Loretta Young 1942 Vintage George Hurrell A Night To Remember Glamour Photograph
Item History & Price
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ITEM: This is a vintage and original Columbia Pictures production still photograph from the 1942 mystery comedy film A Night to Remember. The film stars Loretta Young, who is pictured here as photographed by legendary Hollywood photographer George Hurrell. A radiant fashion portrait, Young is modeling a crisp cotton negligee printed with small white flowers that she wears in the film. The little puffed sleeves, ruffles and beading gives the ensemble a quaint, old-fashioned effect.
The press snipe reads: "A PORTRAIT - of Loretta Young, currently appearing in the Columbia production, 'A Night To Remember.'"
Starting as a child actress, Young had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Actress and received another Oscar nomination in 1949. Young moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series, "The Loretta Young Show, " from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards and was rerun successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. In the 1980s, Young returned to the small screen and won a Golden Globe for her role in "Christmas Dove" in 1986.
Measures 8" x 10" on a glossy, double weight paper stock.
Photographer's ink stamp, studio paper caption, and Advertising Advisory Council ink stamp on verso.
CONDITION: Fine condition with light, scattered corner and edge wear and mild, general storage/handling wear. Please use the included images as a conditional guide.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
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Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamor and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose."
Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 6, 1913, to Gladys (Royal) and John Earle Young. Her parents separated when Loretta was three years old. Her mother moved Loretta and her two older sisters to Southern California, where Mrs. Young ran a boarding house. When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had a daughter, Georgianna, two years later.
Loretta was appearing on screen as a child extra by the time she was four, joining her elder sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (later better known as Sally Blane), as child players. Mrs. Young's brother-in-law was an assistant director and got young Loretta a small role in the film The Only Way (1914). The role consisted of nothing more than a small, weeping child lying on an operating table. Later that year, she appeared in another small role, in The Primrose Ring (1917). The film starred Mae Murray, who was so taken with little Loretta that she offered to adopt her. Loretta lived with the Murrays for about a year and a half. In 1921, she had a brief scene in The Sheik (1921).
Loretta and her sisters attended parochial schools, after which they helped their mother run the boarding house. In 1927, Loretta returned to films in a small part in Naughty But Nice (1927). Even at the age of fourteen, she was an ambitious actress. Changing her name to Loretta Young, letting her blond hair revert to its natural brown and with her blue eyes, satin complexion and exquisite face, she quickly graduated from ingénue to leading lady. Beginning with her role as Denise Laverne in The Magnificent Flirt (1928), she shaped any character she took on with total dedication. In 1928, she received second billing in The Head Man (1928) and continued to toil in many roles throughout the '20s and '30s, making anywhere from six to nine films a year. Her two sisters were also actresses but were not as successful as Loretta, whose natural beauty was her distinct advantage.
Young made headlines in 1930 when she and Grant Withers, who was previously married and nine years her senior, eloped to Yuma, Arizona, with the 17-year-old Loretta. They had both appeared in Warner Bros.' The Second Floor Mystery (1930). The marriage was annulled in 1931, the same year in which the pair would again co-star on screen in a film ironically titled Too Young to Marry (1931). By the mid-'30s, Loretta left First National Studios for rival Fox, where she had previously worked on a loan-out basis, and became one of the premiere leading ladies of Hollywood.
In 1935, she made Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable. They had an affair, and Loretta became pregnant. Because of the strict morality clauses in their contracts - and the fact that Clark Gable was married - they could not tell anybody except Loretta's mother. Loretta and her mother left for Europe after filming on The Crusades finished. They returned in August 1935 to the United States, at which time Gladys Belzer announced Loretta's 'illness' to the press. Filming on Loretta's next film, Ramona, was also canceled. During this time, Loretta was living in a small house in Venice, California, her mother rented. On November 6, 1935, Loretta delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Judith.
In 1938, Loretta starred as Sally Goodwin in Kentucky (1938), an outstanding success. Her co-star Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Peter Goodwin.
In 1940, Loretta married businessman Tom Lewis, and from then on her child was called Judy Lewis, although Tom Lewis never adopted her. Judy was brought up thinking that both parents had adopted her and did not know, until years later, that she was actually the biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. Four years after her marriage to Tom Lewis, Loretta had a son, Christopher Lewis, and later another son, Peter Charles.
