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Rudolph Maté

Shooting for the stars – insights from four leading Hollywood cinematographers

Four leading cinematographers talk about their work and the stars they’ve filmed in this article published in the February 1941 issue of Modern Screen.

Here, then, in their own words are some revealing insights into how they see their work, observations of some of the stars they’ve filmed and revelations of tricks of the trade. And an opportunity to showcase a series of behind-the-scenes images of various cinematographers and crew at work.

Jack Cardiff
1950. Jack Cardiff, one of the great 20th century cinematographers, on the set of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

But first a brief introduction to the cinematographers themselves:

  • Gregg Toland. Orson Welles once said that Gregg taught him everything he knew about the art of photography. Before filming Citizen Kane, Gregg spent a weekend giving him a crash course on lens and camera positions. Orson would never lose his admiration for Gregg, saying on many occasions, “Not only was he the greatest cameraman I ever worked with, he was also the fastest.” Gregg’s advice to aspiring cameramen was simple: “Forget the camera. The nature of the story determines the photographic style. Understand the story and make the most out of it. If the audience is conscious of tricks and effects, the cameraman’s genius, no matter how great it is, is wasted.”
  • James Wong Howe. In the 53 years he spent developing and perfecting his craft, “Jimmy” Howe was nominated for 16 Academy Awards and won two Oscars. In his ongoing quest for realism, he strove to make all his sources of light absolutely naturalistic and developed various filming techniques. For example, to get the audience as close as possible to John Garfield in a boxing scene in Body and Soul, he got up into the ring on roller skates and scooted about the fighters to capture the most evocative shots of their struggle.
  • Rudolph Maté. Rudy worked in Europe with Carl Theodor Dreyer on both The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr before migrating to the US in 1934. During the 1940s he received five consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography, the last of them for the Rita Hayworth vehicle, Cover Girl. He also worked with her on Gilda and (uncredited) The Lady from Shanghai. He went on to direct a series of movies including DOA.
  • Ernest Haller. Ernie is best known for his Oscar-winning work on Gone With The Wind (over the years he had six other Oscar nominations). He was admired within the industry for his expert location shooting and his ability to balance make-up and lighting to bring out actors’ best features. He shot 14 of Bette Davis’ movies and was her favourite lensman. During the 1930s and ’40s, he worked at Warner Bros. His later movies included Rebel Without a Cause and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Shooting for the Stars by William Roberts

They make fat stars thin and old stars young! Who? Those magnificent Merlins of Movietown – the unsung cameramen.

These fellows are pretty tough, believe me. They’re banded together in a secret organization called the ASC, and it’s not that they try to be secret but just that no one knows much about them outside of Hollywood. Movie stars dread them and, privately, call them super-assassins.

The leaders of the ASC have committed many drastic deeds. They have literally taken flesh off Myrna Loy’s legs. They have flattened Brenda Marshall’s nose. They have removed pieces of Madeleine Carroll’s cheeks They’ve reduced Priscilla Lane’s mouth, narrowed Zorina’s forehead and changed Vivien Leigh’s blue eyes to pure green. And for committing these atrocities they have been paid as much as $1,500 per week.

However, if truth will out, the secret organization referred to is actually a staid labor union, the American Society of Cinematographers. The members, merchants of mayhem, are the very expert and very well-paid cameramen of Movieland who, with thick ground glass and well-placed kliegs, have made ordinary faces beautiful and have converted terrible defects into gorgeous assets.

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Ava Gardner filming Singapore

John Brahm and Maury Gertsman shoot a scene for Singapore

1947. Perched above a courtyard entrance, director John Brahm and cinematographer Maury Gertsman prepare to shoot a scene for Singapore. The writing on the clapperboard reads

SINGAPORE
1540
DIRECTOR BRAHM
CAMERA GERTSMAN
SET DRESSER EMERT
PROP MAN BLACKIE
SET NO. 10 SCENE 29

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Rita Hayworth filming Affair in Trinidad

Rita Hayworth films a scene for Affair in Trinidad

1952. Cinematographers go flat out to get the right angle. Here the glamorous focus of attention is Rita Hayworth. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

RITA’S BACK – Rita Hayworth does a torrid dance in a night club scene on her first day before the cameras for Columbia’s “Affair in Trinidad,” a Beckworth Production in which she co-stars with Glenn Ford.

Photo by Irving Lippman.

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Ann Sheridan and Sidney Hickox on the set of Silver River

Sidney Hickox chats with Ann Sheridan on the set of Silver River

1948. Cinematographer Sidney Hickox was brilliant at shooting gritty, moody crime films and melodramas for Warner Bros. His movies included three Lauren Bacall vehicles – To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947). A caption on the back of the photo reads:

Ann Sheridan and cameraman Sid Hickox chat between scenes on the set of “SILVER RIVER,” Ann’s current picture with Errol Flynn for Warner Bros. Star is pictured here at the Warner Bros. ranch near Calabasas, California, where extensive exterior sets of Nevada’s sliver mining town were reproduced for the picture.

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Grace Kelly at ease

Grace Kelly at ease

1956. Aspiring cinematographer Grace Kelly strikes a pose, as the caption on the back of the photo points out:

ACTRESS AT EASE....It’s Grace Kelly perched on the camera boom between scenes on the set of M-G-M’s “The Swan”.

If any one class of worker in Hollywood does not get credit where credit is due, if any one class of laborer is hidden behind the star-bright glare of publicity, obscure, unsung, unknown – it is the cinema cameraman.

“It’s this way with us,” Gregg Toland told me. “They’ve got us wrong, entirely wrong, everywhere. They think cameramen are low-grade mechanical morons, wearing overalls and stupid grins, existing on starvation wages and merely grinding 35 mm. toys. Well, maybe. Only we don’t like that impression. Maybe we are technicians. Nothing wrong with that. But sakes alive, man, tell ’em we’re creative artists, too!”

And so, I’m telling you. They’re creative artists, too. They’re makers and breakers of thespians and pictures. They’re the Merlins behind the movies.

Take that fellow Gregg Toland who just had the floor. A lean little man in brown clothes – cultured, brilliant and active. Twenty-one years ago he obtained a job during a summer vacation as an office boy at the old Fox Studios. The film stars on the lot didn’t impress him, but the intent cameramen, cranking their black-sheathed boxes, hypnotized him. He decided to skip school and become a photographer. The result? Well, the last I heard, he had prepared for canning such products as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Long Voyage Home” and “Citizen Kane.”

