Have a Heap of Hollywood Holiday History & Happiness Made Possible by Mary Mallory
Have a Heap of Hollywood Holiday History & Happiness Made Possible
By Mary Mallory
Long before television, the internet, and YouTube existed, movie studios employed eye-catching, mouth-watering photographic stills to sell new movies and stars to moviegoers. These appealing publicity products appeared in magazines, newspapers, and theatre lobbies, enticing interest in upcoming releases and popular celebrities. Holiday art in particular, offered multiple opportunities to promote stars and their films.
Clifton Webb
In 1910, film production companies first began publicizing star names to general audiences, who in turn clamored for images of their favorites. Studios hired photographers to shoot portraits to use as advertising for lobby displays and for giveaways to film fans. Within a few years, they realized these images could be reproduced in magazines and newspapers, reaching millions of potential filmgoers. Shooting millions of photos, mostly in glamourous black and white, studios crafted images and personas for their stars.
Shirley Temple
By the 1920s, studio still departments cranked out a diverse variety of photos that could be employed by mass marketers to illustrate virtually any type of story. Creating a quid prop quo system, studios produced photo shoots showing stars traveling, cooking, playing sports, working on cars, modeling new fashions, celebrating holidays and the like, which they freely distributed to these mass media outlets to fill empty white space in their issues, only requiring the magazines and newspapers to credit said studio when publicizing the image. Print publications gladly accepted this colorful filler in exchange for giving studios free publicity, a win for both.
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy is the puppet
Holiday art reveals some of the most scintillating work shot by studio photographers. Featuring everything from artistic production design, masterful lighting, suggestive sexuality, to ironic humor, these gorgeous images provide a striking time capsule capturing the look, feel, and design of holiday decorations, costumes, and accessories over a variety of eras.
Mary Doran
Beginning in the late 1910s and continuing through the mid-1970s, superstars and unknown starlets posed in holiday photo sessions, from which thousands of stills were freely distributed to magazines and newspapers, but never sent for copyright protection to the United States Copyright Office. After publication, the vast majority of these images were filed away and disappeared from view, until newspapers and magazines began selling off their photographic archives.
Evelyn Keyes
Photos in this article are a sample of Halloween holiday art, demonstrating the great artistry and skill of Hollywood studio photographers in crafting glamorous images selling entertainment to eager film fans.
Pete Smith & Sally Payne
Mary Mallory is a historian, archivist, and writer specializing in Los Angeles and Hollywood history. She serves as Secretary for Hollywood Heritage's Board of Directors and gives presentations to a variety of organizations and museums. Mary has written four books, including Hollywoodland, and blogs for the LA Daily Mirror.
https://www.hollywoodheritage.org/online-store/Images-of-America-Hollywoodland-p133327975