In the 1940s, Loretta was still one of the most beautiful ladies in Hollywood. She reached the pinnacle of her career when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), the tale of a farm girl who rises through the ranks and becomes a congresswoman. It was a smash and today is her best remembered film. The same year, she starred in the delightful fantasy The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven and Cary Grant. It was another box office success and continues to be a TV staple during the holiday season. In 1949, Loretta starred in the well-received film, Mother Is a Freshman (1949) with Van Johnson and Rudy Vallee and Come to the Stable (1949). The latter garnered Loretta her second Oscar nomination, but she lost to Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949). In 1953, Loretta made It Happens Every Thursday (1953), which was to be her final big screen role.
She retired from films in 1953 and began a second, equally successful career as hostess of The Loretta Young Show (1953), a half-hour television drama anthology series which ran on NBC from September 1953 to September 1961. In addition to hosting the series, she frequently starred in episodes. Although she is most remembered for her stunning gowns and swirling entrances, over the broadcast's eight-year run she also showed again that she could act. She won Emmy awards for best actress in a dramatic series in 1954, 1956 and 1958.
After the show ended, she took some time off before returning in 1962 with The New Loretta Young Show (1962), which was not so successful, lasting only one season. For the next 24 years, Loretta did not appear in any entertainment medium. Her final performance was in a made for TV film Lady in the Corner (1989).
By 1960, Loretta was a grandmother. Her daughter Judy Lewis had married about three years before and had a daughter in 1959, whom they named Maria. Loretta and Tom Lewis divorced in the early 1960's. Loretta enjoyed retirement, sleeping late, visiting her son Chris and daughter-in-law Linda, and traveling. She and her friend Josephine Alicia Saenz, ex-wife of John Wayne, traveled to India and saw the Taj Mahal. In 1990, she became a great-grandmother when granddaughter Maria, daughter of Judy Lewis, gave birth to a boy.
Loretta lived a quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the home of her sister Georgiana and Georgiana's husband, Ricardo Montalban.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson and Bill Takacs and cdonorab
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Along with Clarence Sinclair Bull, George Hurrell helped create the ideal standards of high end Hollywood Glamour in photography.
But while Bull showed an early interest in photography, Hurrell was actually initially more interested in painting. The only reason he got into photography was to make a record of his paintings. Hurrell was born in Covington, Kentucky and eventually moved to Chicago, Illinois. But in 1925 he found, when he relocated to Laguna Beach, California, that there was more of a profitable interest in photography.
In the later 1920s, Hurrell was introduced to actor Ramon Navarro and took a series of photographs of him. Navarro was significantly impressed enough to show the results to actress Norma Shearer who in turn sought to use Hurrell to change her wholesome image to a more provocative one. Shortly after, Shearer showed the finished photos to her husband, MGM production chief, Irving Thalberg. Thalberg signed Hurrell to a contract with MGM as the head of the portrait photography department.
However, in 1932, Hurrell left MGM and opened his own studio on Sunset Boulevard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hurrell photographed just about every major star in the industry including Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. In the 1940s, he moved to working for Warner Brothers Studios and photographed Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Errol Flynn, Maxine Fife, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney. Later in the same decade, he again moved--this time to Columbia Pictures--and photographed Rita Hayworth among others.
While he also photographed Greta Garbo for the film Romance, the two did not hit it off and Garbo preferred to keep Clarence Sinclair Bull as her official photographer. However, Norma Shearer, who adored Hurrell, kept his as her exclusive photographer.
