The Lady from Shanghai – the weirdest great movie ever made

2018-01-16 By aenigma

The Lady from Shanghai – hallucinatory, baffling, sinister, brilliant, twisted. All of those adjectives apply to this flawed masterpiece by one of cinema’s great magicians. Or, in the words of Dave Kehr, the weirdest great movie ever made.

The Lady from Shanghai has become something of a cult for movie buffs, particularly for connoisseurs of film noir. It’s full of originality, strangeness and atmosphere. But the film we see today is very different from the one that Orson Welles, its writer, director, producer and co-star, envisioned. And the story behind it has enough twists and turns to form the basis of a movie in its own right.

If you’ve never seen the movie, now’s the time to find out what you’ve been missing. If you have a blu-ray player, try to get hold of the Mill Creek Entertainment transfer.

Spoiler Alert!!! Let’s begin with the main characters and the plot of the film itself. So, stop reading now if you’ve never seen The Lady from Shanghai and want to watch it without knowing the plot in advance.

The Lady from Shanghai – characters, plot and things to look out for

1947. Rita Hayworth as Elsa Bannister in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

There are five main protagonists in The Lady from Shanghai:

Michael O’Hara, an unemployed freelance sailor who acts as the film’s narrator. Orson Welles cast himself in the role, assuming a less-than-convincing Irish accent. For all that, his wistful voice-over imbues the film with a sense of overwhelming sadness, world-weariness and resignation.
Elsa Bannister, the drop-dead gorgeous lady from Shanghai with a murky past and a great deal on her mind. This role marked a radical departure from those previously played by Rita Hayworth.
Arthur Bannister, Elsa’s husband whose brilliant legal mind is in stark contrast with his pitiful, crippled body. He’s played with “hawk-like malevolence” by Mercury Player Everett Sloane, who made his screen debut in Citizen Kane. And indeed Arthur Bannister, like Charles Foster Kane, is full of despair despite his success.
George Grisby, Arthur Bannister’s sweaty, bulging-eyed, leering legal partner, obsessed with the atom bomb and the end of the world. He has a habit of calling people “fella,” presumably a reference to Nelson Rockefeller, who had recruited Welles to create It’s All True (a film comprising three stories about Latin America), only to terminate the project before it came to fruition. Glenn Anders’ performance in the role all but steals the show.
Sidney Broome, a private detective hired by Arthur Bannister to spy on Elsa. This marked Ted de Corsia’s screen debut and he went on to play a number of villains in movies including Jules Dassin’s terrific The Naked City (1948).

The Lady from Shanghai has a tortuous, labyrinthine storyline. At the beginning, it’s easy to follow. But as the film moves towards its shattering (literally!) climax, the intrigue careers out of control, piling plot-twist on plot-twist. Perhaps things would have been spelled out more clearly had the film not been cut by an hour and subjected to numerous retakes and edits. But even before that happened… after the preview showing, Harry Cohn, Columbia’s president, offered to pay anyone in the room US$1,000 if they could explain the storyline. So perhaps it was always Welles’ intention to take his audience for a ride.

The following sequence of stills should help you to make sense of the plot. The synopsis in the captions draws on a much longer and rather brilliant one at Filmsite.org.

Note: stills 5 and 8 have been cropped from portrait to landscape format so as not to disrupt the grid.

One of The Lady from Shanghai’s most striking aspects is its cinematography – in particular its use of wide-angle lenses to caricature faces, notably those of Grisby and Bannister; startling camera angles (such as the vertiginous vantage point along the coast from which we see Grisby explain his plot to Michael); and deep focus, which disorients the viewer by giving equal weight to foregrounds and backgrounds. There are also many virtuoso passages. Five of the most remarkable are:

The cruise with its sweltering, claustrophobic, voyeuristic atmosphere and the allusions to Elsa’s siren character via the name of the yacht (Circe) and the shots of her reclining on the rocks and singing.
The picnic in the jungle with its air of doom, desire and venom, culminating in Michael’s extraordinary speech:

Do you know, once off the hump of Brazil, I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black, and the sun fadin’ away over the lip of the sky. We put in at Fortaleza. A few of us had lines out for a bit of idle ﬁshin’. It was me had the ﬁrst strike. A shark it was, and then there was another and another shark again, till all about the sea was made of sharks, and more sharks still, and the water tall. My shark had torn himself away from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleedin’ his life away, drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts took to eatin’ each other; in their frenzy, they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stingin’ your eyes, and you could smell the death, reekin’ up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse, until this little picnic tonight. And you know, there wasn’t one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.

The aquarium, which provides such a disconcerting setting for Michael’s clandestine meeting with Elsa.
The outrageous court scene, which makes a hilarious mockery of the legal system.
The Fun House and Hall of Mirrors that Welles created for the film’s dénoement.

The Lady from Shanghai – how it came about

In 1945 Welles found himself in a predicament:

I was working on Around the World in 80 Days [a stage musical based on the Jules Verne novel] and we found ourselves in Boston on the day of the premiere, unable to get the costumes from the station because $50,000 was due and our producer, Mr. Todd, had gone broke. Without that money we couldn’t open. I called Harry Cohn [head of Columbia Studios] in Hollywood…”

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ENDANGERED .. Orson Welles in a dramatic scene from Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which he stars with Rita Hayworth.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles as Michael O'Hara in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ENDANGERED .. Orson Welles in a dramatic scene from Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which he stars with Rita Hayworth.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

According to Welles, he made the call from a drugstore and when Cohn asked him what the film would be about, he grabbed a novel from a nearby shelf and read out the synopsis on the back. However, Welles was a master of creating his own mythology and the truth is a bit more prosaic. The film is based on Sherwood King’s novel, If I Die Before I Wake. Years earlier, producer William Castle had sold the movie rights to Columbia on the condition that he would be involved should a film be made. He subsequently produced a treatment and set it to Welles, who responded:

About If I Should Die – I love it … I have been searching for an idea for a film, but none presented itself until If I Should Die and I could play the lead and Rita Hayworth could play the girl. I won’t present it to anybody without your OK. The script should be written immediately. Can you start working on it at night?

But why did Harry Cohn go along with the idea, given that at the time Welles was pretty much persona non-grata in Hollywood. Citizen Kane (1941) had done a pretty effective character assassination job on newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, setting Welles up as a threat to the establishment. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) had gone over budget and failed to recoup its investment. It’s All True was terminated before completion and never saw the light of day. Welles went some way to redeeming his credibility with The Stranger (1946), which came in under budget and proved a modest commercial success.