I talked with Toland in the comfortable study of his sprawling Benedict Canyon home. He downed a long beer with a practiced gulp and explained the qualifications and duties of the cameraman.

“A first-rate cameraman must realize,” said Toland, “that while some scenes of a film might be shot much, much better, much more artistically, those scenes are worth neither the extra time nor extra cash investment. The cameraman must have a strain of the economist in him, and get speed into his picture without sacrificing quality. After all, time becomes a paramount item when you realize that a single day on a certain picture may run to $22,000 in expenses!

Merle Oberon and Turham Bey filming Night in Paradise
1945. William H Greene, director of color photography, does a last-minute check on the set of Night in Paradise prior to filming a scene starring Merle Oberon and Turham Bey.

“As photographer on a major movie, my first job is to manage my camera crew. I have a special crew of seven men. All specialists. I take them with me wherever I go. There’s an operator and two assistants. There’s a grip, a gaffer or electrician, a standby painter and a microphone boy. But that’s only the beginning of my job. I must see that there is efficiency. Speed, again. And, with things as they are, I must practice economy by being artistic with one eye on the production budget. These days a cameraman is actually a producer, director, photographer, actor and electrician. The out-and-out old-fashioned photographer who just had to maneuver a camera is as extinct as the dodo bird.”

With two decades behind a Hollywood camera, I wondered just which particular feminine face Gregg Toland considered the best he had ever brought into focus.

His answer, like his personality and his pictures, was direct.

“Anna Sten,” he replied. “She was by far the most photogenic woman I ever shot. She didn’t have an insipid baby doll face, you know the type. She had a face full of good bones and character. Her cheeks caught the lights well, and her nose was so tilted as to place attractive shadows beneath. Frances Farmer was another face I enjoyed working on and, of course, if you want to go way back into ancient history, there was no one like the incomparable Gloria Swanson.

“On the other hand, an actress like Merle Oberon gives the photographer a good deal of work. Her countenance can only be photographed from certain angles. And as to clothes, her body requires that she wear either fluffy dresses or evening gowns to show her up to advantage. Jean Arthur, a dear friend of mine, won’t mind my mentioning that her face is also a lighting job, but, when it comes to attire, she is perfectly photogenic in anything from a cowboy costume to a bathing suit.

Ingrid Bergman filming a scene for Arch of Triumph
1946. Ingrid Bergman filming a scene for Arch of Triumph.

“Thinking back on personalities, I recall that I had difficulties with Ingrid Bergman when I worked on ‘Intermezzo.’ Ingrid is really two persons. Shoot her from one side and she’s breath-takingly beautiful. Shoot her from the other, and she’s average.”

Toland paused for punctuation, then smiled.

“Of course,” he said cheerfully, “I’d rather photograph girls like June Lang and Arleen Whelan with their pretty little faces, than any. Because they’re no work at all. You set your camera and your lights anywhere, and they still look cute. If I shot them constantly, though, I’d become far too lazy.”

Now he spoke of the stronger sex.

“The most photogenic male is Gary Cooper. But he looks best when he isn’t photographed well! Here’s what I mean. If he’s shot casually and naturally, without frills or fuss, he has plenty of femme appeal. He doesn’t have to be dolled up like the juvenile leads. If you don’t believe me, just take a gander at him in ‘The Westerner.’ He’s grand in it and without special lighting or any make-up.

“Henry Fonda is another I enjoy working with. He also doesn’t require makeup. And he’s so damn intelligent. Understands props, stage business, electricity. You know, Fonda’s main hobby is photography, and on ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ he spent half his time looking through my camera, which, of course, gave him a better understanding of what I was after.”

I inquired about Toland’s most recent and celebrated patient, Orson Welles.

Orson Welles directing Carl Frank and Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai
A caption on the back of the photo reads: MENACE .. This is the picture you won’t see on the screen. It shows Orson Welles, his usual mug of steaming coffee in hand, directing Carl Frank and Rita Hayworth in a dramatic courtroom cross-examination scene for Columbia Pictures’ “The Lady from Shanghai.” Orson is producer, writer, director and co-star with Rita in “The Lady from Shanghai.” Frank plays the role of a tough district attorney. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

“Shot ‘Citizen Kane’ in sixteen weeks,” explained Toland. “It’s an unusual picture. For example, we worked with no beams or parallels (to hold spots) for the first time in Hollywood history. All sets were given natural ceilings, which made bright lighting difficult but also made for realism.

“Orson Welles was an interesting type to shoot, especially his characterization, changing from a lad of twenty-five to an old man of seventy, and wearing, in old age, blood-shot glass-caps over his eyes.

“His problem, today, will depend on whether audiences prefer him as a character actor or as himself. I like one quality in his acting and direction. Stubbornness. He would bitterly fight every technical problem that came up. Never say die. Never.”

Gregg Toland confessed that the one defect he’d found in most actors and actresses was discoloration and lines or wrinkles under their eyes. “Were we to leave them natural, it would make them appear tired and haggard on the screen, especially since they are amplified so greatly. So, I place bright spotlights directly in their faces, which wash out these lines and make their faces smoother.”

Then Toland began discussing technical problems in a very untechnical manner. It was a liberal education in cinema craft. He spoke fondly of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Said he enjoyed much of it because he was able to shoot his favorite type of scene – building somber moods through shadowy low-keyed lighting, such as the opening candlelight scene in that classic of the soil. “We slaved, Jack Ford and I, to make that picture real,” Toland revealed. “We sent the cast out to acquire good healthy sunburns. We threw away soft diffusion lenses. We shot the whole thing candid-camera style, like a newsreel. That’s the trend today in Hollywood. Realism.”

