Believe It or Not!

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 18

Believe It or Not!

MOTION picture stars don’t like to '" L have their pictures taken 1 This paradox of the profession is vouched for by Eugene Robert Richee, chief portrait photographer at one of Hollywood’s major studios, who, for more than ten years, has been making those wonderful camera studies of the reputedly most handsome men, most beautiful women, in the world. It is unquestionably true that, at some time or another, every illustrated magazine and every newspaper in the world has carried at least one “portrait by Richee.” He is the dean of the studio contract photographers in Hollywood. “Having your picture taken is an ordeal no person of my experience ever enjoys,” says Richee. “Some, even

stars of years of training in posing for the cameras, dread sitting for camera portraits almost as much as they dread a session with the dentist. Some learn to overcome self-consciousness. Others never do. The easiest subjects are young girls, inexperienced at acting, who consider their first few months in a studio a period of training. But even these girls soon learn to try tricks of expression of affectations of manner which make still photography difficult.” Marlene Dietrich is, Richee believes, the most interesting subject he has ever photographed. And incidentally Richee is > the only portrait artist in Hollywood for whom the glamorous German star will pose. “She knows the camera, from her side of it as well as I do from mine,” he explains.