sleep, predicts great things for her. It also charts her early career.

The caption under the leading photo (not reproduced here) reveals that Martha “has long been a favorite subject with photographers the country over and the reasons here are obvious. Typical of America’s young womanhood, she is 5 feet 4 and weighs 104 pounds.”

Martha’s A Good Bet For Stardom

Little Miss Vickers Has Stepped Boldly From Being an Artists’ Model to Top-Flight Movies BY DON ALLEN

The career of Martha Vickers is perfect evidence that the “if at first you don’t succeed—” method is still a good one. After a couple of unsuccessful starts in Hollywood, Martha is now under contract to Warner Bros. studios where she is considered to be an excellent bet for stardom.

Her first picture at Warners was “The Big Sleep” under the guiding hand of Director Howard Hawks. The picture, as yet unreleased, stars the famous team of Bogart and Bacall. Miss Vickers played the part of the schizophrenic young sister, a highly dramatic part that gave her a fine opportunity for emotional acting. Studio executives who have seen it are very enthusiastic over her work.

Miss Vickers has completed one picture since “The Big Sleep” and is currently working in a third, so there is a possibility that she will have completed three films before the public gets a glimpse of her on the screen. Her second picture is called “The Time, the Place and the Girl” in which she has the leading feminine role opposite Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. She is currently working in the picture called “The Man I Love” in which she will have featured billing along with such other important players as Ida Lupino, Robert Alda and Andrea King.

Martha got her first start in pictures through her work as a photographer’s model. When she was 15 she was sitting in a drive-in in Long Beach and a famous cover photographer saw her. He asked her if she would pose for him. She did, and the result was a cover picture on Liberty. After that she worked for most of the well known Hollywood cover and fashion photographers such as Hurrell, Hesse and Engstead.

Martha Vickers, innocent abroad

1944. Martha Vickers, 19 years old and still under her birth name. A caption on the back of the photo...

Martha Vickers, ingenue

1944. Martha Vickers, RKO promotional photo for Marine Raiders. Marine Raiders was Martha's second credited appearance (the first being in...

Martha Vickers, starlet

1944. Martha Vickers poses demurely in front of a zebra-print background. A caption on another photo from the same shoot...

Martha Vickers, fashion model

Around 1945. Martha Vickers models a printed cotton day dress with padded shoulders and belted waist. In September 1945 her...

Martha Vickers, sweetheart

1945. Martha Vickers smoulders in a fitted lamé bodice. Seaman Cal Kerry clearly has a lot to look forward to,...

Martha Vickers, European traveller

Around 1945. In this "leg art" shot, Martha Vickers poses in a skimpy ensemble in front of a map of...

Martha Vickers, Mexican heroine

1944. Martha Vickers, Warner Bros promotional photo for The Falcon in Mexico. No wonder that she worked as a model...

Martha Vickers, pin-up

Around 1946. Martha Vickers flirts with the camera in an outrageous ensemble that pairs black velvet gloves with a diaphanous...

A color photograph of her was seen by David Selznick, who forthwith signed her. Selznick gave her drama and diction lessons for a year without casting her in a picture, and when option time came up her contract was dropped. That, naturally, was a great disappointment to her, but she went back to modeling and it wasn’t long before a well-known Hollywood agent took her under his wing and got her a contract at R-K-O studios. Here again she took lessons but did little actual work. However, she did play small parts in two pictures, but again when option time came up her contract was not renewed.

This was disappointment No. 2 and Martha was beginning to feel she could not make a career of the movies. She returned again to modeling and did considerable work for Tom Kelley the well-known cover artist. One day Howard Hawks called Kelley and asked him if he knew any girls who might be good possibilities for a part in his new picture. Kelley suggested Miss Vickers and, as a result, Hawks tested her and finally assigned her to the part. The result is history.

Miss Vickers was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 28, 1925. Her father worked for the Ford Motor Co. and, consequently, Martha spent her early years in Chicago, Miami, St. Petersburg, Detroit and Dallas before going west with her family in 1940.

Want to know more about Martha Vickers?

You can see a scan of the original article, complete with photos, at Old Magazine Articles. The big question, though, is: could she act? Find out in Martha Vickers – the starlet who dared to upstage Lauren Bacall.