Perhaps Cohn felt that for the money Welles wanted it was a risk worth taking. Or perhaps he didn’t want to upset Hayworth, his biggest star, by turning down her husband even though the marriage was on the rocks. Besides, the pairing of Welles and Hayworth as the leads could be an intriguing prospect for audiences.

The Lady from Shanghai – Welles’ ambition

Rita Hayworth's million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Flash bulbs pop as Rita Hayworth has her tresses shorn by Columbia’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, for her starring role in ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ a Columbia picture. Orson Welles, Rita’s husband, is her co-star as well as producer and director of the film.”

The first thing Welles did was have Hayworth’s trademark long red hair bobbed and dyed “topaz blonde.” And he made it into a media event, inviting the press to come along and witness the makeover for themselves. It was not what Harry Cohn had in mind for his biggest star and he was furious. In spite of that, the studio released a whole series of shots of the event to the press.

Gossip columnist Louella Parsons (who had it in for Welles ever since he parodied her boss, William Randolph Hearst, in Citizen Kane) claimed that with The Lady from Shanghai he had deliberately and maliciously set out to destroy Rita Hayworth’s career. She then asserted that Welles was “washed up.”

It’s difficult to know what impelled Welles to such a controversial move. He may well have felt ambivalent, even vindictive, about his marriage, and there’s certainly a case to be made for seeing the whole movie as a misogynistic, not to say toxic, farewell to Hayworth. And yet… Is Elsa nothing more than a cold-blooded, scheming femme fatale? It’s tempting to jump to that conclusion. But it’s also possible to see her, like Gilda, as a victim – a woman in a man’s world who’s been exploited her whole life and who is now so desperate she’s prepared to take matters into her own hands.

Back to the haircut and it’s likely that, however he felt about his marriage, with his director’s hat on Welles saw the need for a completely new look that would disassociate Hayworth in audiences’ minds from her previous roles. It was an early symptom of the way in which Cohn’s and Welles’ ambitions for the movie diverged. Cohn was looking for a box-office hit. Welles wanted to produce “something off-center, queer, strange,” according to a memo he sent Cohn, by giving the film a nightmarish feel and striving for performances that were “original, or at least oblique.

Orson Welles with Rita Hayworth just before she has her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles with Rita Hayworth before her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with husband Orson Welles just before having her tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles will co-star with her as well as produce and direct it for Columbia Pictures.

Helen Hunt about to embark on Rita Hayworth’s million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with Columbia’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, just before having her tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Rita’s husband, Orson Welles, will co-star as well as produce and direct it for Columbia Pictures.

Helen Hunt giving Rita Hayworth a million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with locks of hair in her hands while Columbia’s chief hair-stylist, Helen Hunt, continues to cut away Rita’s tresses for her role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which she has her husband, Orson Welles, as co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth admiring her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth and husband, Orson Welles, seem pleased with Rita’s new hair style. Rita had her long tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles is her co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth admiring her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth and husband, Orson Welles, seem pleased with Rita’s new hair style. Rita had her long tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles is her co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth’s million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

THE WORLD’S FIRST TOPAZ BLONDE! Glamorous Rita Hayworth, as this photo shows, has submitted to the ministrations of Columbia Studio’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, to acquire a new coiffure for her forthcoming starring picture, “The Lady From Shanghai.” With 18 inches snipped from her crowning glory, and her titian locks changed to a new blonde called topaz blonde, it is a new and vibrant Rita who faces the cameras these days. “I just didn’t want to stay ‘Gilda’ forever,” Rita explains when asked the reason for the change in her hairdo.

Characteristically, Welles was hugely ambitious for the film. For the opening scene, set in Central Park, he planned the longest dolly shot ever filmed. involving huge arc lights, a sound boom and a 20-foot camera crane, which followed Elsa Bannister’s carriage for nearly a mile. That was just the beginning. He also planned to shoot most of the film on location, something pretty much unheard of in Hollywood at the time since seemingly every cinematic need could be catered for by the vast studio lots and soundstages. For Welles that would have been just too obvious and easy. Plus, shooting on location would have been a great way of escaping Cohn’s surveillance – the mogul bugged Welles’ office at Columbia, as he had Glenn Ford’s dressing room when Gilda was being filmed.

And then there were the sets and set pieces, the two most celebrated being the Fun House (a great set for a fashion shoot – Rita’s wardrobe is by Jean Louis) and the Hall of Mirrors. The inspiration for the former were the expressionist images of the German silent movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). According to Rob Nixon:

Stephen Goosson designed an elaborate set with sliding doors, distorting mirrors and a 125-foot zigzag slide from the roof of a studio sound stage down into a pit that was 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep. For one shot simulating Welles’ point of view as he hurtled down the slide, Lawton and camera operator Irving Klein slid the entire length of it on their stomachs with the camera on a mat. The director himself spent more than a week from 10:30 at night until 5 in the morning painting the set.

The Hall of Mirrors was designed with the help of special effects wizard Lawrence Butler and contained almost 3,000 square feet of glass. Some of the mirrors were two-way, others had holes through which the camera crew could shoot.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

WHITE FOR EVENING … Rita Hayworth, co-starring with Orson Welles in Columbia's "The Lady From Shanghai" wears this lovely white marquisette creation by designer Jean Louis against the background of an amusement park "fun house." It is there that one of the most dramatic sequences of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DRESSY BLACK … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this smart black wool suit designed by Jean Louis. The fashion interest in this lies in the contrast between the dull of the fabric and the shiny satin trim. This shot was taken on the “fun house” set, where one of the most dramatic moments of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DRESSY BLACK … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this smart black wool suit designed by Jean Louis. The fashion interest in this lies in the contrast between the dull of the fabric and the shiny satin trim. This shot was taken on the “fun house” set, where one of the most dramatic moments of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

When it came to cinematography, Welles and his director of photography, Charles Lawton Jr, decided to use low-key interior lighting and natural light wherever possible. For outdoor skies and transitions between outdoor and indoor scenes they employed filters. And they exploited wide-angle lenses to lend distortion to close-ups. Shooting on board a yacht was always going to be a challenge – the sort of thing Welles loved. So he and Lawton did a series of experimental test shoots to determine how to deal with the problem of over-exposure – the light meters struggled to cope with the glare of the sea and sky. They also turned the lack of space on the yacht to their advantage by creating cramped, claustrophobic compositions. And for the aquarium scene they got seriously tricksy. First they shot the fish-tanks separately. Then they enlarged the resulting film and used it as the background for the close-ups of Michael and Elsa, making the sea creatures appear super-size and super-sinister.

The Lady from Shanghai – a disaster in the making

Rita Hayworth takes time to relax during the filming of The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “RELAXATION .. Lovely Rita Hayworth relaxes at home after an arduous day at Columbia Studios, where she is working in ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ with Orson Welles, but her Chinese lounging robe and slippers still retain the Oriental motif of her current film.” Photo by Ned Scott.

