Hollywood In Kodachrome

Hollywood in Kodachrome

Kodachrome film saturated the 1940s with an unprecedented explosion of color. Movie audiences, accustomed to seeing photographs of their favorite stars on magazine covers, billboards, and cinema marquees in monochrome or black-and-white, were suddenly enthralled as their idols came to life in vibrant hues as flesh-and-blood human beings. For the first time, the world was treated to the glory of Rita Hayworth's auburn hair, Gary Cooper's blue eyes, Betty Grable's rosy cheeks, and the multicolored fruit bouquets of Carmen Miranda's hats.

Curator and photographic preservationist David Wills has amassed one of the world's largest private collections of original Kodachromes and color photographs from the 1940s. Now, in Hollywood in Kodachrome, he has gathered spectacular, museum-quality work from many of the great photographers of Hollywood's golden era—George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, John Engstead, Paul Hesse, Ernest Bachrach, Bernard of Hollywood, Robert Coburn, Ray Jones, Bud Fraker, Frank Powolny, Eugene Robert Richee, and many others—to create this stunning portfolio of images that pays homage to the richest, clearest, most brilliant, and archivally dependable film stock in history.