“Of course,” he added, “sometimes realism is attained only through complete trickery. Remember the third or fourth shot in the beginning of ‘The Long Voyage Home?’ The scene of the ship floating and rocking on the water? Here’s how that was done. I had the studio build half a miniature boat, set it on a dry stage. Then I took a pan full of plain water, placed it on a level with my lens – and shot my scene over this pan of water, catching the boat and giving the perfect illusion of its being in the water. But I better not tell you too much of that. Trade secrets, you know. You better have another beer …”

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Mervyn Leroy and Harold Rosson filming a scene for Johnny Eager

Mervyn Leroy and Harold Rosson filming a scene for Johnny Eager

1941. Director Mervyn Leroy, crouching, oversees the shooting of a scene for Johnny Eager.

...
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Douglas Sirk conferring with Hazel Brooks

Douglas Sirk conferring with Hazel Brooks

1947. Director Douglas Sirk briefs Hazel Brooks prior to filming a scene for Sleep,...

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Ava Gardner filming The Angel Wore Red

Ava Gardner filming The Angel Wore Red

1960. Ava Gardner seems to enjoy being the centre of attention as she emerges...

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George Cukor filming Marilyn Monroe

George Cukor filming Marilyn Monroe

1962. A bird's eye view of George Cukor directing Marilyn on the set of...

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But, instead of another beer, I indulged in something equally stimulating. I saw another ace cameraman. I left Toland, drove out into the Valley north of Hollywood and halted before an intimate Oriental restaurant bearing a blinking neon that read “Ching How.”

This restaurant was the hobby and hide-out of the cherubic Chinese cameraman, James Wong Howe, the place where he came in the evening, to chat with old friends or supervise a steaming chow mein after a hard and tiresome day with Ann Sheridan, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr or Loretta Young!

Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve
1950. Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve.

Looking at Jimmy Howe, you’d never know what he’s been through and what his keen eyes have seen. Not because he has the “inscrutable” yellow man’s face of fiction, the traditional face that hides feelings and emotions, but because he is so cheerful, so friendly, so disarmingly sincere.

You wouldn’t know that he once fought gory battles in the fistic arena for ten bucks a knockout, or that he got his first job in Hollywood as a camera assistant at that same price. But you would know, immediately, that Jimmy Howe is as American as you or I, born in Pasco, Washington, of a farmer father; and you would know, too, immediately, that he understands more about Hollywood stars than any photographer alive.

I found Jimmy Howe a little interview shy when it came to discussing personalities. That was because he’d been burned once. Recently, a reporter asked him about Bette Davis, and Howe told the reporter that Bette’s enormous eyes were her finest feature, and that they must be emphasized by lighting, whereas her long thin neck must be shadowed. The reporter misquoted him as stating that Bette was badly pop-eyed. Ever since, Howe has been afraid to explain the truth to Bette – and if she reads this – well, hell, Bette, the guy thinks you’re the greatest actress on earth!

Over a delicious dish of aged Chinese eggs, bamboo shoots and other Far Eastern delicacies, in a nook of his popular eatery, Jimmy Howe softened sufficiently to discuss the women he had captured for celluloid.

He digressed on the subject of glamour gals.

“Hedy Lamarr has more glamour than anyone in Hollywood. Her jet black hair and fine light complexion, marvelously contrasting, requires no faking soft diffusion lens. But, like all glamour ladies, she must be aided by the cameraman. First of all, I took attention away from her lack of full breasts by playing up her eyes and lips. With a bright light I created a shadow to make you forget her weak chin. Then, I really went to town! I planted an arc on a level with her eyes, shadowing her forehead and blending it and her hair into a dark background. Now, all attention was focused on her eyes. Remember her first meeting with Boyer in ‘Algiers?’ Her eyes got away with lines that would never have passed Mr. Hays.

Portrait of Myrna Loy by Clarence Sinclair Bull
1936. Myrna Loy by Clarence Sinclair Bull.

“It’s an old glamour trick. The average girl should learn it. For example, when you wear a hat with a low brim, and then have to peer out from under the brim, it makes you more interesting, centers attention on your orbs. When you sport a half-veil, you have to look from behind it and thus become an exciting and intriguing person. There’s no question about it. The eyes certainly have it.

“Now Ann Sheridan. Her gorgeous throat and shoulders, and those lips. I light them up and disguise the fact that her nose is irregular and her cheeks overly plump. Incidentally, to correct her nose, which curves slightly to the left, I put kliegs full on the left side of her face, pushing her nose perfectly straight. Once, on ‘Torrid Zone,’ when Annie arrived on the set with a pimple on her chin, I had the make-up man convert it into a beauty mark, and then viewing her through the camera, realized that this concentrated attention on her full lips, which made her even more glamorous!

“Each actress, no matter how beautiful, becomes a problem. Madeleine Carroll has a good and bad side to her face, like so many others. I always shoot her threequarters, because it thins her out. A full face shot makes her too fleshy. With Myrna Loy, there must not be white around her neck, because it’s too contrasting to her complexion. Moreover, lights must be low, shooting upward, to reduce the size of her underpinnings.

“Zorina, off-screen, relaxing, is an ordinary woman, with a good-sized healthy body. But, the minute she dances before the camera, her true personality grows. Her face turns from good looking to gorgeous. Her body becomes smaller and willowy. She’s easy to work with, except that an enthusiastic uncle of hers, a doctor, gave her four vaccination marks when she was young, and we have to get rid of them with make-up and special lights.

Vera Zorina on the set of On Your Toes
1938. Vera Zorina on the set of On Your Toes. Photo by Madison Lacy

“But you want to know the most photogenic lady I ever set my lens upon? Priscilla Lane. An absolutely eye-soothing face, despite a generous mouth. A fine skin texture. A rounded facial structure. Mmm. Lovely to look at.

“There is no perfect camera face, Confucius say. Not even Loretta Young, who is reputed to have a camera-proof face. Why, she wouldn’t want a perfect face and neither would any other actress. A perfect face, without irregular features, would be monotonous and tiresome to observe. Of course, a well-balanced face is another thing. Oh, I’ve seen so-called perfect faces – those composite photographs showing Lamarr’s eyes, Leigh’s nose, Dietrich’s lips – but the result is always surprisingly vacant!

“Most women must be photographed with flat lights, shooting down from a forty-five degree angle, because this lighting washes out any defects. Whereas, a cross-lighting from either side, while it makes the face natural and round and real, also accentuates wrinkles, blemishes and bad lines. There are exceptions. Flat lighting would wash Joan Crawford’s face clean to the point of blankness. Crosslighting chisels her beautifully. But others can’t stand up as well.

“I’m not telling you these inside items on the stars to give you a sensational story. I’m trying to point out this – that while the Chinese author, Lin Yutang, wrote a book called ‘The Importance of Living,’ I should like to write one called, ‘The Importance of Lighting.’ It’s all-important. Take a look at the way celebrities appear in a newsreel, without careful kliegs adjusted to them. They seem messy.

