As the principal portrait photographer for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in the 1920s, Ruth Harriet Louise was the woman behind the most widely reproduced photographic images of early film stars Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lillian Gish and others.
Barely 22 years old, Louise, armed with her unwieldy 8 x 10 camera, collaborated with these women not only to crystallize the images that still resonate decades later, but also to define the very notion of Hollywood glamor.
While her photographs have lived on, the pioneering Louise has been virtually forgotten.
Now comes the Terra Museum of American Art to the rescue.
A major exhibition of Louise’s work, organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, opens at the Terra on Saturday. Drawn from private and public collections, it brings together 80 vintage photographs that highlight Louise’s historical and artistic importance.
The difference between these studio portraits and the ordinary stills that are snapped on movie sets as soon as the director yells “cut!” is the difference between art and documentary.
Robert Dance, co-curator of the Louise exhibit, said the portrait sessions were long and laborious. “It was done with the same degree of attention that, say, someone like Horst in a later generation and Avedon today calculate what they’re doing,” he said.
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The cinematographers then sought to recreate the lighting and ambience of those portraits in the film, he added.
Louise, the sister of Mark Sandrich, the director of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, opened her first photography studio in a vaudeville theater in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1922, at age 19.
Three years later she moved to Hollywood, used her entertainment connections and snagged the job with MGM to run the portrait studio, which she did from 1925 through 1929.
Movies in those days were aimed primarily at women, and there was a movie fan magazine apparatus to feed their desire for information on fashion and beauty. Major stars also sent out thousands of photographs to their fans each month.
Louise, who died in childbirth at age 37, had a relatively brief career, and that contributed to her obscurity.
“They say you have to have a third act if you want to be remembered, and she only had a first act,” Dance said. “She wasn’t anthologized in the way that a lot of her contemporaries were.
“While her images continued to be used for publicity purposes, her name and her work had become separated.”
“Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography” will continue at the Terra through July 7.