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

2017-05-26 By aenigma

Cover Girl is a 1944 movie in which Hollywood embraces the business of fashion. It offers an opportunity to take a look at the modeling businesps, then burgeoning but still in its infancy. And it provides a showcase for the fashions of the day and the talents of Rita Hayworth and a bevy of models.

It’s a bright spectacle with songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, costumes by Travis Banton, Muriel King and Gwen Wakeling, choreography by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and that special early-Technicolor lushness. Donen would go on to direct Funny Face, another musical about the world of fashion, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn as its stars. Funny Face would help to cement the reputation of Paris after World War II as the world capital of fashion.

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby is an extraordinary lady. Currently she's a model, a movie star and an agent. But she’s ambitious and talented and will go...

Cecilia Meagher

1943. Cecilia Meagher began modeling in 1936 when she was barely 17 years old. In the early 1940s she signed with Conover models. In 1942,...

Leslie Brooks

1943. Leslie Brooks started her career around 1940 as a model. In 1941 she signed with Columbia and had a makeover: she changed her name...

Peggy Lloyd

1943. Peggy was adopted age five by Harold Lloyd, a famous comedian, a shrewd investor and the richest man in Hollywood. Despite the family’s wealth,...

Eileen McClory

1943. Eileen McClory is a vivacious, cute, girl-next-door type, so has just the kind of looks and personality that Harry Conover likes. So when she...

Betty Jane Hess

1943. Betty Jane Hess began modeling in 1938, when she was barely 17 years old. Like many aspiring models, she competed in various pageants and...

Dusty Anderson

1943. Dusty started out as Ruth Anderson from Toledo, Ohio. Harry Conover spotted her in New York “doing some designing”, decided that the name Ruth...

Jinx Falkenburg

1943. With her hazel eyes and lithe figure, Jinx Falkenburg is one of America’s highest-paid cover-girl models during World War II and, with her husband...

The plot of Cover Girl is both pure fantasy and pretty banal. A Brooklyn nightclub owner loves his principal dancing girl. The dancing girl loves the nightclub owner. But the dancing girl has a driving ambition to become a famous cover girl… Bear in mind that while the world of Cover Girl might feel like it has nothing to do with reality, former Vogue editor Rosamond Bernier would recall:

Vogue was something in those days. I came in my first morning and saw all the editors at the typewriters wearing hats with veils and big rhinestone chokers and earrings. I looked with absolute wonder!

To give you a flavour, here are three extracts from the movie.

1. Put Me To The Test

Set to Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s Put Me To The Test, this number is one of the movie’s highlights: two phenomenally athletic and graceful dancers, a treacherous set (different levels, stairs, a ramp) and no quick cutting to mask mistakes. The supporting girls and the costumes are the icing on the cake.

2. The shoot

So they’ve hammed it up for the movie, but this scene offers a light-hearted insight into the art behind the stills photography that is such a focus for aenigma. We see the make-up artist (remember Perc Westmore – the makeup king of Hollywood?), the hairdresser, the dapper photographer and his assistant, and the final product – the magazine itself.

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

We’re in the Wheaton Theatre. The curtain goes up and an enormous lens is lowered onto a podium in the middle of the stage. Through the lens we see each cover girl in turn enter from the left and watch her pose full-length and close-up. Her session ends with a glimpse of the magazine cover on which she appears. The whole thing has a nice pace and wit.

It's followed by the wonderful "round the mountain" scene in which Rita Hayworth dances down and back up a cloud-shrouded Art Deco mountain peak. In this version, the original soundtrack has been replaced by a Madonna mash-up with Victor Cheng.

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

In 1944, the modeling business in the US is dominated by two agencies.

Andrea Johnson, Powers model — Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.

John Robert Powers has blazed the trail. In the 1920s as an out-of-work actor he finds himself using his network to help photographers find models. He spots a business opportunity and sets up shop. As he later recalls, he:

…had their pictures taken, made up a catalogue containing their descriptions and measurements, and sent it to anyone in New York who might be a prospective client – commercial photographers, advertisers, department stores, artists.