“Why, the only newsreel personages I ever saw who looked decent without expert work on them, and who were, in fact, once offered a million dollars to come to Hollywood, were the Windsors. Now Wally Simpson is a bit too thin in the face and has some blemishes. But this could be corrected by shooting her three-quarters, the lights flat against her. She should never be shot in profile. As to the Duke, Edward himself, well, while he often appears a bit weary and haggard, he would have to be kept that way in Hollywood. It’s part of his adult charm. We wouldn’t want to wash that out with faked brightness.”

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Esther Williams filming Jupiter's Darling

Esther Williams filming Jupiter’s Darling

1955. Well, here's a different cinematographic challenge – underwater filming for Jupiter's Darling, a Roman...

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Dorothy Lamour on a location shoot

Dorothy Lamour on a location shoot

Around 1940. Most Hollywood movies made in the forties and fifties were shot in the...

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Shooting a scene for A Matter of Life and Death

Shooting a scene for A Matter of Life and Death

1946. A Matter of Life and Death, a Powell and Pressburger production, was shot primarily...

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Joseph Ruttenberg filming Ava Gardner

Joseph Ruttenberg filming Ava Gardner

1948. Joseph Ruttenberg homes in on Ava Gardner in this scene for The Bribe. Another...

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Now the little man expounded on picture-making. He told exactly the way pictures should be made. Here’s Howe:

“My theory of picture -making is that a movie must run true. It must be real. You must not feel that it is obviously a movie. A big fault is that photographers often try to make their photography stand out. That is bad. If you go away raving about the photography of certain scenes, you’ve seen a bad photographic job.

“When I was a beginner, way back, I had that common failing. I never gave a damn about the actor. All I wanted was to get those fat beautiful clouds in, so people would say, ‘Some shot. Some photographer.’ But now I know that’s not professional.”

There was one more thing. I had a hunch a lot of photographers, like producers, were repressed actors at heart. Did James Wong Howe ever aspire to histrionics?

“Oh, once I almost became an actor. The late Richard Boleslavsky wanted me to play with Greta Garbo in ‘The Painted Veil.’ Just a bit part. I refused. My place is behind the big machine, not in front of it. Besides I’d be scared stiff. Me, Wong Howe, an actor? Hell, the boys would rib the pants off me!”

To continue my scientific study of the lads behind the lenses, I went to a party of General Service Studios. There, on the lavish set of “Lady Hamilton,” Vivien Leigh was passing out cake to celebrate her birthday, and a stocky, dark-haired handsome man named Rudolph Mate was celebrating his first year as a full-fledged American citizen.

Rudolph Maté on the set of Gilda
1945. Rudolph Maté on the set of Gilda with Rita Hayworth and Russ Vincent.

Rudolph Mate, born in Poland, student of philosophy, lover of fine paintings, was the cameraman on the newest Leigh-Olivier vehicle. His previous pictures had been movie milestones – “Love Affair,” “Foreign Correspondent” and “Seven Sinners.”

I asked Mate about the ingredients that make a tip-top photographer, and he answered very slowly and very precisely. He spoke slowly to prevent becoming mixed in the languages he knows – French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, English and pinochle – all of which he speaks fluently.

“To become a good photographer, one must have a complete knowledge of the technical end,” stated Mate. He pointed toward his $15,000 movable camera. “One must make everything about that instrument a habit, a second nature, as natural and uncomplicated as walking. This complete technical knowledge gives one time, on the set, to think in terms of the story being shot. A photographer must be creative, imaginative. Above all, he must have a talent for continuity.

“What do I mean by continuity? The celluloid mustn’t be scatterbrained. For example, every day a cameraman looks at the daily rushes of the footage he’s shot. Some photographers have excellent daily rushes, excellent separate scenes – but, when the film is cut, patched together, it’s mediocre and without full meaning because the cameraman had no feel of harmony, no sense of continuity. “A cameraman must be thorough. I study a script page by page and solve each problem as I study it. Also, on the side, I study oil paintings and works of art. In fact, I have a big collection of my own, because this study gives a cameraman knowledge of composition and color.”

Rudolph Mate was ecstatic about Vivien Leigh as Lady Hamilton.

“A marvelous subject. Cool. Positive. The certain beauty of a steel dagger. No bad facial angles. And an actress in her head and in her heart. Laurence Olivier is fine for me to shoot, too. His face is so expressive. It has so much character.”

Marlene Dietrich as Jamilla in Kismet
1944. Marlene Dietrich as Jamilla in Kismet.

Mate admitted that he had enjoyed toiling with Marlene Dietrich on “Seven Sinners,” and that he was scheduled to do her next opus at Universal.

“She has a wonderful head. I mean both brains and shape. Furthermore, like no other actress, she understands lighting problems and angles, and takes all suggestions without a fight. She is cooperative despite the nonsense you read. She will pose for fifty different takes if need be. The reason she knows so much is that she acquired her photographic education from Josef Von Sternberg, her first director, who still has the best pictorial mind in the cinema business.”

Mate, I understood, was a master magician at trickery. He could make anything real. In “Lady Hamilton,” you’ll see the Battle of Trafalgar, when Olivier as Lord Nelson is killed. It’ll be a terrific scene, realistic as war and death – but remember, it was made with miniature boats, only five feet tall, costing $1,000 each, and the cannon balls were tiny marbles shot into thin balsa wood.

Remember, too, that Mate can – and often has – made mob scenes involving thousands of people with just a half dozen extras. This he has accomplished with a special “button lens,” one with 220 separate openings for images, thus multiplying anything it is focused upon.

Rudolph Mate had a date with Vivien Leigh, in front of the camera, and I had one, at Warner Brothers Studio, with a gentleman named Ernie Haller, a studious architect who wound up by becoming the genius to put that little tidbit labeled “Gone With the Wind” on celluloid.

Good-natured, bespectacled Ernie Haller didn’t waste words. “The cameraman’s main duty is to tell a story with lighting. Next, he must have a thorough understanding or feeling for composition; you know, how to group and balance people and objects properly. It’s like salesmanship – you create a point of interest, and you try to sell the fans a star or an idea by subtly focusing attention on this point of interest.”

Haller referred to a few tangible points of interest.

Ann Sheridan filming Nora Prentiss
1946. Ann Sheridan filming Nora Prentiss.

