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News-Antique.com - Jul 16,2010 - Photographer George Hurrell wanted some kind of unusual prop to showcase blond bombshell Jean Harlow for his 1935 Vanity Fair photo shoot.
He could tell Harlow wasn’t afraid of the camera. She responded to it which opened up all kinds of possibilities for him.
Hurrell went with a white bearskin rug. He positioned the starlet on the floor leaning on the head of the snarling creature. The bear was the perfect contrast for a “beauty and the beast” type of image. It demonstrated Hurrell’s stylistic touch.
The rug was so popular and so often requested in future photo shoots, Hurrell was forced to go out and buy one himself. He was a studio photographer for MGM, Warner Brothers and Columbia and photographed some of the most glamorous women in Hollywood.
“She was the only star I know…who is completely different from what she appears to be on screen,” said columnist Gladys Hall. “The hard-boiled character of the blond-bombshell…is the girl who is timid before people she doesn’t know.”
On March 26-27 the now famous 8 inch by 10 inch, black-and-white, camera negative on nitrate film of Jean Harlow on the bearskin rug went on the block at Profiles in History in Calabasas, Calif.
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