A Hollywood satire

In the 1930s, photographer Will Connell captured Hollywood’s leading ladies at their most glamorous in headshots and publicity shots. While helping studios construct the image of their stars, Connell gained a unique insight into the moviemaking business. This series of surrealist photographs are from his first artist book, In Pictures: A Hollywood Satire (1937). Each photograph is named after a stage in the production of a film. In ‘Career’ we see a man reaching for a woman’s wrist, suggesting that Connell saw something sinister behind the scenes.

Studios controlled far more than their stars’ roles and wardrobes. Through the morality clauses in their contracts, they also dictated their actors’ off-screen lives. Drinking and drugs were banned. Queer actors like Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor were forced into sham ‘lavender’ marriages and studios ran competitions to name their stars, which happened to Lucille Fay LeSueur, better known as Joan Crawford.

By charting the production process through his surreal images, Connell satirises the absurd overreach of the studios and highlights their control and coercion.