“I’m not merely being loyal to Warners when I tell you Ann Sheridan is the most photogenic female in this town today. Her features are well proportioned and take lighting easily. The most photogenic man is Errol Flynn. His oval face stands up from any angle or under any lighting condition.

“But, as you know, we have our sticklers, too. There’s Clark Gable. I always shoot him three-quarters, so that you see only one of his ears. If you saw both at once, they’d look like mine do – stick out like the arms of a loving cup.

“Brenda Marshall, whom I’m working with at present, is a fine actress. Her only defects are a slightly crooked nose and eyes set too closely together. I light up one side of her face more fully to straighten the nose, and push inkies square into Brenda’s face to spread her eyes.

“When I shot GWTW, I found Vivien Leigh ideal for Technicolor. But I learned too much light was extremely bad for her. Her face was delicate and small, and full brightness would wash out her features and spoil the modeling of her countenance. Another thing. She has blue eyes. David Selznick wanted them green. So I set up a baby spot with amber gelatine, placed it under my lens, and Scarlett wound up with green eyes.

Franz Planer preparing to shoot a dancing scene starring Ava Gardner and Robert Walker
1948. A rare behind-the-scenes shot of cinematographer Franz Planer preparing to shoot a dancing scene starring Ava Gardner and Robert Walker. Director William A Seiter looks on.

“Listen, they all have handicaps that we have to correct. Most have square jaws, which must be softened and rounded. Some have prominent noses, which requires a low light set at the knees to push up their noses. Some actresses have thin legs. We plant spots right at their feet to fill ’em out.

“There’s no limit to what we have to do. We keep middle-aged actresses young by using special diffusing lenses that make faces mellow, hazy, soft, foggy, ethereal. We use these lenses on mood scenes, too, thus enabling us to create cold, crisp mornings on hot, sultry days.

“In my time, I’ve put them all in my black box. Some who were difficult and some who were easy, ranging from Mae Murray and Norma Talmadge to Dick Barthelmess and Bette Davis. I’ve never had trouble because I knew sculpturing, knew the basic foundation of the human face and was able to become, literally, a plastic surgeon with lights.”

Says Haller:

“Most trick stuff is in the hands of the Optical Printing Department of any studio. This is conducted by specialized cameramen and special effects men who manufacture 75% of the mechanical trick scenes. Most impossible scenes are done in miniature, caught by a camera that blows them eight times normal.”

Ernie Haller, with an eye for the unusual, summarized some of the crazy paradoxes he’d run into during his many semesters in the movie village. He said that big banquet scenes were always filmed right after lunch, because the extras weren’t so hungry then and wouldn’t eat so much expensive food! Moonlit night scenes were taken in the daytime with a filter, because real moonlight was not photogenic. Faked fights photographed better than real ones, because real ones appeared too silly. Sequences on an ocean liner had to be faked on dry land, because an honest-to-goodness boat pitched and heaved too much for the average camera. Blank cartridges recorded better on the sound track. Real ones were too high-pitched.

“In barroom sequences,” concluded Haller, “cold tea is better than whiskey, not because it photographs better but because actors have to drink a lot of it – and tea, sir, keeps them sober!”

So there. You’ve met some of the boys from the ASC. Now paste Gregg Toland’s classical outburst into your hat –

“Tell ’em we’re not low-grade mechanical morons, we cameramen. Tell ’em we’re creative artists, by God!”

And, by God, they certainly are!

Other topics you may be interested in…

George Hoyningen-Huene – from film to fashion and back again
Perc Westmore – makeup king of Hollywood
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Stars Tagged With: Ann Sheridan, Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, Carl Frank, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Douglas Sirk, Eddie Cronenweth, Ernest Haller, Franz Planer, G B Poletto, George Cukor, Giuseppe Rotunno, Grace Kelly, Gregg Toland, Harold Rosson, Hazel Brooks, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Cardiff, James Wong Howe, John Brahm, Joseph A Valentine, Joseph Ruttenberg, Lana Turner, Madison Lacy, Marlene Dietrich, Maury Gertsman, Merle Oberon, Mervyn Leroy, Myrna Loy, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Robert Sterling, Robert Taylor, Rudolph Maté, Russ Vincent, Sidney Hickox, Turham Bey, Vera Zorina, William A Seiter, William H Greene

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

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.

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Anita Colby

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby – "the most beautiful face this side of heaven and the sharpest tongue this side of hell," according to Valdemar Vetlugen, editor...

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Cecilia Meagher

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,...

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Leslie Brooks

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...

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Peggy Lloyd

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,...

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Eileen McClory

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...

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Betty Jane Hess

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...

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Dusty Anderson

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...

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Jinx Falkenburg

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...

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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

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put me to the test

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.

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the shoot

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.

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the cover girls

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

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.

Anita Colby
Mid-1940s. Anita Colby, model, agent and businesswoman extraordinaire. Read more.

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

Rita Hayworth and co-stars on the set of Cover Girl
1943. Filming a scene for Cover Girl. Photo by Ned Scott. Read more.

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.

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Rita and the gang

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...

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Lucky man!

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...

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Tea time

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...

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Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

1944. Two of the era's supermodels pose on the set of Cover Girl. Susann Shaw is taken with the fashion sketch she's holding, while Jinx...

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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.

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.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

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:

1943. Martha Outlaw by Robert Coburn. Read more.

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.

Cover girl Rita Hayworth with magazines
1941. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell. Read more.

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.

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

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.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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At the office

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...

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Heavenly sight

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...

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Round the mountain

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...

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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.

Cover Girl magazines and models
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’.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

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.

Cecilia Meagher
1944. Cecilia Meagher by George Hurrell. Read more.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in a passionate embrace
Gilda – the movie that made Rita Hayworth into a bombshell
Ludmilla Tchérina – a throbbing, pulsating dynamo
The Lady from Shanghai – the weirdest great movie ever made

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Stars Tagged With: Andrea Johnson, Anita Colby, Arthur Schwartz, Betty Jane Hess, Bosley Crowther, Candy Jones, Cecilia Meagher, Charles Vidor, Columbia Pictures, Cover Girl, Dusty Anderson, Eileen McClory, Francine Counihan, Gene Kelly, George Hurrell, Gwen Wakeling, Harry Cohn, Harry Conover, Jinx Falkenburg, John Robert Powers, Karel Reisz, Leslie Brooks, Martha Outlaw, Muriel King, Orson Welles, Peggy Lloyd, Rita Hayworth, Robert Coburn, Rosamond Bernier, Rudolph Maté, Stanley Donen, The Powers Girl, Travis Banton

Gilda – the movie that made Rita Hayworth into a bombshell

Gilda is a landmark 1940s movie. It was one of the first to capture the angst that would infuse post-World War II film noir, and it gave Rita Hayworth her most famous role, transforming her image overnight from dancing queen to femme fatale.

