Hollywood Hair: Masculine or Feminine?

Mary Pickford's rich and lustrous hair was the paradigm of female beauty in early Hollywood.

I’ve been looking at portraits of Hollywood stars from the 50’s, a time when the studio system was finally collapsing, and I noticed a few things.

The quality of studio portrait photography was dismal.

The images are, for the most part, bland, with little creative inspiration. Everyone seems bored—the photographers and the stars. Hollywood once employed geniuses like George Hurrell and C.S. Bull, whose iconic photography helped mold the G-d-like images of Hollywood’s golden age.

But as the studios were shrinking in power, they drastically cut back on their still departments. And because actors were no longer under long-term contract to the studios, the technocrat executives who replaced the original passionate moguls had no stake or ability to carefully shape and control the images of their most promising thespians.

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