Shooting began in autumn 1946 in locations including Acapulco, San Francisco and New York as well as Columbia Studios – for details and photos take a look at Reel SF. For the Acapulco shoot, which took more than 35 days, Welles rented Errol Flynn’s yacht, and Columbia sent 40 technicians and more than six tons of equipment.

Even under the most favourable circumstances, the location shoot was never going to be straightforward. The jungle picnic scenes were filmed close to a crocodile-infested river. Poisonous barnacles had to be scraped off the rock from which Elsa dives into the ocean. A spear-wielding Mexican swimming champion had to be employed to swim off-camera to protect Hayworth from deadly barracuda.

But it was as if the shoot was cursed. In Mexico, the cast and crew were plagued by problems, many of them detailed by producer William Castle in his diary. During the day, the temperature was sweltering. At night, clouds of poisonous insects swarmed around the arc lights, sometimes rendering them useless. Histamine poisoning from an insect bite caused such swelling to one of Welles’ eyes that he couldn’t open it. And half the crew went down with dysentery. Meanwhile, Hayworth was sick throughout the shoot, collapsing both In Mexico and in San Francisco, and halting production for a month.

Worst of all, on the first day of shooting, assistant cameraman Donald Ray Cory, working bareheaded in the blazing sun, had a heart attack and died. Rumour has it that Errol Flynn, who insisted on captaining his boat and was regularly drunk and abusive, wanted the body dumped into the ocean in a duffle bag. The crew ignored him, discreetly put the corpse ashore and hushed the incident up.

And then there were problems Welles brought on himself by his way of working. He would rewrite the script from day to day so everyone ended up confused. And as a director he would give his actors a hard time. Sometimes he deliberately upset them to get nervous, edgy performances. Other times he would cause them to forget their lines and improvise on the spot. By all accounts, it was not a happy project.

Welles never viewed the rushes; he just shipped them straight off to Columbia. There they were reviewed by Viola Lawrence, the studio’s chief editor. As a firm advocate of using close-ups and highlighting actors’ eyes to convey drama and emotion, she was horrified to discover that the rushes contained no close-up shots of Hayworth. She reported this to Cohn, who sent orders to rectify this. On location, Welles refused to do so. Back on the studio lot, he caved in. On Cohn’s orders, he also added the scene of Elsa singing on the yacht.

The Lady from Shanghai – from bad to worse

The rough cut of the film was based on an editing concept outlined by Welles. It ran approximately 155 minutes. But Welles’ contract with Columbia left it up to the studio to decide who would edit the final cut. Their choice was Lawrence, who had previously worked on Rita Hayworth vehicles Cover Girl and Tonight and Every Night, and would go on to work on Down to Earth, Affair in Trinidad, Salome, Miss Sadie Thompson and Pal Joey.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

GLAMOUR – Rita Hayworth wears a revealing black evening gown in Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which she and Orson Welles are co-starred.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE – Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Orson Welles is her co-star.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Taking her orders from Cohn, she cut about 55 minutes from the movie, including the opening dolly shot in Central Park, much of the Chinese opera sequence and most of the Fun House scene – all highlights of the original concept; the fashion shoot above shows just how weird and wonderful the set was). Quite apart from the damage done to the storyline, the continuity of Welles’ long takes was disrupted by the insertion of close-ups, and the result is a bewildering hotchpotch. Welles accepted some responsibility for the fiasco but pushed most of the blame onto Lawrence’s editing.

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “CAP’N RITA .. Rita Hayworth, in a fetching nautical outfit, takes over the helm of the big schooner yacht Zaca, which was chartered by Columbia Pictures from its owner, Errol Flynn, for location scenes off tropical Mexico for ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ in which Rita stars with Orson Welles.” Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

What he was most upset about was what became of the soundtrack. He’d wanted to use sound to unsettle the audience – for example by fading in voices so quietly that viewers would have to strain to make out what was being said. Traces of what he intended are evident in the grating voices of Bannister and Grisby and the final dialogue in the Hall of Mirrors.

After the success of the songs, Amado Mio and Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda, Cohn insisted on retrofitting a song into The Lady from Shanghai. The result was Please Don’t Kiss Me, commissioned from the same team – Alan Roberts and Doris Fisher (with Hayworth’s singing voice once again dubbed by Anita Ellis). The song itself is a class act. What absolutely isn’t is the way in which it is exploited as the background track for pretty much the entire movie, replacing the original score by George Antheil. Welles was incensed:

The only idea which seems to have occurred to this present composer is the rather weary one of using a popular song – the “theme – in as many arrangements as possible. Throughout we have musical references to “Please Don’t Kiss Me” for almost every bridge and also for a great deal of the background material. The tune is pleasing, it may do very well on the Hit Parade — but Lady from Shanghai is not a musical comedy.

The Lady from Shanghai – from box office failure to cult

When The Lady from Shanghai was completed in 1946 Columbia got cold feet. They were worried that it would bomb at the box office and anxious to protect Hayworth’s image. So they chose to hold it until after they’d released Down To Earth (1947) – a much more commercial movie. The Lady from Shanghai ran first in Europe (1947), where it was generally well received, before finally opening in the US in 1948, seven months after Welles and Hayworth were divorced. The studio did nothing to push the film, allowing it to be shown as the bottom half of double bills.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth, as Elsa Bannister in The Lady from Shanghai, chats on the phone. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth poses in a killer, black-satin gown by Jean Louis for a publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth as Elsa Bannister, dressed by Jean Louis to kill in The Lady from Shanghai.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth sports her dramatic new haircut in this publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

JACKETS FOR MOTORISTS … Lovely Rita Hayworth, who is currently working in Columbia’s “The Lady From Shanghai,” has found the ideal coat. Made of broadtail, it is designed after the Navy “P” jackets, its length and fullness allowing complete freedom.

Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Contemporary critics were pretty disparaging. Bosley Crowther opened his review for The New York Times with:

For a fellow who has as much talent with a camera as Orson Welles and whose powers of pictorial invention are as fluid and as forcible as his, this gentleman certainly has a strange way of marring his films with sloppiness which he seems to assume that his dazzling exhibitions of skill will camouflage.

John Carter’s review for The New Yorker was in a similar vein: “The penny-dreadful aspects of The Lady from Shanghai are obvious, but the film is nevertheless often remarkable.” While William Brogden, in Variety wrote:

The Lady from Shanghai is okay boxoffice [sic]. It’s exploitable and has Rita Hayworth’s name for the marquees. Entertainment value suffered from the striving for effect that features Orson Welles’ production, direction and scripting. Script is wordy and full of holes which need the plug of taut story telling and more forthright action.

