The beautiful collector's box set LIFE: Hollywood brings together several hundred photographs taken for the famous US magazine, documenting American cinema over almost four decades. A must-have.
From 1936 to 1972, LIFE magazine followed all the golden ages of Hollywood, from the great studio era to the New Hollywood revolution. We discovered all the great stars in their staged intimacy. Bette Davis posing in her Beverly Hills villa; eight-year-old Shirley Temple having breakfast; old Charlie Chaplin with his family at his hilltop home in 1952; or producer Sam Spiegel's New Year's Eve party in 1949, with hotdogs and champagne for 700 celebrities. There are the photos, taken by the magazine's greatest photographers (Gordon Parks, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt...), and the texts, period reports or contemporary commentaries, rich in information and anecdotes on the history of American cinema in its heyday, such as this fascinating article on the shooting of The Odyssey of the African Queen (1951), John Huston's famous film starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.
" To see life, to see the world, to be the eyewitness of great events ": this was the motto of LIFE magazine, in the words of its founder Henry R. Luce. Luce. From Jean Harlow, the first great Hollywood legend to grace the magazine's cover in 1937, to Jane Fonda, daughter of the seraglio and icon of a modern world, LIFE has witnessed both Hollywood and its transformations. But as we peruse the on-set photographs, intimate reports and personal accounts, we also rediscover the history of a world that has long since disappeared.
Rereading the pages devoted to her, it's as if we're reminded of the big Oscar night in 1954, when the 25-year-old debutante Audrey Hepburn won Best Actress for her role in William Wyler's Roman Holiday. The black-and-white photographs show her fulfilled face, and it's hard not to be moved like her. It's also moving to see the audience at the party, and the glances cast on the great Ava Gardner, the other favorite for the Best Actress Oscar, whose much-publicized marriage to Frank Sinatra was floundering at the time. In over 700 pages, dozens of the stories that made Hollywood legendary are told, frozen for eternity by the gaze of LIFE's photographers. What a happy coincidence that the magazine's golden age coincides with that of Hollywood, making this box set the ultimate collector's item for lovers of press photography and film history.
LIFE. HOLLYWOOD - ÉDITIONS TASCHEN, 2024
TASCHEN.COM
