Some notes on my association with George Hurrell
In 1979 I was introduced to George Hurrell by one of my UCLA students who knew him. George was the definitive Hollywood glamour portrait photographer of all time.

George Hurrell and I met when his first book of Hollywood celebrity glamour portraits he had shoot in the 1930 – 1940 was printed. He received a pittance for the rights and the book was not financially successful. Photography had not yet come to the marketplace as an art form. Forty years had passed, the studio system had ended and as it often happens in Hollywood, most young persons in the “new” movie scene never knew his style and bodywork.

His incredible career had temporarily passed him by and he needed to find new directions to in which to go. We signed a contract and I became his Creativity Consultant. We sat for hours in his small house each day eating breakfast that he fastidious made for us, talking about what he wanted to be photographing during his last years.

When we broke for lunch, he loved to eat in a restaurant near where he lived called the Lamp lighter. For a guy, who loved light and shadows in his work, this place really had only shadows. It was so dark that had to finally bring a flashlight to read the menu.

I met him 2 sometimes 3 days a week for several months and I learned a lot during that time about him and about shooting faces. He would take me on his infrequent location shoots. In fact the photographs I shoot of him on my web site were done at Valazques Rocks, a famous scene location that old time directors used for westerns.

In a matter of time George and I became friends. I wrote a UCLA Extension class in teaching his style of photography that we taught together in 1980. With our wives, we celebrated his birthday together. George and I became close, as close as he was comfortable with. I had to remember he came from Hollywood where success depends on trusting no one!

But he finally opened a part of his life to me that he had not shared with anyone. I suspect that to this day it might have had to do with my being a college art professor who cared about him and his art.

I found a hidden collection of 8 x 10 negatives he had stashed away years before in a cardboard box in his files of images that he shot in1928. No one else had or has to my knowledge ever seen the images because he thought the model that sat for him might still be alive and he hadn’t gotten a model release from her.

George was a visual artist and yet a product of the Victorian era. Like a lot of us do, he hid a lot of his creative vision and work that he didn’t think had anything to do with his primary work, glamour photography.

One time I arranged a lunch for us with Helmet Newton. He called me when he found out I was George’s creativity consultant and asked if George might take the time to meet with him. Little did he know that George told me he was his favorite photographer. He told Helmut that he thought no one would be interested in any of his other work.

By that time I had successfully arranged for the sale of 30 of his images to a group which created his portfolios which we are all now familiar with. He earned a large sum of money for that project and it propelled him back into the media limelight as a Hollywood glamour photographer. The portfolios were an overnight success that filled many of George’s days with new glamour assignments.

He became so busy once again with glamour photography that he placed his other art interests on a “back burner” and we shall never know what could have been!

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