In the movie’s most celebrated scene, she does an impossibly seductive striptease that involves the removal of just two long, black-satin gloves. It’s a performance charged with eroticism, desperation and tragedy and it cemented Rita’s status as Hollywood’s reigning love goddess of the 1940s. Movie posters screamed “There NEVER was a woman like Gilda!”, and Rita is reported to have said, “Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me.”

Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in a passionate embrace
1945. Gilda (Rita Hayworth) and Johnny (Glenn Ford) in a passionate embrace. Photo by Robert Coburn. Read more.

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, make sure you get the Criterion transfer.

Spoiler Alert!!! Stop reading now if you want to watch Gilda without knowing the plot in advance.

Gilda – the story in a nutshell

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is a down-at-heel, card-sharp and gambling cheat whom we meet taking advantage of a group of sailors in Buenos Aires. Threatened by one of them as he leaves the docks, he is rescued by Ballin Mundson (George Macready), who invites him to his casino, where he becomes manager.

The arrangement is disrupted by the arrival of Gilda (Rita Hayworth), Johnny’s old flame but now Ballin’s wife. And, like Johnny, she jumps from opportunity to opportunity, looking for the next path to fortune. Gilda and Johnny are two of a kind and take every opportunity to wind each other up. A bad situation is made worse by Ballin ordering Johnny to look after Gilda. Their secret festers and the erotic tension escalates. The pair seem to delight in hurting and humiliating each other.

Meanwhile, we discover that the casino is merely a front for a cartel run by Ballin and a group of ex-Nazis to control the international tungsten market. As the police close in, Ballin fakes his death, and Johnny marries Gilda – not, as it turns out, because he loves her but in order to punish her for being unfaithful to Ballin.

Ballin returns to exact revenge but gets his come-uppance, leaving Johnny and Gilda to walk out into the sunset.

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are-you-decent

1. Are you decent, Gilda?

On his return from a business trip, Ballin leads Johnny to the master bedroom. We’ve been waiting for Rita’s entrance for over quarter of an hour.

First we hear her singing to herself off-camera. Then she detonates onto the screen in a pose that would have reminded contemporary audiences of Bob Landry’s famous 1941 photo of her for Life magazine.

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hate-is-a-very-exciting-emotion

2. Hate is a very exciting emotion

The carnival is in full swing as Johnny picks up Gilda. Later they return to Ballin’s empty mansion. Rudolph Maté's lighting and cinematography for the bedroom scene is wonderfully moody and the electricity between the pair is palpable.

Ballin returns unexpectedly en route to the airport to escape the police, throwing Johnny into a fit of confusion and angst.

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amado-mio

3. Amado Mio

Suffocated by her sham marriage to Johnny, Gilda flees to Montevideo and gets a job singing in a nightclub.

Amado Mio is a gorgeous number set to a pulsating rhumba beat. The choreography is wonderfully sensuous but we don’t know who was the man behind the moves. Surely it must have been Jack Cole, who masterminded Put the Blame on Mame?

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put-the-blame-on-mame

4. Put the Blame on Mame

Known as the "Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance," Jack Cole worked with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Mitzi Gaynor as well as Rita Hayworth. Before Gilda, they collaborated on Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945). Of the Put the Blame on Mame sequence in Gilda, he said:

I must say of all the things I ever did for movies, that’s one of the few I can really look at on the screen right now and say: If you want to see a beautiful, erotic woman, this is it. It still remains first class, it could be done right now. A lot of old things make you go wow! And you have to remember a lot about the period to explain why you did what you did, and make allowances. But every time I see "Put the Blame on Mame" I feel it’s absolutely great.

Gilda – just-in-time production

The making of Gilda turns out to be a pretty haphazard affair. There’s friction behind the scenes (more of that later) between studio boss, Harry Cohn, director, Charles Vidor and various members of the cast and crew. What’s more, the producer, Virginia Van Upp, whom Cohn has assigned to fashion a sexy new film for Rita Hayworth, has too much on her plate (she almost certainly has a hand in the screenplay by Marion Parsonnet). An article in the July 1946 issue of Screenland reports that:

Even today, when perhaps she should be resting on her laurels, she is still doing a double job. For one thing, her pictures are too close together to allow time to write them in advance. Instead, she stays on the set all day to see that each scene is photographed as she intended and then goes home and writes all night. She writes the script as she goes along, about five days in advance of the shooting schedule.

Charles Vidor recalls:

We didn’t have a finished script, we never knew what was coming next and we even started the picture without a leading man. Every night as we quit we got the next day’s scenes. Rita had to study at night, so did I, so did Jean Louis the dress designer, but somehow he kept one leap ahead of us all. So that particular ‘Mame’ morning, none of us knew how Rita was going to look. She sauntered on the stage holding her head up high, in that magnificent way she does, stepping along like a sleek young tiger cub and the whistles that sounded would have shamed a canary’s convention. She enjoyed every second of it. Then she did that elaborate difficult ‘Mame’ number in two takes.

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Conference

Conference

1945. There seems to be some amusing banter going on between Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford as Harold Clifton looks on. A caption on the...

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Conference

Conference

1945. With Virginia Van Upp delivering scripts day by day, there's little time for preparation and rehearsal so Rita Hayworth needs all the help she...

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Gilda-ing the Rita

Gilda-ing the Rita

1945. Seated in her director's chair, Rita Hayworth is prepared for her Amado Mio scene in Gilda. A caption on the back of the photo...

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A touch of the tresses

A touch of the tresses

1945. Helen Hunt, Columbia’s chief hair stylist, is one of Rita’s closest friends. She has worked with Rita since her early days at the studio....

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Finishing touches

Finishing touches

1945. That movie camera is a monster! It's almost as if Rita Hayworth is being prepared as a ritual sacrifice. But don't worry, a caption...

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Make-up test

Make-up test

1945. Rudolph Maté, exposure meter in hand, has a pretty impressive CV. He has worked on several of Carl Theodor Dreyer's films, including The Passion...

