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Maven: Expert, a connoisseur (from the Yiddish, meyvn,  from the Hebrew mevin ‘one who understands’ )  

The names of the great Hollywood moguls are legend: Mayer, Thalberg, Lasky, Warner, Goldwyn, Cohn and a host of others. Most grew up poor and were either immigrants or the sons of immigrants, the uneducated progeny of profligate or absent fathers and Yiddish mammas. These men used an inborn entrepreneurial ability to carve a place for themselves in a new industry, motion pictures. None of them created the technology that they exploited so brilliantly but they were the midwives who birthed the nascent industry, the nannies who nourished it through its infancy and finally, the parents who guided it through adolescence to adulthood. For the most part they dealt in the business of glamour, starting a process that transformed truck drivers and chorus girls into icons of allure and glamour and in doing so, exported American values throughout the globe.  They also seduced the world with American music, fashion, slang and urban sophistication. So much has been written about the influence of these Hollywood tycoons on the popular culture that there is little to add; however, there were other Jews who made profound contributions to film and contributed to the Hollywood glamour machine yet are often forgotten by the very industry they helped create. This short article examines the lives of four of them. 

She was born Ruth Goldstein in New York City, a lovely, dark-eyed girl with an interest in photography and motion pictures. Her older brother, Mark Rex Goldstein, changed his surname to Sandrich and as Mark Sandrich, wrote and directed numerous films, both silent dramas and talkies. Sandrich became renowned for his direction of Astaire and Rogers in five of their classic RKO musicals including Top Hat, Shall We Dance and Carefree. Ruth’s first cousins were producer/director Zion Meyers and his sister, silent star Carmel Meyers.  

In the summer of 1925, at the tender age of twenty-two, Ruth was hired to work at MGM as its chief publicity photographer. As Ruth Harriet  Louise , her stock and trade became the creation of alluring photos of MGM’s pantheon of the era including Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford and most notably, Greta Garbo. Louise’s luminous black and white images set the global standard for glamour photography until 1929, the year her career at MGM came to a standstill.  Perhaps it was because Garbo found a new favorite in photographer Clarence Bull or perhaps MGM’s other leading actress, Norma Shearer, wanted someone else to take her patrician looks in a new, sexy direction. Perhaps Miss Louise, who had  married director Leigh Jason in 1927, was ready to start a family. Whatever the reason, there was only room for one chief photographer on the MGM lot, and the head of publicity, Howard Strickland, replaced Louise with George Hurrell. Her swansong at MGM was a session with Vilma Banky, a silent star whose heavy Hungarian accent would ultimately destroy her career in talkies.  

Louise worked briefly for Samuel Goldwyn, photographing his exotic discovery, the ravishing Anna Sten and even experimented with the new medium of color photography, shooting portraits of her sister-in-law, Freda; unfortunately, Ruth Harriet Louise died at the age of thirty-seven due to complications from childbirth.  Ruth Harriet Louise’s oeuvre was extensive, with over 100,000 photographs to her credit. She created some of the most stunning photos of Hollywood luminaries but sadly until recently, her artistry had been largely forgotten. Perhaps her dismissal by many film historians was rooted in issues in gender bias but today Ruth Harriet Louise is regarded as the equal of every glamour photographer who worked in the studio system and her art continues to astonish all who see it.   

The name Max Factor will always be irrevocably linked to the world of glamour but the early life of Maximilian Faktor was anything but  glamorous. He was an elfin man, a diminutive Polish Jew who never had a childhood.  While he dreamed of studying art, the abject poverty of his family forced him to work from the age of seven. First, he was a street peddler, selling fruit and candy on the cobbled street of his native Lodz. At the age of nine, the child was apprenticed for four years to a wigmaker and cosmetician. There was no play for this child of fortune who moved to Moscow as a teen and worked with the Russian Grand Opera. Military service was mandatory for all males and at the age of eighteen, Max did a stint in the Russian Army. He worked as a nurse in the Medical Corps and learned about skin care and physiognomy.  He had no way of knowing at the time, but his childhood apprenticeship, the Grand Opera, even the army was preparing him for what would eventually become his life’s work, the world of make-up and skin care.  

When his military service ended, Max returned to Moscow and the constrictions of working for the Grand Opera but soon realized he would have to leave Russia, which was going through a series of bloody pogroms. Max and his family fled Russia for New York, ending up in Ellis Island. The immigration officials misspelled his name, re-christening him Max ‘Factor’. He soon found the congestion and crowded tenements of New York unbearable and his next stop was St. Louis and the World’s Fair where he introduced his line of cosmetics, perfumes and hair products that had the stamp of being created for Russian royalty. He succeeded in St. Louis but was soon seduced by the promise of a new art, photoplays, that was taking the world by storm. Max released he had a contribution to make to this the business which was also called motion pictures and heeded the siren’s westward call.  

In 1908 Max and the Factor clan moved to downtown Los Angeles and opened Max Factor’s Antiseptic Hair Store which catered to the actors, singers  and dancers who toured the city. His store was an unbridled success and within three months, he opened Max Factor and Company and the rest as they say, is history.  His first feature was DeMille’s The Squaw Man for which he supplied wigs and make-up. He created a special form of greasepaint especially for motion pictures and soon found many clients in  the burgeoning industry including Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Mable Normand and even its reigning queen, Mary Pickford. He eventually moved his operation to Hollywood and changed the face of the industry. He transformed a warehouse into a sumptuous showroom replete with chandeliers. When sound changed the way movies were shot, Max created a new panchromatic make-up for black and white films and earned a citation from the Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was Factor who invented the color harmony system, using specific shades that blended with skin, hair and eye coloring. Max Factor took a blonde starlet named Jean Harlow and lightened her hair to a platinum blonde. His advances were legendary and he went on to create Pan Cake Make-up for Technicolor film.  Though he died in 1938, his family continued his work and became the pre-eminent make-up dynasty in Hollywood.

He was born Adrian Adolph Greenburg in Naugatuck, Connecticut, the child of immigrant parents who were determined that their gifted progeny would receive the education he so richly deserved. At the age of eighteen, he adopted his father’s name, Gilbert, dropped his surname and became known around the globe as Gilbert Adrian and later, Adrian. Good fortune combined with talent, taste and an impeccable eye assured that Adrian would attain early success. Adrian was accepted by the prestigious Parsons School of Applied Arts and Design and while there, sketched costumes for the George White’s Scandals of 1921. At the age of nineteen, he transferred to the Parson’s campus in Paris. It was in the luminous City of Lights that composer Irving Berlin spotted one of Adrian’s designs on a model at a show at the Beaux Arts. Berlin needed a fresh look for his newest Music Box Review and recruited Adrian to leave Paris and follow him to New York.  Adrian went on to create sumptuous designs for other Broadway shows and soon built a body of work that was so outstanding that Hollywood came knocking on his door. Creating costumes for Broadway show certainly got him noticed, but designing for motion  pictures introduced Adrian to an international audience. The Cadillac of movie studios, MGM, hired him to design costumes for the Mae Murray extravaganza, The Merry Widow. Madame Rudolph Valentino, the tempestuous Natasha Rambova, spirited him away to create work for her husband’s independent film company. Later, producer/director, Cecil B. DeMille, also needed a designer for his company and employed Adrian to dress the actresses in his provocative society dramas. When DeMille contracted to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Adrian followed him but continued working for MGM after DeMille’s tenure ended. He remained at MGM until his retirement from films in 1941.  
 
While at MGM, Adrian became Hollywood's foremost costume designer during the 30s and '40s and was responsible for more fashion trends than any other designer in the United States. What was worn on the screen influenced the modes of the day and women throughout the world copied them. It was Adrian who adapted the bias cut of French couturier Madeleine Vionnet into daring gowns worn by biggest female stars, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Katherine Hepburn and most famously, Joan Crawford. When he created broad-shouldered dresses and suits and gowns with puffed  sleeves for Joan Crawford, shoulder pads and puffy sleeves became de rigueur. His design sense was astonishing, his eye impeccable and while his costumes for period dramas like Marie Antoinette may not have truly captured the authenticity of the era he was designing for, the historical silhouettes provided a springboard for the Adrian touch.  

At the age of thirty-six, Adrian married Academy Award-winning actress and screen legend, Janet Gaynor. Though Adrian’s sexuality later became a source of speculation for some, their marriage was a smashing success. Gaynor retired from films and devoted herself to Adrian and their son Robin, who was born on July 7, 1940. Adrian left MGM in 1941 following the departure of the great Garbo.  At the time he said, "When the glamour goes for Garbo, it goes for me as well."  From 1941 to 1952, he turned his attention to his own design house, Adrian Ltd. in Beverly Hills where he produced custom-made creations and ready-to-wear ensembles of the highest quality for a mass market. He used practical fabrics in high fashion, blending the everyday with the outré. Adrian’s golden touch and flawless eye caused his designs to be copied by New York fashionistas and Adrian knock-offs were found everywhere. He became so concerned about having his work pilfered that he shielded his designs from avaricious eyes, rarely allowing photos or sketches to be released in advance of his collections. He made his ready-to-wear line even more exclusive by allowing only one retailer in each city to market his fashion.  
 