The depression that follows the 1929 stock market crash enables him to broaden his talent pool by attracting debutantes whose families are on their uppers. At the same time he works hard to make the business respectable. His success changes the social status of models. Society hostess extaordinaire Elsa Maxwell says that she might give a party without debutantes but she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting a few Powers Girls.

The 1940s see Powers basking in the light of success and publicity and expanding his business portfolio. He has a radio show and writes a regular syndicated newspaper column, Secrets of Charm. Warner Bros release The Powers Girl (1943), a movie about two sisters living in New York and aspiring to become high-profile models. And Powers Girls are hired by the Hollywood studios and go out with and marry the rich and famous.

In 1941 Powers publishes the first of many books, The Powers Girls. Promising “The story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” it’s partly a behind-the-scenes look at the agency, partly a beauty and grooming guide, and partly a marketing piece. In 1943 he launches a correspondence course, including “practical hints about what men really do and don’t like.” Meanwhile, his wife begins teaching charm courses covering grooming, diction and coiffure, the first step along the road to a nationwide chain of John Robert Powers Schools. But Powers has taken his eye off his core modeling business and this provides an opening for a new competitor.

Harry Conover begins his career in the modeling business as a model and works for John Robert Powers before deciding to set up in competition. He’s handsome, suave and unscrupulous, taking with him models Anita Colby, Phyllis Brown and her boyfriend, who agrees to invest in the start-up. The boyfriend is Gerald Ford and in 1974 he will become President of the US.

Harry differentiates his agency from that of his erstwhile employer by promoting a different kind of model. He mocks the Powers Girls as “Adenoid Annies, rattling bundles of skin and bones.” Focusing on preppies and campus queens, he pioneers a new type of model – “the windblown outdoor girl”, in the words of Bob Fertig his head of promotion. Conover calls these recruits Conover Coeds, then Cover Girls – and that’s where Columbia’s Cover Girl gets it inspiration and title. While, taking his cue from Hollywood, Conover develops a habit of rechristening his models – including his future wife.

In 1941, the winner of a Miss Atlantic City contest turns up at the agency. She introduces herself to Conover: “I’m Jessica Wilcox.” “You’re Candy Johnson,” he replies. “And your rate is $5 an hour.” He later shortens her name from Johnson to Jones because she has trouble remembering the longer version. By 1943, thanks to her looks and his promotion – including candy-striped outfits and calling cards – she is a top model. And in 1946 Conover marries her.

But the marriage is fated from the start. Conover is always chasing skirt – seemingly out with a different model night after night. He is also less concerned than Powers about respectability – he has a much more laissez-faire attitude when playboys approach him for dates with his models. “Right in my own office we have the very thing that every man looks for, works for, fights for and dies for,” Conover says, just before being excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

In 1952, having dropped out of the agency business and franchised his schools, Powers will move to Beverly Hills, where he will settle until he dies, age 84. Conover, by contrast, will die age 53, having succumbed to a classic combo of booze, lechery and profligacy. The modeling business, like the movie business, is unforgiving. It has a habit of chewing up its practitioners and spitting them out.

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Filming a scene from Cover Girl — 1943. Susann Shaw, players Rose Mae Robson (hood), Dusty Anderson, Martha Outlaw, Lee Bowman, Rita Hayworth, Francine Counihan (striped dress) and Jean Colleran in a scene from the Columbia production “Cover Girl” starring Miss Hayworth. Photo by Ned Scott.

Cover Girl has more in common with Gilda than their very different plots and styles might lead you to expect. Both are Columbia productions commissioned by Harry Cohn. Both are directed by Charles Vidor with cinematography by Rudolph Maté. And both have scripts by Virginia Van Upp.

Cohn is known to be tightfisted but he makes an exception for Cover Girl. He sets aside no less than a million dollars for the production and accepts it going US $600,000 over budget, with the lavish dance numbers devised by Kelly in no small part to blame for the overspend.

The movie is quite a coup for the Conover agency – a massive riposte to (and possibly inspired by) The Powers Girl, released the previous year. Harry Conover and Anita Colby are both employed by the studio as “technical consultants”. The latter is in charge of a troupe of Conover models who travel west from New York in a special railway carriage – a great publicity stunt that’s lapped up by the press.

