The 1930s ushered in Hollywood's
golden age of filmmaking, and never before or since has the movie industry
generated such unqualified public adulation for its leading men and ladies. The
popularity of the movie star was largely due to an overwhelming appetite for
larger-than-life entertainment in which realism was lacking and hero worship
held sway. Thus the primary purpose for the existence of the Hollywood-style
film produced during those years was primarily a vehicle for the stables of
stars under contract to the movie studios.

At work as a commercial portrait photographer
during this pivotal period in filmmaking history, working for MGM, Columbia,
Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount, George Hurrell was an influential
voice in the evolution of the Hollywood "look." As a writer in Esquire
magazine wrote in 1936, "A Hurrell portrait is to the ordinary
publicity still about what a Rolls Royce is to a roller skate." This
portrait of Tyrone Power and Loretta Young, a benchmark of that style,
presumably was photographed while the pair was starring in Darryl F. Zanuck's
1938 production Suez. As presented by Hurrell, the two personify the
classic Roman ideal of beauty. Through a combination of skillful make-up,
masterful retouching in the negative and the print, and Hurrell's artful staging
and lighting techniques, the composition maximizes the illusion of physical perfection.