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Gilda – the two songs

An article in Modern Screen (May 1946, page 8), announces that:

Rita Hayworth turns dramatic in “Gilda.” The studio’s announcement that the glamor girl was saying goodbye to musicals brought a storm of protest from GIs all over the world. In answer to the flood of requests that Rita continue showing her legs and swinging her hips, the studio wrote two songs into the script. “Put the Blame on Mame, Boys” is a torchy lament, and “Amado Mio” comes out in the middle of a samba sequence.

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Amado Mio

Amado Mio

1945. Gilda (Rita Hayworth) performs Amado Mio at a nightclub in Montevideo.

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Put the Blame on Mame

Put the Blame on Mame

1945. Rita sings Put the Blame on Mame on screen, but behind the scenes her voice is dubbed by Anita Ellis. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DANCE, LITTLE LADY – Rita Hayworth, although she plays a dramatic role in Columbia’s “Gilda,” takes time out from histrionics to do a torrid dance specialty to the tune of “Put the Blame on Mame, Boys.”

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Put the Blame on Mame

Put the Blame on Mame

1945. Gilda (Rita Hayworth) performs her infamous striptease at the casino.

And it’s true – the songs are in fact retrofitted, not integral to the movie from the outset. It’s another example of the apparently chaotic way in which the film is put together. Both songs are written by Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts, whose work will be recorded by a string of stars including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Marilyn Monroe. According to Doris Fisher:

Though we weren’t supposed to work yet, they gave us a script the next day, told us they wanted a couple of songs and where they wanted them to come. At about 3 a.m. we went into a publisher’s office on Vine Street since we had no office of our own, sat down by a piano and, I don’t know, it just happened. Al came up with that title Put the Blame on Mame because of the script. We’d already been playing around with that feeling for a song so it just worked. We wrote that in a couple of hours. A day or two later we wrote Amado Mio because we had to have something with a South American flavour there. We had no idea where it was going to be, how it was going to be done or what it would look like. We only wrote those two songs. Then they had to shoot those scenes after the film was finished and inject them into the story.

Gilda – Rita’s wardrobe

Columbia certainly goes to town on Rita’s wardrobe, designed by Jean Louis, Columbia’s head of costume. According to the article in Modern Screen:

The star wears twenty-nine different outfits in the picture, including a chinchilla evening wrap worth $65,000 and a sleeveless ermine cloak, valued at S35,000…

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Publicity shot for Gilda

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

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Publicity shot for Gilda

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

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Publicity shot for Gilda

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

However, the pièce de résistance is the iconic strapless satin dress Gilda wears when she sashays with alluring abandon across the casino floor as she performs Put the Blame on Mame. Reputedly inspired by John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madam X, it is designed to accentuate Rita’s fuller figure – she has recently given birth to her daughter, Rebecca. According to Jean Louis:

It was the most famous dress I ever made. Everybody wonders how that dress can stay on her while she sings and dances… well, inside there was a harness like you put on a horse. We put grosgrain under the bust with darts and three stays, one in the centre, two on the sides. Then we moulded plastic softened over a gas flame and shaped around the top of the dress. No matter how she moved, the dress did not fall down.

Gilda leans casually against the stair-rail in Ballin's mansion
1945. Gilda leans casually against the stair-rail in Ballin’s mansion. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth. Read more.

Gilda – Rita Hayworth, the making of a bombshell

The first woman to be known as a bombshell was Jean Harlow, who was nicknamed the “blonde bombshell” for her 1931 film Platinum Blonde. With her role as Gilda, and particularly the Put the Blame on Mame sequence, Rita ends up giving the term a whole new meaning.

In 1946, atomic scientists on the Bikini Atoll name the first atomic bomb to be detonated in peacetime “Gilda” and paint Rita’s picture on it. According to her then husband, Orson Welles, she’s furious.

Rita used to fly into terrible rages all the time, but the angriest was when she found out that they’d put her on the atom bomb. Rita almost went insane, she was so angry. She was so shocked by it! Rita was the kind of person that kind of thing would hurt more than anybody. She wanted to go to Washington to hold a press conference, but Harry Cohn wouldn’t let her because it would be unpatriotic.

More likely, Harry is delighted with the publicity for his movie.

Gilda – behind-the-scenes shenanigans

The year of Gilda’s release, some of the main personalities involved in its production are entangled in a nasty lawsuit. Charles Vidor, the movie’s Hungarian-born director who has already worked with Rita on Cover Girl, in attempt to extricate himself from his contract, sues Harry Cohn, president and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation, on the grounds of, among other things, “abusive language.” According to Bob Thomas’ book King Cohn, he also claims that during the making of Gilda Cohn accused him of using too much film, quitting early, and shooting excessive retakes.

I told Mr. Cohn that the delays were due to the fact that Miss Hayworth got tired at five o’clock in the afternoon and was unable to give her best performances. I also told him that his abuse was upsetting me, that I could not sleep, that I had to have doctors give me injections, and that I was nervous.

Witnesses for the defence then testify that Cohn was not the only person using abusive language – Vidor was just as bad, especially when it came to dealing with “the little people on the set.” Vidor loses his case and remains at Columbia, for whom he will direct Glenn and Rita in The Loves of Carmen (1948).

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Exit Rita

Exit Rita

1945. The dress might be glamorous but behind the scenes things are much more functional. Rita does look a bit suspicious so has the photographer...

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Goin' places

Goin’ places

1945. Not surprisingly, Columbia issued a string of fashion shots to publicise Cover Girl, one of their previous Rita Hayworth vehicles. Here's one for Gilda....

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Tipping the scale

Tipping the scale

1945. That's a pretty impressive mobile weighing machine that Rita's perched on. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TIPPING THE SCALE –...

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Preview

Preview

1945. In costume for the carnival scene, you'll recognise Glenn and Rita but perhaps not the man between them. He's Joe Sawyer, who plays the...

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Harry Cohn is known for his autocratic and intimidating management style (not unusual for Hollywood studio moguls of the 1940s). But he could also be a good wind-up and, according to Glenn Ford:

When I went into Gilda, Rita was finished with Orson, and we gave Harry Cohn a few grey hairs. We were told by the sound department that Harry had had a microphone planted in my dressing room. That was kind of interesting. He was worried about my carrying on with Rita, so we gave him some marvellous things to listen to.”

Gilda gets into the car with Johnny
Gilda teases Johnny. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth. Read more.

