George DeBarron

[mrcheese]

“George (sometimes "Georges") DeBarron dominated the Showgirl glamour trade after the accidental death of John De Mirjian in 1928 until 1935. A photographer who specialized in middle brow entertainments and entertainers, DeBarron could not, like Afred Cheney Johnston, attract a Blue Book clientele. He lacked the technical expertise to become an important advertising photographer at a time when many New York photographers diversified their business with commercial work. DeBarron was, unfortunately, plagued by a sense of taste. He could not bring himself to take Showgirl photography in the direction of raunchiness that burlesque photographers, Strand, Bruno of Hollywood, and Maurice Seymour (Chicago) were exploring. The ideals of beauty that his old competitiors Johnston and De Mirjian had projected remained standards to emulate. As the revues began to become increasingly political and less carnal on Depression Broadway, DeBarron kept his faith in female beauty, and, alas, saw his business decline. On March 3, 1936 George DeBarron sold the business to Empire Studios, though the brand name remained intact until November 1940 when the studio was resold.
George DeBarron specialized in glamorous Showgirl portraits and theatrical scene photography. He was an expert at 'Drape Shots' in which girls wore drapes instead of clothes. He did a great amount of portfolio work for aspiring actresses and B level stars. He favored light backgrounds and managed to place images with newspapers regularly. Less daring than De Mirjian, less elegant than Alfred Cheney Johnston, more classy than burlesque specialist Strand Studio, Debarren embodied the norm of beauty portraiture in New York during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He would manipulate the negative to pretty up a picture, yet his taste for simplicity led him to eliminate details in pictures rather than add objects to supply visual interest.”
© David S. Shields
http://broadway.cas.sc.edu/index.php...ographer&id=21


“In the late 1920s, Florenz Ziegfeld detected a change in the aesthetic of portrait photography among the younger Broadway camera artists. A new lightsomeness and sculptural character using compressed ranges of tonality became popular among figures such as Irving Chidnoff, Herbert Mitchell, and Hal Phyfe. Of the practitioners of this new style, DeBarron Studio, particularly attracted Ziegfeld's eye. DeBarron Studio broke into the mass print market in 1926. In 1927 Ziegfeld began hiring the group to do portraits of Showgirls and featured performers in his theatrical productions. The studio remained on the short list of publicity photographers up until Ziegfeld's death, and for the late 1920s was second only to Alfred Cheney Johnston for the number of sittings booked. Housed in a sumptuous studio, DeBarron projected the sort of luxuriousness that Ziegfeld ever embraced, so earned the nod over the other photographers named above, who worked in more modest settings.
DeBarron Studio did not weather the Depression and was sold in the mid-1930s. The brand survived under other ownership into World War 2.”
© David S. Shields.
http://historicalziegfeld.multiply.c...eBarron_Studio

[mrcheese]

Barbara Newberry, Betty Compton, Emily von Loesen, Ethel Smith Atwell, Virginia Biddle...





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