Le Beret

Marie Prevost

The days are getting colder, which means the donning of hats and gloves. I love any excuse to wear a hat and although I own a good number, I always turn to my trusty berets in winter. Berets stay put (no danger in a sudden gust of wind sending them flying), can easily be shoved into a bag when indoors, keep your head incredibly warm, and look rather jaunty when worn at a slight tilt. They also have a timeless quality, and I just adore them. Don’t believe me? Look at how cool these stars look in their berets.

Jean Harlow

Olive Thomas. (I can't tell if she's really wearing
 a beret but I'm including it anyways).

Clara Bow

Greta Garbo

Carole Lombard

Ingrid Bergman

Marlene Dietrich

Lauren Bacall

I hope I've convinced you. So if you don't have one, go out and buy yourself a beret. I'm partial to black berets but any colour will do. I promise you'll love it. 

Feeling Better

Earlier this week I thought I was coming down with the flu. Those symptoms quickly evolved into a hacking cough that could wake the dead. After spending Friday afternoon at the hospital I learned that I have asthmatic bronchitis. Now my nightstand is covered with a variety of medications (alas, no VanBeil's Rye and Rock), which already have me feeling much better and breathing easier. Hopefully my days of imitating Garbo in Camille will be over soon.

Image from the Library of Congress.

Silver Screen Stars

Garbo. Harlow. Dietrich. Gable. These are just a few of the stars featured in an exhibit at the Grolier Club—“Silver Screen/Silver Prints: Hollywood Portrait Photographs from the Robert Dance Collection.” The exhibit examines the genre of portraiture during Hollywood’s Golden Age and the great photographers who created the glamour portraits of Hollywood's legendary stars.

Starting with the leading photographers of the silent era—James Abbe, Albert Witzel, and Alfred Cheney Johnston (famous for his Ziegfeld Follies portraits)—the exhibit is broken up into ten sections, each dedicated to a single photographer, star, or theme. Even if you've seen some of these images before in books, nothing compares to looking at these lovely silver prints with all of their nuanced details in person.

One of my favourite photographers in the exhibit was Ruth Harriet Louise. The first woman to work as a portrait photographer in Hollywood, she was the head of MGM’s portrait studio when she was just 22. A striking example of her work is a photograph of Myrna Loy portrayed as a sophisticate, a type she played on screen as Nora Charles in the Thin Man series. This was probably one of the loveliest portraits in the exhibit.

The section on Ramon Navarro illustrates through a mix of portraits and film stills how he perfectly embodied the role of romantic lead on screen. A portrait by Carl Van Vechten, better known for his photographs of members of the Harlem Renaissance, is especially modern looking; it wouldn’t look out of place in a magazine today.

Other great photographers in the exhibit include Clarence Sinclair Bull, who captured Jean Harlow shortly before her death on the set of her last film Saratoga, and George Hurrell, whose portraits of stars like Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer probably helped to define the Hollywood glamour portrait more than any other photographer in the 1930s and 40s.

The last photo in the exhibit is the famous portrait of Louise Brooks with her pearls taken by Eugene Robert Richee in 1928. This image perfectly symbolizes what Hollywood portraiture is all about—the melding of art with a star’s beauty, resulting in an iconic image.

Seeing exhibits at the Grolier Club is always enjoyable. Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club is the oldest society of bibliophiles in the country and is housed in a lovely townhouse. Best of all, their exhibits are free.

Silver Screen/Silver Prints is on through November 12, 2011.