Original'42 George Hurrell High Glamour Color Camera Transparency Teresa Wright
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A gorgeous portrait by George Hurrell of ingenue beauty Teresa Wright captured in a captivating and sultry manner. Already the master of Hollywood glamour with his dramatically shadowed black and white photography, the color film revolution showcased a whole new side of Hurrell's talent for playing with light. This is a phenomenal example of his fine art glamour photography. This original camera transparency includes its original sleeve with paper caption press snipe attached. A wonderful golden age of Hollywood treasure. Teresa Wright, screen newcomer, portrays Mrs. Lou Gehrig in Samuel Goldwyn's The Pride of the Yankees. Goldwyn and awarded the role of Bette Davis' daughter in "The Little Foxes, " Teresa scored an instant success on the screen and this led to the role of Mrs.Gehrig, one of the choice acting plums of the year. The film is directed by Sam Wood, and stars Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig.
The cast also includes Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Gehrig's former team-mates, Walter Brennan, Virginia Gilmore and Dan Duryea. Film shows Hurrell's careful hand retouching when held under direct light. A natural and lovely talent who was discovered for films by Samuel Goldwyn, the always likable Teresa Wright distinguished herself early on in high-caliber, Oscar-worthy form -- the only performer ever to be nominated for Oscars for her first three films. Always true to herself, she was able to earn Hollywood stardom on her own unglamorized terms. Born Muriel Teresa Wright in the Harlem district of New York City on October 27, 1918, her parents divorced when she was quite young and she lived with various relatives in New York and New Jersey.
An uncle of hers was a stage actor. She attended the exclusive Rosehaven School in Tenafly, New Jersey. The acting bug revealed itself when she saw the legendary Helen Hayes perform in a production of Victoria Regina. After performing in school plays and graduating from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, she made the decision to pursue acting professionally.
Apprenticing at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers of 1937 and 1938 in such plays as "The Vinegar Tree" and "Susan and God", she moved to New York and changed her name to Teresa after she discovered there was already a Muriel Wright in Actors Equity. Her first New York play was Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" wherein she played a small part but also understudied the lead ingénue role of Emily. She eventually replaced Martha Scott in the lead after the actress was escorted to Hollywood to make pictures and recreate the Emily role on film.
It was during her year-long run in "Life with Father" that Teresa was seen by Goldwyn talent scouts, was tested, and ultimately won the coveted role of Alexandra in the film The Little Foxes (1941). She also accepted an MGM starlet contract on the condition that she not be forced to endure cheesecake publicity or photos for any type of promotion and could return to the theater at least once a year. Oscar-nominated for her work alongside fellow cast members Bette Davis (as calculating mother Regina) and Patricia Collinge (recreating her scene-stealing Broadway role as the flighty, dipsomaniac Aunt Birdie), Teresa's star rose even higher with her next pictures. Playing the good-hearted roles of the granddaughter in the war-era tearjerker Mrs.
Miniver (1942) and baseball icon Lou Gehrig's altruistic wife in The Pride of the Yankees(1942) opposite Gary Cooper, the pretty newcomer won both "Best Supporting Actress" and "Best Actress" nods respectively in the same year, ultimately taking home the supporting trophy. Teresa's fourth huge picture in a row was Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and she even received top-billing over established star Joseph Cotten who played a murdering uncle to her suspecting niece. Wed to screenwriter Niven Busch in 1942, she had a slip with her fifth picture Casanova Brown (1944) but bounced right back as part of the ensemble cast in the "Best Picture" of the year The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) portraying the assuaging daughter of Fredric March and Myrna Loy who falls in love with damaged soldier-turned-civilian Dana Andrews. With that film, however, her MGM contract ended. Remarkably, she made only one movie for the studio Mrs. Miniver during all that time. The rest were all loanouts. As a freelancing agent, the quality of her films began to dramatically decline. Pictures such asEnchantment (1948), Something to Live For (1952), California Conquest (1952), Count the Hours (1953), Track of the Cat (1954) and Escapade in Japan (1957) pretty much came and went. For her screenwriter husband she appeared in the above-average western thriller Pursued (1947) and crime drama The Capture (1950). Her most inspired films of that post-war era were The Men (1950) opposite film newcomer Marlon Brandoand the low budgeted but intriguing The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956) which chronicled the fascinating story of an American housewife who claimed she lived a previous life.The "Golden Age" of TV was her salvation during these lean film years in which she appeared in fine form in a number of dramatic showcases. She recreated for TV the perennial holiday classic The 20th Century-Fox Hour: The Miracle on 34th Street (1955) in which she played the Maureen O'Hara role opposite Macdonald Carey and Thomas Mitchell.
Divorced from Busch, the father of her two children, in 1952, Teresa made a concentrated effort to return to the stage and found consistency in such plays as "Salt of the Earth" (1952), "Bell, Book and Candle" (1953), "The Country Girl" (1953), "The Heiress" (1954), "The Rainmaker" (1955) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1957) opposite Pat Hingle, in which she made a successful Broadway return. Marrying renowned playwright Robert Anderson in 1959, stage and TV continued to be her primary focuses, notably appearing under the theater lights in her husband's emotive drama "I Never Sang for My Father" in 1968. The couple lived on a farm in upstate New York until their divorce in 1978.
By this time a mature actress now in her 50s, challenging stage work came in the form of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds", "Long Day's Journey Into Night", "Morning's at Seven" and Ah, Wilderness! Teresa also graced the stage alongside George C. Scott's Willy Loman (as wife Linda) in an acclaimed presentation of "Death of a Salesman" in 1975, and appeared opposite Scott again in her very last play, "On Borrowed Time" (1991). After almost a decade away from films, she came back to play the touching role of an elderly landlady opposite Matt Damon in her last picture, John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). Teresa passed away of a heart attack in 2005. IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh 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. Lastly, he created publicity photos of Annette Benning and Warren Beatty for the film "Bugsy" and Natalie cole for her album Unforgettable... 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. 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. The item "Original'42 George Hurrell High Glamour Color Camera Transparency Teresa Wright" is in sale since Sunday, April 10, 2016. This item is in the category "Entertainment Memorabilia\Movie Memorabilia\Photographs\1940-49\Color". The seller is "grapefruitmoongallery" and is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This item can be shipped worldwide.
- Size: 8" x 10"
- Country//Region of Manufacture: United States