Hollywood Icons

• Hollywood Icons will accompany an international travelling exhibition featuring masterworks of photography taken during the golden age of motion pictures. Venues for the exhibition will be in North and South America, Europe and Asia

Hollywood Icons features approximately 200 photographs focusing on the great faces that drew moviegoers around the world into movie theatres by the tens of millions. Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and other luminaries of early silent film are depicted in splendid photographs revealing the potency of their allure that is obvious even today. Later silent stars such as Garbo and Crawford, who rose to even greater cinematic heights when the movies began to speak, are featured in series of images showing how those two star faces were magically transformed into thrilling exemplars of 1930s glamour.

Better known are the great players from the 1930s whose names today form the bedrock of Hollywood history. All-American men such as Gary Cooper and Clark Gable shared the screen with sirens such as Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr, two among many who began acting in Europe and found lasting fame in southern California. They were soon joined by Vivien Leigh and Charles Boyer. Legends such as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall ware prominent among the stars, along with Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

All the great Hollywood photographers whose careers were resurrected by John Kobal in dozens of books are included. The exhibition will be arranged to show both the sweep of glamour photography as well as to focus on the unique style of each of the leading camera artists.