The girls are all excited about what lies in store for them in Tinseltown but they’re in for a nasty surprise. Harry Cohn has made arrangements to ensure that they stay out of trouble. Francine Counihan, one of the models and also Anita Colby’s sister remembers:

Cover Girl was produced by Harry Cohn. Oh, he was a monster. He decided to put us all in one house together where he could see that nobody could get out. So we stayed in Marion Davies’ home in California. He only let us out to go shopping.

And there they stay for months while Harry Cohn apparently searches for an actress to play the lead role. Surely he’s known all along that this is to be a vehicle for his studio’s leading star, Rita Hayworth? Perhaps he just likes the feeling of power over the girls.

Rita and the gang

1943. On a lawn, presumably outside the studio, Rita Hayworth poses with the cover girls. It looks like the photographer must be perched in a...

Lucky man!

1943. Some people have all the luck. Rita Hayworth gives Tech Sergeant Gordon L Smith a peck on the cheek. A caption on the back...

Tea time

1943. The stars relax in the hot California sunshine during a break in filming. The maid (as usual) is uncredited. A caption on the back...

Cover conversation

1943. The two models look as if they're enjoying each other's company. But there must have been some interesting dynamics going on among the troupe...

Anyway, whatever the reason, there’s a great story about how all the girls sneak out one night to go to a party. They have to return at intervals, one by one, to get past the security guards. To the guards’ growing consternation, each in turn announces herself as Anita Colby, who is the only member of the troupe allowed out. Inevitably, the last one back is the real Anita Colby.

Meanwhile, Anita Colby, who also acts as the girls’ agent, makes the most of the stay by managing to book three magazine covers each for the girls. Her success with the press doesn’t go unnoticed and she’s appointed “Feminine Director” of the David O Selznick studio.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

One of those most closely involved with the way Rita looks in Cover Girl is Robert Coburn, head of Columbia’s Photo Gallery. In John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth, Coburn talks about photographing Columbia’s biggest star:

The contract I signed put me in complete charge of the studio’s stills department. Mind you, if I ever relaxed and let a bad picture of Hayworth or any other star out, Cohn would call me on the carpet immediately.

In those days we had the Johnson Office, and if we had any cleavage showing the pictures would be sent back. The Code was very strict. Any sign of breasts, even the shadow between, had to disappear. A woman wasn’t supposed to have any. We spent all our time touching photos up.

Hayworth didn’t need touching up. She didn’t treat herself badly, she wasn’t an all-night carouser, although naturally we had to watch for wrinkles under the eyes and around the neck. Of course, any skin marks, small pimples, we would take them out. I don’t remember Hayworth ever looking at a picture, I don’t think she ever cared how she looked in a picture. She’d come in once in a while and ask how they looked but she didn’t bother checking or approving them. That’s rare for women. Whereas Cohn was interested in her every minute of the day. He’d call whenever he knew from the call sheet that I was shooting her. They fought a lot. I told Cohn a million times that if he stopped picking on her I’d get what I wanted but he kept needling her and fitting in more hours.

I’d usually talk to her all the time when I was photographing her, getting her in the mood. Then, I’d catch her at her peak. She had the famous Hayworth look, looking over the shoulder, and after doing three of those she’d had it. She’d say, “What do you want that for? Get something else.” She didn’t realize that she didn’t have that come-and-get-me look except in that one pose.

Rita Hayworth with magazines — 1942. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell.

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

“Cover Girl” – Rita learns new role is the title of an article that appears in the 18 January 1943 issue of LIFE magazine.

Rita Hayworth is just a little bit bigger in the bust and in the hips than the average top-notch photographer’s model. The movie star is 35 in. around bust and hips whereas the average model is, at best. only 34.

These extra inches, which look fine on Rita Hayworth, did not worry Columbia Pictures at all when they cast her for the lead part in their forthcoming movie, The Cover Girl. The movie, which goes into production soon, will tell about photographers’ models who appear on the covers of national magazines. In it Miss Hayworth will combine her looks, figure and talents with Technicolor, some songs and a complicated story about two cover girls, one of 30 years ago and the other of today. The second cover girl will be the first one’s daughter. Miss Hayworth will play both of them.

