Vintage Movie Star Photos: Greta Nissen

Friday, February 15, 2013

Another Silent Photographer Favorite Max Munn Autrey

Max M. Autrey was born on May 23, 1891 in Dallas, Texas.

He was a still photographer on four films including "Modern Times" with Charlie Chaplin.

According to the Los Angles Times:

Most of the silent-movie stars photographed by a twentysomething Autrey in the 1920s for Fox Studio are forgotten today, with the exception of Clara Bow, the "It" girl. "It," of course, really meant "sex," and, even in the demure bathing suit of the time, Bow's exuberant, upraised-arm stance in swirling surf gave her an air of ready-for-anything sauciness.

Other Autrey shots include an image of Madge Bellamy coyly poised on tiptoe or Lanore De Lara vamping in what appears to be a hastily constructed toga.

He was mainly a portrait photographer for the Witzel Photography Studio in Downtown L.A. between the 1920s and 50s, noted for the glamour styles of the subjects and clientele which graced his work, especially those identified in the realm of motion pictures.

The soft, delicate shadow of a tree in the latter portrait represented a trickle-down effect from the art photography movement known as Pictorialism.

His works have become popular even appearing at museum shows alongside some of the greats like Hurrell.

He died August 5, 1971 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 80.

For more information and photographs you may want to check out this book:

Max Munn Autrey: One Photographer's Hollywood by Constance W. Glenn, David Quinn, Louise Moore, Alma Friedman and Mark Norton.

Here are some of his pictures:

Mary Duncan

Mary Duncan again

Jean Harlow

Jean looking spectacular.

Book showcasing Autrey's Book

Greta Nissen

He did many photographs of Olive Borden.

Both of these are Delores Del Rio.

Fifi Dorsay

Madge Bellamy

Billy Poobah

Marjorie Beebe

Profile of John Wayne

Anna Nilsson

Thelma Todd

Janet Gaynor

Margaret Livingston

Delia Magana

Katie-Louise Ford

Eve Arden

Marguerite Churchill

Here are three of the great Myrna Loy above.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Silent Era Photographer Walter Frederick Seely

Walter Frederick Seely was born in 1886 and photographed stars primarily during the 1910s to the 1930s. He worked for the Witzel Studio (of Los Angeles) who were popular for their Ziegfeld girls.
According to David S. Shields:

“Walter F. Seely was one of the most artful of the L.A. performing arts photographers.
Trained as a landscape painter, Seely had co-directed the Redwood Gallery in Eureka with his brother Ed Seely from 1907 to 1911, so knew how to run a studio. Seely stayed with Witzel until setting up an independent gallery under his own name in 1920 and created the most daringly designed images produced under the Witzel brand. His fine arts background inclined him to horizontal formats and reclining figures, a different orientation and disposition of subject than the vertical stock-in-trade of portraitists. A colorist whose eyes had been nourished by the natural tones of his native California, Seely imported into his photography an exquisite sense of tonal modulation and lighting dramatics. He favored the spare ornaments and props of pictorialist portraiture—the fat bellied urns, ewers, and ollas—and embraced pictorialism’s interest in exotic costume. He had a finer sense of pictorial design than Witzel, but not as great an interest in the subtleties of facial expression. That part of Witzel drawn to glitz—to visual sensation for its own sake—found an amplifying eye in Seely. After Seely’s departure, Witzel sought someone who could take his place.”
As for Witzel himself he wanted photos printed a certain way:

His exhibition prints tended to use richly shadowed “Rembrandt lighting,” using single source natural light in a studio, amplified, concentrated, or diffused by mirrors and scrims.
From 1914 to 1924 his studio photographed more motion picture performers than any on the planet.

Seely passed away in the 1960s.

Here are some examples of his work of silent film stars: