Fashion and GlamourThe Golden Age of HollywoodBy the last two decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood had shed many
of the trappings of glamour that had characterized it in the 1930s and 1940s.
Only on select occasions, such as Oscar Night, does the modern-day movie
industry seek to dazzle its public with a glittering gathering of stars dressed
to the height of elegance. If Sharon Stone is sometimes referred to as the
only current star of the old type, it is largely because she made it her business
from the 1990s always to present herself as elegantly groomed, perfectly
coiffed and sexually alluring. Yet the image of the stars of the past and their
lifestyles is still strongly evident in contemporary commercial culture. Perhaps
more than anything else, the Hollywood golden age constitutes the benchmark
for what today is understood as alluring and glamorous. On numerous
occasions fashion magazines feature models made up and photographed in
black and white as Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich or Ava Gardner.
Moreover, in recent times, Pretty Polly tights has deployed in advertisements
images of Rita Hayworth, while Mercedes and World of Leather have used
Marilyn Monroe, Elena Mirò Ava Gardner, Luciano Soprani fragrances Hedy
Lamarr and Gap Steve McQueen. All these images refer back to the period
between the 1930s and the 1950s, when Hollywood cinema conquered the
world and shaped the collective imagination with its stories, style and stars.
The ‘glamour of Hollywood’ was precisely an image that was constructed
through a variety of media: the films themselves, still photographs and
portraits, publicity material and press and radio coverage of the lives and
loves of the stars. In reflecting on this image, two elements deserve particular
attention. Sex appeal on the one hand and luxury on the other constituted
the cornerstone of Hollywood’s strategy to capture and hold mass interest.
On screen, all direct references to sexual intimacy inside and outside of
marriage were strictly taboo following the adoption of the Hays Code in
- By introducing this element of self-regulation, the American movie
industry hoped to pacify respectable opinion and win recognition as a
mainstream component of American society. Yet sex appeal was always
important in Hollywood movies. In 1950, anthropologist Hortense Powder-
maker observed in her study of America’s ‘dream factory’ that the physical
presence of actors was vital to the films’ appeal.^15 Heroes were always virile
he-men, she noted, while heroines exuded an obvious sex appeal. The
immediate and unambiguous attraction between the two protagonists (even
if at first disguised by a comedy of hatred) was part of the theme of most - Powdermaker, Hortense, Hollywood: The Dream Factory, Boston: Little, Brown, 1950,
p. 207.