So The Lady from Shanghai sank without trace and for many years was regarded as one of Welles’ great failures. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he remembered how:

Friends avoided me. Whenever it was mentioned, people would clear their throats and change the subject very quickly out of consideration for my feelings. I only found out that it was considered a good picture when I got to Europe. The first nice thing I ever heard about it from an American was from Truman Capote.

More recently, though, not least thanks to the advocacy of François Truffaut, critical opinion has swung behind The Lady from Shanghai, with Dave Kehr in his review for the Chicago Reader dubbing it “the weirdest great movie ever made.” Flawed masterpiece is probably the best description of the film, which in many respects makes it a whole lot more interesting than a perfect masterpiece (if such a thing even exists).

Want to know more about The Lady from Shanghai?

Ava Gardner and Orson Welles on the set of The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. The pixie looks like he belongs to the Fun House – hence the suggestion that this photo was taken on the set of The Lady from Shanghai, supported by Welles’ suit and haircut. This is an incredibly rare image – apparently sthe only photo of the two stars together.

There are some brilliant analyses and critiques of The Lady from Shanghai available online.

Filmsite Movie Review has some good background and an excellent, detailed plot synopsis.
Brian Phillips provides a combination of background fact and insightful observations in his piece for Grantland, Through a Glass, Darkly: ‘The Lady From Shanghai’ and the Legend of Orson Welles.
Chris Justice offers a similar combination of background and analysis, well worth reading at senses of cinema.
Among a series of articles at TCM, Why The Lady from Shanghai is Essential by James Steffen & Rob Nixon and Behind the Camera on The Lady from Shanghai by Rob Nixon stand out.
Stories Behind The Screen has some great anecdotes about the making of the film.
Doug Bonner’s piece, The Lady from Shanghai – If You’re Confused, You’re Supposed To Be, is particularly strong on Orson’s and Rita’s relationship and its influence on the film.
Reel SF covers the locations with then and now shots together with interactive maps of Acapulco and San Fransisco.

Celebrity break-up – why Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth split

2018-01-03 By aenigma

Rita Hayworth married Orson Welles in September 1943. She was 25, he 28. They were young, talented, and celebrities.

They say that opposites attract, and you could hardly get more opposites than Orson and Rita.

1941. Publicity photo of Orson Welles for RKO Radio Pictures, probably to promote Citizen Kane. Photo by Ernest A Bachrach.

Orson was born into a wealthy family and brought up by his mother, who indulged his every whim and encouraged him to see himself as a genius. By age 23, he had made a name for himself on stage, founded his own repertory company (Mercury Theatre) and hit the headlines with his radio play based on H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which made some listeners think Earth was under Martian attack (an event recalled in Woody Allen’s brilliant movie, Radio Days). Famously, in 1940, having been invited by RKO to make his first movie, he exclaimed: “This is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.”

Rita was born into a family of dancers and brought up by her father, a Spanish immigrant, who took her out of school and on the road to be his partner in vaudeville acts and submitted her to sexual abuse. Age 19, she married Ed Judson, a sometime car dealer who, like her father, saw her as “an investment” and treated her as such. He set her on the path to stardom, changing her appearance, whoring her out to those who could influence her career and threatening to beat her up if she disobeyed him.

So he was full of confidence, she was plagued with insecurity. He thrived on chaos and improvisation, she had been taught discipline and obedience ever since she was a small child. He was by nature a maverick and wedded to his creative work (but not to the exclusion of a series of affairs), she was lonely, craved a conventional relationship and would have been happy to renounce her career. And ironically, as one the biggest stars in the world, she was pulling in the dollars while he kept losing money with his various projects.

Publicity photo of Rita Cansino before she had her hairline raised and her name changed to Hayworth — 1936. An early publicity photo of Rita Cansino before she had her hairline raised and her name changed to Hayworth. A caption on the back reads: Easter Madonna – – Rita Casino, beautiful Spanish-Irish actress . . . prepares for the Easter Sunrise services which she attends regularly at the Hollywood Bowl.

Of course they fell for each other. And of course it couldn’t last. Latterly, the marriage traded financial dependence on his part with emotional dependence on hers.

The way in which the press treated the marriage was pretty much a blueprint for how they would pontificate on Marilyn Monroe’s to Arthur Miller –Beauty and the Brain. The relationship was under scrutiny and pressure from the off.

In March 1946 Rita officially separated from Orson and moved into a rented house in Brentwood with their daughter, Rebecca.

The couple got back together again to make The Lady from Shanghai (the subject of an upcoming piece on aenigma). But working together on the movie failed to revive their flagging relationship. Once filming was complete, Orson’s erratic behaviour, prolonged absences and obsessive dedication to his work kept on taking him away from his wife and daughter. Finally, in November 1947, the couple were divorced. On the witness stand Rita declared that:

Mr. Welles showed no interest in establishing a home. Mr. Welles told me he should never have married me in the first place, as it interfered with his freedom in his way of life.

A few months earlier, Hedda Hopper (along with Louella Parsons Hollywood’s leading gossip columnist) interviewed Rita for the June 1947 issue of Modern Screen. It’s clear whose side she’s on and that she resents Orson for his mercurial genius (for Louella Parsons, genius equates to half-crazy outsider status – Orson must have made her feel so shallow and stupid). It’s pretty vitriolic stuff but it’s also interesting for the insights it provides into Rita’s and Orson’s personalities, their relationship and, not least, their home.

Rita explains

He’s fiery, unpredictable, cursed with the mark of genius — yet Rita Hayworth loved and lived with Orson Welles for 3 years . . . before she admitted defeat BY HEDDA HOPPER.

Rita Hayworth was at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs, and I was in my Hollywood home, but what she said over the telephone was crystal clear.

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

She said, “Orson and I are through, Hedda. This time it’s for keeps. I just can’t take it any longer!”

Rita sounded tired; her voice was flat. Not angry, not excited, not tearful, not sad. Just tired – a fugitive from genius, fed up and through. I thought, “So it’s over – the second honeymoon of the Man from Mars and the pretty dancing girl – and I wondered out loud to Rita, “For how long this time?”

“For keeps,” she repeated. “Forever.” “I’d like to make a bet on that,” I said, and we did. I bet that in six months she would return to Orson and she bet that she wouldn’t.

Maybe. Only a few days before, I had walked onto a Columbia Studio set with some questions up my sleeve and I’d got some very different answers about one of the maddest marriages the Fates ever dreamed up for a Hollywood pair. Love was in bloom then for Orson and Rita.