When Miss Hayworth was in New York City recently, it occurred to Columbia Pictures that she ought to go through a model’s routine to see how a photographer’s model really worked. Miss Hayworth, who is a game girl, spent a full day working out of Harry Conover’s model agency, making believe she was a real cover girl. She learned that beauty is not enough.

For $3 an hour – $10 an hour if in great demand – models work exhausting hours in front of hot lights and fussy photographers, always trying to be charming and intelligent. To get work they have to be on time for appointments, be well-groomed and sweet-tempered. They spend days tramping around from client to client just to keep up their contacts. They are on their feet so much, in fact, that after being a model for a few months a girl’s feet invariably grow a whole shoe-size bigger.

The girls with Rita are Conover models, each chosen by a national magazine to play its cover girl in The Cover Girl. Being the star, Miss Hayworth will not represent any single magazine. This week, however, she is LIFE’s own cover girl.

9 September 1943. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched.

In fact during the shooting of Cover Girl it turns out that Rita has two new roles. The second is as the wife of Orson Welles. It’s no secret that the couple have been dating. Even so, when it happens on 7 September 1943 their marriage takes everyone by surprise. According to Lee Bowman, the day the teams are shooting the film’s wedding scene, Rita arrives on the set.

She looked very lovely sitting there in her wedding dress [for the movie] while the crew were setting up. Rita sat there with her hands in her lap, her eyes very big and a lovely big pussy smile on her face. When any of us asked, “What is it, Rita?” she’d just shake her head and say, “Mmm, I’ve got a secret.” Wouldn’t say anything else. The first we knew what it was came during the lunch break when somebody brought us the papers with the headlines.”

While Rita is on cloud nine, director Charles Vidor is anything but. According to the film’s producer, Arthur Schwartz:

And you know who was terribly jealous and unhappy? The director. He had fallen in love with her. He came and cried on my shoulder and didn’t want to go on. He had to continue shooting every day and she was now married and looking more radiant all the time. She had a tremendous empathy, tremendous sex appeal. All those fifteen or so Cover Girls together didn’t have what she had.

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl wins the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award for Scoring of a Musical Picture. It is also nominated for Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Sound Recording and Best Song.

Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, says in his review:

The script is so frankly familiar that it must have come from the public domain. And the characters are as sleekly mechanical as only musical comedy characters dare to be. But it rainbows the screen with dazzling décor. It has Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth to sing and dance. And virtually every nook and corner is draped with beautiful girls. Further, this gaudy obeisance to divine femininity has some rather nice music in it from the tune-shop of Jerome Kern.

In spite of everything people have said about Harry Cohn, his vulgarity, his lack of education, neither of which was a unique characteristic among the men in his position – he had an instinct for quality. Cover Girl, as I made it, couldn’t have been made at WB: Jack Warner wouldn’t have had the taste somehow, while at Metro they would have overproduced it – too many girls and too many of everything.

The magazines and models: Cosmopolitan, Betty Jane Hess; McCall’s, Betty Jane Graham; Vogue, Susann Shaw; Harper’s Bazaar, Cornelia B Von Hessert; Woman’s Home Companion, Rose May Robson; The American Home, Francine Counihan (Anita Colby’s sister); Mademoiselle, Peggy Lloyd; Glamour, Eileen McClory; Coronet, Cecilia Meagher; Liberty, Karen Gaylord; Redbook, Martha Outlaw; The American, Jean Colleran; Farm Journal, Dusty Anderson; Look, Cheryl (Archibald) Archer; Collier’s, Helen Mueller; Rita Hayworth. Collage copyright and courtesy of Blonde at the Film.

In his programme notes for the BFI, director Karel Reisz observes:

In Cover Girl we can see the transition from the old to the new taking place. Though its story has the usual backstage background, many of its numbers are staged in the open air and characters dance in it for the joy of dancing and as an expression of mood, not simply as professional performers. The design of costumes and sets moreover, is notably above the usual standard of the routine product. Cover Girl also saw the emergence of Gene Kelly as a choreographer playing the role which he has since played many times: he dances pieces of the ‘plot’ instead of interpolating numbers, and his style is that of a ballet dancer, not a ‘hoofer’.