From the book, Glamour of the Gods:
George Hurrell started work at MGM at the beginning of 1930 and almost immediately transformed Hollywood photography. Brought to MGM at the insistence of Norma Shearer, his task was to make his subjects, especially women, sexy. Not only did he succeed but his work, in this respect, has never been bettered. Norma Shearer was an attractive and talented actress, who through determination and fortitude, not to mention marriage to MGM's top producer Irving Thalberg, managed to secure most of the studio's choicest female roles. But she found herself increasingly cast as the nice girl or sophisticated matron when she wanted the racier roles given to Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. Hurrell changed Shearer's appearance, at least in the portrait gallery, and there is no question that the lovely lady portrayed by Ruth Harriet Louise took on a new smoldering guise when seen through Hurrell's lens. Hurrell's very best work was saved for Joan Crawford who probably enjoyed being photographed more than any actress before Marilyn Monroe. Of the approximately 100, 000 photographs that were coded by MGM's publicity department between 1924 and 1942, Crawford's face appears more often than that of any other star. Hurrell and Crawford enjoyed an extraordinary collaboration, beginning at MGM and continuing after he went independent in late 1932. Hurrell could be almost brutal with his sitters, subjecting them variously to strong lights, extreme close-ups, and complicated positions. Crawford survived all of Hurrell's antics and her allure was only heightened by his inventive camerawork.
Glamour was Hurrell's hallmark and he saved the best for his ladies. Harlow reached her peak of sexual allure in front of Hurrell's lens, as did Carole Lombard and Veronica Lake when he shot portraits for Paramount. As good as Hurrell was in the 1930s, his 1943 photographs of Jane Russell in the hay, taken to promote "The Outlaw, " are portably his most famous and frequently reproduced.
Hurrell did not have the temperament to last long as part of a studio team. He remained available to MGM on a contract basis throughout the 1930s photographing Harlow, Gable and Crawford among others, both at his studio and at MGM. MGM seemed to have been grooming Harvey White to take Hurrell's place, but he lasted at the studio less than a year. The work by White that survives includes copious shots of Jean Harlow on the set for "Dinner at 8.”
John Kobal (the famous chronicler of Hollywood) and Hurrell must have enjoyed swapping tales about Marlene Dietrich, who, when Kobal met her in 1960, was in the midst of a second career as a concert performer. A quarter of a century earlier she was one of Hollywoods reigning queens and for six years, beginning when she came to Hollywood in 1930, Dietrich's star shone brightly, especially in a series of films made at Paramount and directed by Joseph von Sternberg. But two duds released in 1937, "Knight Without Armour" and "Angel", saw her value sink rapidly and she was dropped from the Paramount roster. Strategically, and in an attempt to bolster her career, she commissioned a series of portraits from Hurrell. The feathered hat and chiffon dress she selected for the session obviously pleased both actress and photographer, and the results proved that, although her film career might be faltering, she was as beautiful as ever. Two years later she was back with one of her greatest hits, "Destry Rides Again"--but it was a western and made at Universal, something of a comedown for a Paramount star. Might Hurrell's dazzling portraits have helped her secure the role?
For a time, Hurrell left Hollywood to make training films for the United States Army. But, when he tried to return to Hollywood in mid 1950s, he found that his original style of glamour photography was no longer in vogue. So he decided instead to venture to New York, where he photographed for fashion magazines and did advertisements for various products.
However, his initial style did not fall out of favor for long. In 1965, a revival of his work was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and it caused a sensation. He began to work again returning to Hollywood and photographing occasionally but by the 1970s he was in full swing again taking photos of such new stars as Raquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett and John Travolta.
He decided to retire though in 1976. Nevertheless, he sporadically would photograph certain new stars if he found an interest in them. Sharon Stone, Brooke Shields, and Shannon Tweed were among those he felt imparted the same kind of glamour that he was famous for shooting in the Hollywood heydays.
In addition, in 1984, he could not say no when Joan Collins (then hot off Dynasty) said that he would be the only photographer she would allow to photograph her in the nude for a spread that Playboy was proposing. In turn, Hurrell photographed the classy 50 year old star in some page layout shots and the subsequent issue became a best seller.
Lastly, he created publicity photos of Annette Benning and Warren Beatty for the film "Bugsy" and Natalie cole for her album Unforgettable ... with Love.
Around the same time, there was a documentary being made about his life and he did his last legendary style shots of actors Sherilyn Fenn, Sharon Stone, Julian Sands, Raquel Welch, Eric Roberts and Sean Penn.
After the documentary was completed, he fell ill from complications from a recurring problem with bladder cancer. He passed away May 17, 1992.
Like C. S. Bull, his photographs have appreciated in value over time. His work is highly sought after by art dealers and collectors.
— Biography From: VintageMovieStarPhotos (dot) BlogSpot (dot) com
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