“What a tender and touching finale to a second honeymoon!” I told Rita. At least Mr. Magic wasn’t sawing Rita Hayworth in two, he was just plain killing her with a gun when I walked on the set of The Lady From Shanghai. Rita died a dozen times before my eyes, until Orson stepped out of the scene and panted, “Cut – that’s it – that’s the picture!”

Because that’s what it was – before the love song died in the second chorus – a six-months long love tour for Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, making The Lady From Shanghai, the picture they teamed in the minute they made up the first time as man and wife. I’d walked in on the very last scene. It was all over. Under her bleached and bobbed platinum curls, Rita Hayworth grinned wearily. “And for a second wedding present,” I observed, “he makes you a dramatic actress. Happy?”

Rita nodded. It was a silly question. And Orson was still courting Rita as he never courted anyone before, since they kissed and made up – and went right to work.

There’s a rock, El Morro, in Acapulco Bay down in Mexico, that’s a spot of forever Hollywood. Orson had all the barnacles that scratched and the sea anemones that stung hacked off until it was smooth and soft as a rock can be. All because Rita had to climb on that rock and lie down for a scene. He hired the Olympic champ swimmer of Mexico to hover just out of camera range in every ocean shot in which she appeared to scare away hungry barracuda. When they plunged into the jungles to shoot, he hired a bodyguard of fierce Pancho Villas complete with mustachios, bull bandilleras and blunderbusses to scare off snakes and alligators with designs on a hunk of Hayworth. Orson followed Rita around in person, bearing oils and unguents every time she had a brief encounter with the tropical sun. He had special rope-soled shoes flown down from Hollywood so she wouldn’t slip and smack her sacroiliac on Errol Flynn’s yacht deck when it rolled.

get that story…

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth dining out in NYC in November 1943 — November 1943. A caption on the back of the photo reads: New York……screen actress Rita Hayworth is shown dining out with hubby Orson Welles, last night, while Hollywood, and the movie column fans of the nation, buzzed about the $12,000 divorce settlement it was revealed she made upon her ex-husband, Edward Judson. She also signed away community property rights.

The reason I had tracked Orson and Rita down on the set the day they completed Lady From Shanghai was because I had gotten a phone call from Al Delacorte back in. New York.

“Can you pierce the Wall of Steel that surrounds Orson and Rita,” Al inquired, “and give an inimitable Hopper sketch of their home life?”

I repeated that to Rita. Her hairdresser said, “Please, Rita, I almost stabbed you. Don’t shake so!” Rita was laughing, a little bitterly, it seemed to me.

“Our Wall of Steel,” scoffed Rita, “is either a sound stage or a sun reflector – and as for our home life – just look around. It’s this set.”

“Sometimes,” sighed Rita, “we have breakfast together, but it’s usually dinner for Orson. He’ll work 24 hours straight without eating. Then he comes home and wants three steaks and a couple of pies. Steaks for breakfast – pies – ugh!”

Orson and Rita lived – at odd hours – in a small, ranch type house out in Brentwood. Rita bought the place for herself and baby Rebecca after the last time Orson left his happy home. It wasn’t exactly a match for the little love nest they started housekeeping in when they first married. That was something you’d have to see to believe.

A Los Angeles sports promoter owned it. He’d built the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, a showy sports arena in Hollywood, and he must have told the architect, “Now build me a house to match.”

It had neon lights — honest — and three or four floors. A swimming pool with a tropical island in the middle. Mirrors and glass and colored lights everywhere and – well – I won’t go on. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Orson Welles started housekeeping. Orson used to broadcast his radio thriller-chillers from the first floor. Rita reclined in her bed up on the third and listened in. Where career left off and home life started, I’m sure she never exactly knew.

I was out there once when Orson was broadcasting. Radio people swarmed all over. The only touch of domesticity that crept in that evening was a cocker pup of Rita’s, who wandered into Orson’s temple of art and darned near busted up the broadcast before they could shoo him out!

It took more than a puppy to break up the marriage of Orson and Rita the first time – and the second time, too. It took the most uniquely exasperating driving temperament that ever hit show business. People who work with Orson often idolize the guy like GIs worshipped Ike Eisenhower. But they can’t stand him long. He consumes them. No one can keep up with him – let alone a wife.

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles taking a bow in the big-top tent of his Wonder Show for Servicemen — August 1943. A caption on the back of the photo reads: Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles take a bow before the audience crowding the big-top tent in which his Wonder Show for Servicemen is staged. Rita helped with some of the trickery and got loud and long applause from soldiers.

I also know, of course, how warm-hearted Orson Welles can be when he wants to. Years ago, before I had a column, before Orson came to Hollywood and set it on its ear with the picture they dared him to make, he charmed me where a mother is always charmed easiest. My son, Bill, had ideas then that he wanted to be an actor. He’s reformed now – he’s a business man. But then Bill promoted himself a walk-on job in the Katherine Cornell Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. Orson had a big role. He had no idea who the shy, awkward, hopelessly unactorish kid was. But he took him under his wing; couldn’t have been more kind and helpful.

Okay. Orson’s charming, appealing, sweet when he wants to be – and also exhausting, temperamental and mad. So what made Orson and Rita separate in the first place? And then, what made them come back together again? I asked Rita all this, rapid fire, sticking my inquisitive nose – leave it to me – directly into the confusing business. Rita answered them all with one shrug and a couple of sentences.

“We’re in love, Orson and I,” she said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Begging Rita’s pardon, I don’t think it’s quite as “simple as that.” Nothing about O. Welles is simple, not even love. He’s as complex as a jig-saw puzzle. Rita Hayworth knew that when Orson first found himself smitten and went a’wooing. He had a tough time getting a date, believe me, because Rita was scared. She didn’t want any more domineering mates. Her first husband, Ed Judson, had bossed her around and made her life pretty miserable. Orson’s genius made Rita shy as a mouse, when Romance peeped around the corner.

she stood him up…

Orson wrote her fan letters at first, from South America. When he got back, he called her up, almost every hour on the hour. She hid out, finally made a date, and stood him up! Did that discourage Welles? Not a bit. He came back for more, and then rashly Rita agreed to go out for dinner and this time kept her word. They went to Chinatown and ate chow mein. When Orson told her good night, she was in love, lost in the spell that Mister Influence wove like a web.

Rita Hayworth's magical escape — August 1943. A caption on the back of the photo reads: At the count of “three” Miss Rita Hayworth will miraculously escape from the cords which bind her neck, instead of being decapitated as the audience expects. Scene takes place during the “Death of the Silken Cords” mystery, an act in Orson Welles Magic Show for Servicemen held in a “big-top” in Hollywood.

