Some of the most famous images of midcentury American history — Robert Capa’s dispatches from D-Day, a sailor and a nurse entangled in a V-J Day kiss, Robert F. Kennedy lying mortally wounded on the floor of a California hotel kitchen — first appeared in Life magazine.
Emerging on the scene in 1936, the weekly photo publication was perfectly positioned to capture the great years of classic Hollywood glamour and power, as documented in the coffee table book LIFE. HOLLYWOOD (Taschen, $250). And once you get past the images you’ve seen time and again (James Dean walking through a rainy Times Square, a trio of darkly dressed Italian women looking askance at a scandal-ridden Ingrid Bergman), this massive two-volume set offers a mix of striking celebrity portraiture and behind-the-scenes reportage.
See Alfred Hitchcock going small and filming “Shadow of a Doubt” on location in Santa Rosa, Calif., prevented from using his typical intricate studio sets because of wartime material restrictions. Or Cecil B. DeMille directing thousands of Egyptian extras in “The Ten Commandments,” a remake of his own silent film from three decades prior. A filthy Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart on location in what was then the Belgian Congo for John Huston’s “The African Queen.”
As we sit firmly in the age of C.G.I., perched on the precipice of the A.I. era, these reminders of tactile Hollywood land in ways both exciting and heartbreaking.
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