In 1945, Adrian won the Coty Award for his contributions to world fashion. It should be noted that though Adrian was the foremost designer in films, he never won an Oscar© but for good reason - he’d retired from films years before Costume Design became a category for Academy voters. After suffering a heart attack in 1952, Adrian closed Adrian Ltd. and retired to his ranch in Brazil, where he and Janet devoted their time to painting landscapes and raising Robin. He returned to Hollywood in 1958 to design costumes for the stage musicals, At the Grand Hotel and Camelot. Before completing the designs for Camelot, Adrian suffered a second heart attack that proved to be fatal. He died on September 14, 1959 and was mourned by everyone who knew him. Adrian Adolph Greenburg led a charmed life indeed and exited the world as he did everything else, with grace.

Sydney Guilaroff may not be a name that comes trippingly to the tongue when one thinks of Hollywood glamour but as the primo hair stylist to the  stars, he created more beauty on stage and screen then any other hairdresser before or since time. Guilaroff was born in London into a family of Russian Jews who migrated to Winnipeg, Canada where he spent his childhood. As a young boy, he was fascinated by silent dramas and saved his pennies to see the newest offerings of the movie theaters. In 1920 he left Canada for New York City where he was forced to sleep in Central Park. According to his autobiography, in 1921 at the age of fourteen, he was working as a stock boy at Gimbels Department Store when an on-the-job accident forced him to quit and changed his life. 

In an odd twist of fate, that injury became the luckiest thing that had  ever happened to him. He answered an ad for a beautician’s assistant and found employment in the industry that was to make his fortune. He was hired to be a lackey in a hair salon. The owner soon recognized young Guilaroff’s talent and taught him the business of hair and beauty. By sixteen, Guilaroff had a huge clientele and his fame as a stylist was soaring; unfortunately, everything ended when Guilaroff contracted tuberculosis. In the days before the discovery of antibiotics,   tuberculosis was called the “white plague” and Sydney was forced to return to Canada. He recovered, returned to New York, worked as a hair stylist and eventually joined the staff of Manhattan’s premier hair salon, Antoines. Prior to working Antoines, he’d created the signature bob of actress Louise Brooks. Later, he became the stylist of silent screen star, Corinne Griffith then Miriam Hopkins and Claudette Colbert.

The actress who transformed Guilaroff’s life was Joan Crawford who would not allow anyone else to touch her. Before every film she’d make the long trek by railroad to New York, have him style her hair then be photographed from every angle and take the photos to the studio hairdressers. Stories of Guilaroff 's prowess with hair began circulating around Hollywood and other stars visiting New York made bookings with the dapper stylist. Finally Louis B. Mayer hired Guilaroff in MGM Hair and Make-up Department around 1934, though his name wasn’t listed on screen credits until 1937. He continued working at MGM for forty years and eventually had over two thousand film credits.

This elegant man became a fixture around Beverly Hills society, a confident to some of the most beautiful women on the planet including Marilyn Monroe, Vivian Leigh, Ava Gardner, Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor. It was Guilaroff who changed Lucille Ball’s hair to flaming red  and gave Claudette her signature look. In 1938, he made legal history as the first bachelor in the United States to adopt children, first his son Jon, named after Joan Crawford and later, Eugene, whom he named after his father. Though he never married, he kept close bonds with his Canadian family, even flying to Canada with his sons to attend the bar mitzvah celebration of his nephew, Robert. Like Adrian, there has been speculation about his sexuality, but in the end, it is his on-screen work that counts, not conjecture about whom he may have slept with. Sydney Guilaroff passed away at age of ninety (though some sources say eighty-nine) after a long and very fruitful career. 

Note: I’d wanted to include eight-time Oscar© winning designer Edith Head in this article. Miss Head who was born Edith Claire Posener to Jewish parents but when her father died, her mother married out of her religion and most probably raised Edith a Catholic. Miss Head never acknowledged her Jewish heritage. Her biography, Edith Head: The Life and Times of Hollywood’s Celebrated Costume Designer by David Chierichetti, noted that she lived in the future and the present and ignored the past.

For anyone interested in more information about the personalities I’ve profiled, I recommend the following books: 

Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography by Robert Dance and Bruce Robertson; Max Factor: The Man who Changed the Faces of the World, by Fred E. Basten, Crowning Glory: Reflections of Hollywood’s Favorite Confidant by Sydney Guilaroff, Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label by Christian Esquevin. 

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