Rita was set to make Cover Girl then, a very swell musical you’ll remember. It was a big production for Columbia with Technicolor and tricky dances. They’d borrowed Gene Kelly from M-G-M; rehearsals were starting. Time was a-wasting and big money, too. That’s why Harry Cohn shouted “No” when Orson wanted Rita to stooge for his magic act in the tent show he was putting on for GIs in Hollywood. But Orson said that was the thing for Rita to do. So she did it. For a hard-headed show girl like Rita, that was love, or hypnotism or something.

Orson could have used any one of a dozen willing stars in Hollywood in his USO carnival act. Marlene Dietrich stepped in when Rita finally had to go to work, and filled the bill beautifully. But Orson is selfish. Nobody counts but Orson once he takes off on an airy flight of genius. But that’s the kind of a daffy divinity Rita Hayworth fell for and married.

Well, at least, she does have a child! Little Rebecca, “Becka” as she’s already named herself, looks exactly like Orson, black curls and all. But she’s Rita’s darling. Every gurgle and gasp and baby memento has been recorded in a huge picture book Rita keeps.

For all Orson loves his little Becka, Rita knows that nothing else in the world really matters to him once he’s lost in one of his creative trances. Not a wife or a baby or anything except those ideas buzzing about in his brain. One week-end during shooting, Rita talked Orson into a trip to her beloved Mexico. They went just to Rosa Rita Beach, across the border. But Orson hauled along his typewriter and rewrote the whole finish of the picture!

One of the fuses that set off their second marital blow-up was Orson’s refusal to regard Rita as a human being and a wife. She was dog-tired after her exhausting marathon acting ordeal. After that last scene I saw, she begged Orson to go away with her for a rest. “Tomorrow,” he answered, day after day, and whisked right in to the cutting room to pore over his precious film. He tomorrowed himself out of a wife at last. “I had to get away or I’d have collapsed,” Rita told me. “So I walked out.” How else?

Actually, this final split wasn’t too different from the first one – when Rita had consoled herself with Vic Mature and Tony Martin, while Orson spent his time back East with the arty Broadway boys and girls – producing a play.

Oddly enough, that play he lost his shirt with on Broadway, Around the World in 80 Days, was what brought Orson back to Hollywood and a big factor, I suspect, in bringing Orson and Rita back together for a second try at love. To help finance it, Orson charmed Harry Cohn, head of Columbia, out of $80,000, advanced against an Orson Welles picture job. When that went down the box-office drain, along with another $300,000 of Orson’s (and some other people’s), Orson, flat broke, faced making a Hollywood comeback whether he wanted to or not.

a role for rita…

Orson brought his pet Mercury Theater actors out from New York (most of them have never made a picture before) and prepared to shoot. If I Die Before I Wake they called it then, and it was a man’s picture tailored to Orson and his Mercury pal, Everett Sloane. Then, one night Orson went out to the house to see Rita and daughter, Becka. The next week his production was The Lady From Shanghai and the picture was Rita’s. Orson rewrote it in eight days, gave her the co-star part. Then they announced their official reconciliation.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth at odds over dinner in Hollywood — December 1945. A caption on the back of the photo reads: Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles dine together in Hollywood, California, in November of this year. The actress said in Hollywood, December 6, she will divorce Welles, after two years of marriage. They have a year old daughter, Rebecca.

Rita was happy at first, working and learning from her favorite maestro.

They spent most of the time cruising around in Mexico on Errol Flynn’s yacht, the “Zaca.” And they acted like a pair of newlyweds.

One night, for instance, Rita was ashore while Orson was out in the bay doing some night scenes with Errol (Flynn was skipper – at $750 a day on this job.) But Rita couldn’t stand to be apart from her maestro even that long. So she trekked around Acapulco with Errol’s wife, Nora, and rounded up a native Mariachi band. They found a fisherman with a boat and slipped out in the bay, circled the yacht in the dark, then had the guitars and swarthy crooners cut loose with a serenade. Then they climbed on board into their loving husbands’ arms.

When Rita’s birthday came up they were still in Mexico. Orson tossed a banquet for Rita at Las Americas Hotel with all the Mexican big shots there, the really high brass of the land. They all toasted the lovely lady and that night on her pillow she found a diamond pendant from her thoughtful hubby.

Orson might be a lovable, livable husband, if he didn’t have that spur of genius eternally prodding him out of all normal social interests. He has absolutely no relaxing interests to sop up his atomic energy.

His daughter, Becka, usually sees him on the gallop. Orson had to fly to Hollywood on business while making a street scene for The Lady From Shanghai, up in San Francisco. He flew down and flew back. “Did you get to see Rebecca?” Rita asked him.

“Oh, yes,” said Orson. “Had a nice visit. She rode with me to the airport to catch the plane!”

Opposed to Orson’s genius and dynamic qualities, Rita’s really a very normal, unspectacular girl with simple tastes and normal yearnings. She’s a model mother, both with Becka and Christopher, Orson’s nine-year-old daughter by his first wife. Christopher is always welcome at Rita’s.

I had hopes that this time the noble experiment of Svengali with Love would work. I hoped it more for Rita’s sake than Orson’s. After all, he’s got his genius to keep him warm.

I hope, above all, now that she’s had a taste of the astral spheres of acting, Rita won’t be spoiled for her musicals, whether The Lady From Shanghai hits or misses the box-office bus. That would be a shame; Rita has such a wonderful, adoring public for her songs and dances, her pretty face and figure. And it could happen. A friend of mine who knows Orson as well as I do, maybe better, was laying odds that if Orson stuck around long enough, Harry Cohn would lose his musical queen.

I, myself, might place a cautious bet that if Orson sticks around where Rita is very long, or vice versa, he’ll have her back in his spell and there’ll be kissings and makings up and a third inning of Svengali vs. Love. That guy Orson is Dick Tracy’s “Influence” without the glass eyes, and he’s still the father of Rita Hayworth’s child.

But if Rita and Orson do try it again, I’d like to suggest a good text for that needle-point sampler they may want to hang over their mantelpiece.

It’s an old gag we used to plant around Hollywood – only in this case I wouldn’t be exactly kidding – and it reads, “Danger — Genius at Work!”

Want to know more?

You can see the article as it was originally published in the June 1947 issue of Modern Screen at Fan Magazines Collection. You can find out more about how Rita was exploited by the men in her life in Susan Braudy’s review for The New York Times of Barbara Leaming’s book, If This Was Happiness A Biography of Rita Hayworth. Or you could go the whole hog and read John Kobal’s Rita Hayworth: The Time, the Place and the Woman.

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.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

At the office

1943. Rita Hayworth and models pose at the offices of Vanity magazine. This is just the epitome of mid-1940s chic in terms of both the...

