A gilded age

The hugely popular LIFE magazine was at its zenith at the same time Hollywood was enjoying its most glamorous decades - a sumptuous new book now celebrates that crossover. Amy Davies finds out more

- Amy Davies

Take it from us when we say that producing a weekly photography magazine is no mean feat. The much-heralded LIFE magazine, which ran from 1936 to 1972, reached a huge audience and featured some of the world’s best photography.

It also happened to coincide with the glitziest era of Hollywood, so naturally there was a feast of photographic goodies for readers to lay their eyes on over the years. A new book, published by Taschen, LIFE. Hollywood, gathers together a collection of this superb material.

LIFE was launched in 1936, with the publisher Henry R Luce’s mission statement for the magazine being, ‘To see life; to see the world, to eyewitness great events.’ Incredibly, by the late 1940s, it was being read by one in three Americans – an extraordinary feat. That would likely be next to impossible to recreate today thanks to the ever-diverse methods for people to get hold of writing and photography (or what we might somewhat glibly refer to simply as ‘content’ today).

Intriguing

Some of the biggest names and faces in the movie business graced LIFE’s pages, but, as you might expect from a champion of documentary and ‘real life’ photography, there was plenty of behind-the-scenes as well.

If anything, that peek behind the curtain was perhaps more intriguing than the glamorous stars one could look at more readily every week at the cinema and on billboards. Readers wanted to know ‘what went into the sausage’. Great effort was taken to impress upon the audience that Hollywood is more than just glamour, it’s a full-scale industry. Heavy equipment, rugged operators and the nuts and bolts of a cash-generating economic heavyweight, indeed one of the country’s biggest exports, were crucial to highlight.