Cohn is furious, but Rita is amused by his reaction. While she entertains Glenn in her dressing room after the day’s shooting, Cohn phones down every 15 minutes. “What the hell are you doing down there?” he shouts. “Just having a drink,” says Ford. “Why don’t you go home? I can’t keep the studio open all hours of the night. It costs money. Now get the hell out and don’t forget to shut off the lights when you leave.”

Enjoying Cohn’s exasperation, Glenn and Rita settle down for another drink. In fact, they’re great friends, having previously worked together on The Lady in Question (1940). And on the set of Gilda:

Rita and I were very fond of one another, we became very close friends and I guess it all came out on the screen. Honestly speaking, I’m sure we all sensed something going on there, there was an excitement on the set. Mr Vidor was a very strict, demanding director who had a streak of sadistic, Hungarian, love-hate understanding and he sort of nurtured that aspect. His instructions before we did a scene, on how we were to think and do it, were pretty incredible, even in today’s market. I can’t repeat the things he used to tell us to think about. They are marvelous images to hold…

Glenn will later admit to having had an affair with Rita, though as a man of discretion he will never give any details.

Gilda – dark undercurrents and the influence of the Hay’s Code

The themes at the heart of Gilda are uncomfortable and, to a 1940s audience, subversive to boot.

1945. Gilda gets help from a couple of members of the audience. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth. Read more.

The relationships between Gilda and her two ‘lovers’ are at best perverse, at worst sado-masochistic. Ballin observes: “Hate can be a very exciting emotion. There’s a heat in it you can feel. Hate is the only thing that warms me.” In a later scene, Gilda reprises the theme: “Hate is a very exciting emotion, haven’t you noticed? Very exciting. I hate you too, Johny. I hate you so much I think I’m going to die from it.” There’s a rapture, an intensity about Gilda’s feelings for Johnny: “I have to keep talking, Johnny, as long as I have my arms about you, or else I might forget to dance. Push my hat back, Johnny.”

When Gilda performs Put the Blame on Mame, she is not simply provoking both Johnny and Ballin with her open sexuality, she is also crying out in pain for the love she’s being denied. She is both powerful and vulnerable. For Gilda, love and hate are two sides of the same coin.

But the real love affair is between Ballin and Johnny. Upon hearing of this interpretation, Charles Vidor reportedly said, “Really? I never had any idea those boys were supposed to be like that!” Glenn Ford acknowledged the gay subtext, “But it never occurred to us at the time we were filming.”

But hey… what is Ballin doing late at night down by the docks where he rescues Johnny other than cruising? And the relationship that develops between the two men is much too cosy to be just about business.

Which makes Gilda herself into an especially tragic figure, trapped between two profoundly misogynistic ‘lovers’. It also makes a mockery of the ending – it is inconceivable that Johnny and Gilda will simply forget the bitter nastiness of their relationship, let alone live happily ever after.

Mini lobby card promoting Gilda
1946. Mini lobby card issued to movie theatres as publicity for Gilda. Photo by Robert Coburn. Read more.

A convincing ending would have hatred and tragedy win out but that wasn’t possible because of the Motion Picture Production Code. Coming into force in 1930, the Hays Code (as it came to be known) introduced film censorship to the US by laying down a series of guidelines based on three general principles:

  • No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
  • Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
  • Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

No wonder Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review, observes:

This reviewer was utterly baffled by what happened on the screen. To our average register of reasoning, it simply did not make sense. It seems that a fantastic female, the pivotal character in this film, turns up in a Buenos Aires casino as the wife of the dour proprietor. But it also seems that she was previously the sweetie of a caustic young man who is quite a hand at gambling and is employed by this same proprietor. For reasons which are guardedly suggested, she taunts and torments this tough lad until, by a twist of circumstances, her husband is suddenly removed. Then she marries the laddie but continues to fight with him because of some curious disposition which is never properly explained. In the end, after certain vagrant incidents, they are reconciled—but don’t ask us why.

Colour portrait of Rita Hayworth as Gilda
1945. A rare colour portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn. Read more.

But let’s end on a more positive note with a couple of reviews that recognize different aspects of Gilda’s greatness. The first is by Ruth Waterbury for the Los Angeles Examiner:

When Judy Garland and Alice Faye got the urge for drama, they went the whole way and in their pictures The Clock [1945] and Fallen Angel [1945], respectively, they handed out the acting straight, without so much as a jazz note or a single twinkle of a toe, to highlight in. Rita Hayworth, going heavily dramatic for the first time in Gilda, proves herself a smarter show woman. For how this glorious pinup does emote in this one! What a glittering gamut of drama she reveals, plus much of her beautiful self while also singing and dancing! The result is an exciting, glamorous, rich, ruddy melodrama – and if the plot is most incredible at times, you will be more than willing to ignore it while concentrating on its star.

And this is from Charles Higham’s Hollywood in the Forties:

This is a film with the intense surrealist qualities of a dream. Its Buenos Aires is a creation totally of the imagination, with its winding dark streets, its gambling hell, Mundson’s white glittering house. The ambience is one of heat, decadence, sexual ferocity barely concealed behind civilized gestures and phrases. Maté’s photography has a lacquered finish: the husband smoking a cigarette in silhouette, the first glimpse of Gilda, like every GI’s dream, sitting on a bed and throwing back her head in ecstasy, the wedding scene glimpsed through windows streaming with rain.

Want to know more?

Tim Dirks’ Filmsite is a great place to start, with a great introduction and a detailed synopsis of the plot. A primary source for this article is John Kobal’s biography, Rita Hayworth: The Time the Place and the Woman. Turner Classic Movies has some excellent articles about the movie but these appear to be available only in the US, while the 1946 issues of Screenland are worth looking at for contemporary coverage. The Jean Louis quote about that dress is sourced from Gilda: Rita Hayworth as Gilda Farrell. Conelrad Adjacent’s extensive investigation, Atomic Goddess: Rita Hayworth and the Legend of the Bikini Bombshell is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the topic. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Hollywood stars announce Japan’s surrender
Jane Greer during her early-Hollywood days
Jane Greer – the queen of film noir
The Lady from Shanghai – the weirdest great movie ever made

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Films, Stars Tagged With: Allan Roberts, Charles Vidor, Doris Fisher, Gilda, Glenn Ford, Harry Cohn, Jean Louis, Rita Hayworth, Rudolph Maté, Virginia Van Upp

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