Heavenly sight

1943. In this ravishing fantasy sequence, Rita Hayworth appears at the top of a stylized Art Deco mountain down which she dances into the arms...

Round the mountain

1943. Having indulged her admirers, Rita Hayworth dances back up to the mountain peak in a rain of golden snowflakes. The caption on the back...

Later on, Arthur Schwartz, whom Harry Cohn brought in to produce Cover Girl, recalls:

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’.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Apart from the LIFE article, key sources are Michael Gross’ book, Model – the ugly business of beautiful women, and John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth. You can find my favourite online article at Blonde at the Film. Other articles worth reading are at The Vintage Cameo and moviediva. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective. For biographies of some of the cover girls, take a look at Those obscure objects of desire.

1944. Cecilia Meagher by George Hurrell.

Short stories – for a quick break

2017-05-02 By aenigma

Aenigma is all about images from the the worlds of fashion and the movies and the stories behind them.

Short stories is a good place to come if you don’t have time for one of the longer pieces. Below you’ll find a selection of shots that illustrate the range of subjects covered by aenigma. It’s a deliberately eclectic mix with, hopefully, something for everybody.

Use the filter buttons to home in on topics that might interest you, and then the Read more button to go to the whole story.

A L “Whitey” Schafer – the art of the portrait

2017-04-20 By aenigma

Janet Blair by A L "Whitey" Schafer — 1941. “A PORTRAIT – of Janet Blair, currently appearing in the Columbia production, “Blondie Goes To College”,” says the caption. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.

A L “Whitey” Schafer was a leading stills photographer in Hollywood during the 1930s and ’40s. In 1941 he published Portraiture Simplified, a book in which he argues that “…portraiture’s purpose is the realization of character realistically.” It provides an insight into his approach and techniques.

To help promote the book, he wrote wrote an article for amateur photographers in the February 1943 issue of Popular Science. It makes a nice counterpoint to some of his studio shots. A transcript follows, but it’s worth taking a look at the original (there’s a link to it at the end of this article), both for the photos that illustrate it and for his advice on equipment, which do not appear here.

After the transcript, you will find a few reflections on A L “Whitey” Schafer’s Hollywood portraits followed by his career timeline.

Explore your home for pictures in pattern

By A. L. (WHITEY) SCHAFER Portrait Photographer, Paramount Studios “Whitey” Schafer is a pioneer among Hollywood’s still photographers. Starting 22 years ago as a laboratory worker at Paramount, he was for ten years in charge of portrait, publicity, advertising and production still photography for Columbia Pictures. Now he is back at Paramount, in charge of all still photography and directing the work of the same laboratory where he started as a boy. He specializes in “pattern pictures” such as the accompanying ones of Ann Rooney and Lynda Gray.

The man behind the lens, whether he be a professional or an amateur, sees life in terms of pictures. Since many of us are going to spend more time at home from now on, more of our pictures will have home settings. Why not make the best of the situation by getting interesting home patterns into your photographs? If you follow the suggestions I’ve found valuable in my studio work, you can build a collection of pictures that will not only portray your family and friends more interestingly, but will, in their settings, afford intimate glimpses of your home as well.

Vera Zorina by A L “Whitey” Schafer. — 1942. “DANCING BEAUTY – – Vera Zorina continues on her merry, graceful way dancing in all her pictures, her latest ballet being in “Star Spangled Rhythm”, Paramount’s new-style musical which has a cast of seventy top stars and featured players in the cast. Miss Zorina does a ballet on a snow set with millions of snow flakes falling about her. For her dance, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen wrote a new hit tune, “Black Magic,” which is sung by Johnny Johnston while she ballets.” says the caption. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.

Any background other than a blank wall resolves itself into a pattern of lines or masses. Where in the home will you find interesting patterns? In the woodwork of a door, and its framework; in the brick sidewalk and the flagstones of your patio; in floor coverings, particularly rugs with strong markings; in chairs and lamp standards and iron grill work; in the grape arbor, a shade tree, the picket fence. Two simple rules will serve as your guide:

1. Look for interesting line.

2. Do not shoot into “open” background, such as a plain wall.

Both rhythm and contradiction will provide interest. For example, lower the camera and you elongate a full-length figure. Have your subject lean away from the perpendicular when the design is rectangular to break up parallel lines, and so get a contradictory line between the center of attraction and the background. These points are well illustrated in the accompanying pictures.

There is one important exception to the second rule. You may safely photograph a girl in a pretty costume against a plain wall, for here interest centers in the girl and her garb. In general, though, it is the background that makes your pictures.

Any feminine wardrobe will include more than one costume with interesting pattern – a peasant dress, for example. Have your subject stand against the wall, hold or pin the dress up by the hem so as to frame her head and shoulders like a fan, turn one shoulder toward the camera, and you’ll get a picture to be cherished. Unless you have a portrait attachment, you must be content with a waist figure. In enlarging, though, bleed the dress off the edges of the print, thus creating a feeling of endless design.

How should you shoot for close-ups, medium figures or long shots? Does a door call for a medium figure and the mantel a full figure? Which odd corner holds promise of a beautiful composition?

Suppose we examine some concrete cases. The ideas they suggest undoubtedly will point the way to parallel possibilities in your own home.

Barbara Stanwyck by A L "Whitey" Schafer — 1943. Barbara Stanwyck as provocative housewife Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy WIlder’s iconic film noir, Double Indemnity. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.

Consider the front door, or perhaps the dining-room door. It may be paneled, or perfectly plain with handsomely grained wood. You’ll agree, I am sure, that the form and pattern of the door are interesting; they’re doubly so when sister or mother consents to pose. Again let us ask your subject to stand with one shoulder turned toward the camera. (If she stands straight on, her head will appear disproportionately small.) Place the camera at shoulder level – certainly no lower than the bust line.

“Four walls do not a prison make,” but four sides of the door casing certainly will imprison your subject. So, either on the negative or when enlarging, crop so that the casing does not frame the picture. Let the panel bleed off the edges.

That’s not an inflexible rule, of course. Some doors have interesting moldings or casings. When including this framework, to avoid the feeling of imprisonment, tip the camera opposite to the line of your subject’s figure. If she leans to the right, tilt the camera to the left. By this means, the normally horizontal and perpendicular lines of the doorway will both frame the center of interest at an interesting angle and enhance the line of the figure.

Have you ever thought of a wall, a simple, unadorned expanse of plaster, as part of your home worth photographing? It can be, if you add interesting shadows. Some of the most effective portraits I have taken are medium shots photographed against such a background. Place your subject directly against the wall, turn one shoulder toward the camera and arrange a single key light high enough to cast a butterfly shadow under the nose so long as almost to reach the lip. No matter which way he or she faces, to avoid the illusion of a crooked nose the light must be cast to run the shadow directly down, and not even a trifle side-ways. The single-source light will cast shadows along the wall, bringing out the relief that makes the picture. No back light is needed here.

Rugs, particularly those bearing a single predominant figure against an open or lightly figured field, offer interesting opportunities. They may be hung against a wall or left on the floor. In the first case, be sure to place the figure high enough so it doesn’t conflict with the head of your subject. It’s a good plan to make this a medium shot, placing the subject in one lower corner, with the figure running out of the opposite upper corner. If you wish to avoid an unsightly shadow and focus attention upon the subject, place her about three feet in front of the rug. Thus, the background will be slightly out of focus.

A slightly different procedure applies when the rug is left on the floor. Now you’ll shoot down from an elevation of about 5’, tilting the camera so that the figure comes diagonally across the plate. Make sure your subject’s head is closer to the camera than her feet.

Mary Lou Dix by A L “Whitey” Schafer. — 1941. “This attractive svelte young brunette with the piquant profile is Mary Lou Dix, young actress recently added to the Columbia roster of talent. Miss Dix, who has played small parts in several important productions, is currently at work in “Sissy” (tentative title), the new Grace Moore picture directed by Josef von Sternberg, with Franchot Tone in the leading male role,” says the caption. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.

Remember my warning not to shoot into open background. That means, simply, that with such exceptions as costumes against bare walls, the background pattern and foreground objects should balance the picture both as to width and depth. Virtually any piece of furniture may be used in the foreground, such as a sofa or an upended chair. These natural props not only solve the problem of the straying hand by giving it a resting place; they also keep the resulting picture out of the stereo-typed class.

Lean an occasional table on its side, for example, and frame a head in the center of the top. Use a low setup, shooting up to get a feeling of distance. The possibilities with furniture are limitless. A few trials will show you the way.

What may you find of interest outdoors? Lattice work, vines, tree branches … pictures are everywhere. Let’s make them different. The latticed arbor, for instance. Don’t simply take a straight shot, but angle the lattice to the boundaries of the negative. If the sun is shining directly through the lattice, try for a silhouette, making sure none of the rays strike the lens.

A human figure will improve the picture, and yet preserve the pattern. In this case, while the lattice will give you a bolder pattern as a result of contrast, you should expose for the subject rather than for the background.

I have left until last the most prized and usually the most poorly conceived picture of all. That’s the family portrait. Don’t stand all your subjects in a single row, some in shadow and some in the sun, say “look at the camera,” and shoot. Do take time to arrange them against an interesting background, perhaps the climbing rose against the living room. Break the straight line by having some sit and others stand, one turned right and another left, some slightly farther from the camera than others. Get them to talk until they relax, and when they seem to be interested in each other rather than in that box at your finger, press the trigger.

A L “Whitey” Schafer – Hollywood portraits

These days, the likes of George Hurrell and Clarence Sinclair Bull garner most of the attention. A L “Whitey” Schafer, by contrast, is a name unfamiliar to all but the cognoscenti. He barely gets a mention in John Kobal’s book The Art of the Great Hollywood Photographers. One reason for the neglect could be the relative brevity of his career, curtailed by his early death.

Dolly Haas

1936. Dolly Haas made her movie debut age 10 in Germany, the country of her birth. With the rise of...

Dolores del Rio

1937. Dolores del Rio was one of Hollywood's most important silent-movie actresses and one of its first Latin stars. Her...

Doris Nolan

1938. Doris Nolan’s career as an actress oscillated between the stage and screen. Her most notable movie appearance was as...

Joan Perry

1938. Joan Perry was a model when, dancing with an escort in New York's Central Park Casino, she caught the...

Fay Wray

1940. Fay Wray screamed her way into movie history as the apple of King Kong's eye. Although she made about...

Ann Miller

1941. Ann Miller was the leading female tap dancer in Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and ’50s, with a reputed...

Veronica Lake

1944. Veronica Lake’s trademark peek-a-boo hair-do (a cascade of golden tresses that fell forward to obscure one heavy-lidded eye) motivated...

Ann Savage

1944. Ann Savage was best known for her role as Vera, one of the most hellish femmes fatales in the...

Ann Richards

1946. Shirley Ann Richards kicked off her career in a series of 1930s Australian films before moving to Hollywood to...

Dorothy Lamour

1947. Dorothy Lamour was one of the four most popular pin-ups of World War II (along with Betty Grable, Lana...

Looking at the images on this page, his most distinctive trait seems to be the tilt at which he regularly puts his camera. Even when he’s not employing that technique, there’s often a strong diagonal element to the composition achieved via the lighting or the pose of his sitter. And as his article suggests, he’s not afraid to use backgrounds to add drama and interest, whether via props or projection.

Does he succeed in realistically capturing his sitters’ characters? Well, that was probably a tall order, given the studios’ requirement for glamour rather than personality. The closest he comes here is probably the portrait of Doris Nolan – the hint of a smile that plays around her eyes and lips suggests a mischievous sense of humour.

At his best, as in the photos of Rita Hayworth, Mary Lou Dix, Janet Blair, Dolly Haas, Joan Perry, Fay Wray and Ann Miller, A L “Whitey” Schafer proved a master of his profession, well up to the task of helping his employers turn aspiring actresses into movie icons.

Rita Hayworth by A L "Whitey" Schafer — 1942. “A portrait of Rita Hayworth, currently appearing in the Columbia production, “You Were Never Lovelier’,” says the caption. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer.

A L “Whitey” Schafer – career timeline

1902. Born in Salt Lake City.

Around 1917. Moves with his family to Hollywood.

1921. Joins Famous Players-Lasky to work in the stills laboratory, processing prints.

1923. Joins the Thomas Ince Studio, where he shoots stills and occasionally appears in movies. In a 1948 Popular Photography article he recalls, “That was in the days when everybody on the lot was called on to act at times. When we weren’t shooting pictures, we were doing “walk-ons.”

1932. Moves to Columbia.

1935. Succeeds William Fraker (father of “Bud” Fraker) as head of Columbia’s stills photography department.

1941. Replaces Eugene Robert Richee as head of Paramount’s stills photography department.

1951. Dies, age 49, when a stove aboard a yacht explodes as he tries to help the owner light it.

Want to know more?

The best source of information I’ve found is Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights — A. L. “Whitey” Schafer Simplifies Portraits. For more photos by A L “Whitey” Schafer, take a look at The Red List. The full article in Popular Science is available via Google Books (you’ll find it on pages 144f).