La Cuccagna (1917)

The Italian diva Hesperia was the star of the silent drama La Cuccagna/The Bonanza (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917). The film was an adaptation of Emile Zola's La curée. Hesperia is Renata/Renée, second wife of the cunning and wealthy Saccard, who married young Renata for her money. She has an affair with Saccard's son Max, played by Alberto Collo. In the end money triumphs over love, just as in Zola's novel.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5070. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Renata and Massimo love each other." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Alberto Collo.


Italian postcard by IPA CT V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5071. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Saccard surprises Renata and Max Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917). On this postcard the father (Claudio Nicola at left) looks not much older than the son (Alberto Collo at right).


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5072. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Massimo and Luisa are betrothed. The jealousy of Renata." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5073. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Renata and Massimo at the ball of Bianca Muller." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Alberto Collo.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5074. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Saccard cannot pay the bills of his wife anymore." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Claudio Nicola.

Money triumphs over Love

Hesperia (1885-1959), was one of the divas of the Italian silent screen. She often worked with director Baldassarre Negroni, who later became her husband.

La Cuccagna was a liberal adaptation of Emile Zola's La curée, cutting Zola's socialist critique on bourgeois building speculation and nouveau riche under the Second Empire, and keeping the Phaedra-like, private intrigue of a triangular affair.

Hesperia is Renata/Renée, second wife of the cunning and wealthy Saccard (Claudio Nicola), originally Aristide Rougon, who married young Renata for her money, with Saccard's sister Sidonie as intermediate.

Years after, his son from his first marriage, Max/Massimo (Alberto Collo), develops an affair with his stepmother Renata - an affair which Saccard initially tolerates in exchange for Renata's inheritance. They claim to have an open marriage.

In the end money triumphs instead of love, just as in Zola's novel. Massimo is married to young Luisa (Diana d'Amore), the daughter of rich banker Mareuil (Ignazio Lupi), when Saccard claims he cannot pay Renata's bills anymore.

Renata is so shocked Massimo leaves her for wealth and youth she first maddens, then develops meningitis and dies.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5076. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Massimo had been raised in a provincial college." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Claudio Nicola.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5077. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Renata had turned Massimo in un 'viveur'." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Claudio Nicola, Hesperia and Alberto Colla.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5078. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Sidonia hosted meetings between her female and her male customers." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Ida Carloni Talli as Sidonia.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5079. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Renata and Massimo agree to elope." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Alberto Collo.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5080. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "The nocturnal meetings of Massimo and Renata." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Alberto Collo.

How true are her heartbeats

In the Italian film journal La vita cinematografica (22/28.2.1917), Pier da Castello regretted the loss of the social critique but praised Hesperia's performance:

"How naively she smiles, how heartily she laughs, how she knows to be tender, languid and mischievous!

How true are her heartbeats and her worries, how pathetic are her despairs, how sad and bitter her tears.

How true and human is her desperate rage! Hesperia does not act. She lives her part, defies every confrontation and surpasses any expectation.

Whoever sees her in La cuccagna must connect her with the female sovereigns of the gesture, among the silent actresses who unsurpassable know to express any emotion."


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5081. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "Renata has heard about the wedding between Massimo and Luisa." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia and Alberto Colla.


Italian postcard by IPA CT. V. Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 5082. Photo: Tiber Film. Caption: "At the Half Lent ball. All is lost for Renata." Postcard for La Cuccagna (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917), starring Hesperia.

Source: Vittorio Martinelli (Il Cinema Muto Italiano - Italian) and IMDb.

Pier Angeli

Before she was 20 Pier Angeli (1932-1971) had starred with Vittorio de Sica in two Italian box office hits and was discovered by Hollywood. There she would win a Golden Globe, have an affair with James Dean, and there she would die before she was 40.


French postcard, no. 108.


Dutch postcard by DRC, no. F 103. Photo: MGM.


Dutch postcard. Photo: MGM.


Dutch postcard.


French postcard by Edition du Globe (E.D.U.G.), no. 93.

A Light Touch of Innocence

Anna Maria Pierangeli was born in 1932, in Cagliari on the island of Sardinia. Her twin sister is the actress Marisa Pavan.

When she was only 16 she made her film debut in an uncredited part in a short Italian film. The following year she played with Vittorio de Sica in Domani è troppo tardi/Tomorrow Is Too Late (Léonide Moguy, 1950).

At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: "Domani e Troppo Tardi is the first of two Leonide Moguy films dealing with the travails of post-war Italian life; the second was Domani e un altro Giorno. The story concerns the efforts to provide a proper sex education for youngsters. Progressive schoolteachers Landi (Vittorio De Sica) and Anna (Lois Maxwell) have a profound influence on two of their young students, Mirella (Anna Maria Pierangeli) and Franco (Gino Leuri). The two kids are enamored of one another, and decide to experiment with some of the knowledge they've gleaned in the classroom... with devastating results."

Soon Anna Maria Pierangeli would be discovered by Hollywood, and she changed her professional name in Pier Angeli. MGM launched her in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). Enthusiastic reviews for her eloquent and understated performance compared her to Greta Garbo. She received an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe.

With Stewart Granger she played in The Light Touch (Richard Brooks, 1952). She indeed brought a light touch of innocence to the film, but her next films, like the musical The Story of Three Loves (Vincente Minnelli, Gottfried Reinhardt, 1953), and Flame and the Flesh (Richard Brooks, 1954) with Lana Turner, were respectable but unexciting.


Italian postcard. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Domani è troppo tardi/Tomorrow Is Too Late (Léonide Moguy, 1950) with Gino Leurini.


Belgian postcard, offered by RI RI Demaret, no. 1051. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951) with John Ericson.


With James Dean. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2346. Photo: Keystone.


British postcard in the Film Star Autograph Portrait Series by L.D. Ltd., London, no. 133. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Sombrero (Norman Foster, 1953).


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 520, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1954.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 549. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. 1182. Photo: MGM.

The Angry Silence

Pier Angeli had a relationship with James Dean but in 1954, under pressure from her domineering mother, she married Catholic singer Vic Damone. The marriage lasted only four years and was followed by highly publicized court battles for the custody of their one son, Perry Farinola.

MGM discovered another European ingénue, Leslie Caron, and they loaned Pier out to other studios. At Warner Bros., she made The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954) which was only remarkable for the debut of Paul Newman.

For Paramount, she should have had the role of Anna Magnani's daughter in The Rose Tattoo (Daniel Mann, 1955), but motherhood interfered. The role went to her twin sister, Marisa Pavan, who was nominated for an Oscar for it.

Pier returned to her old form in the biography of boxer Rocky Graziano, Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) as Paul Newman's long-suffering wife.

During the 1960s she worked in Europe. She did a strong performance in the kitchen sink drama The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960) opposite Richard Attenborough, but few of her other films during that period were notable.

She was reunited with Stewart Granger for the sword and sandal epic Sodom and Gomorrah (Robert Aldrich, 1962) and she played a brief role in Battle of the Bulge (Ken Annakin, 1965) starring Henry Fonda .

Her final appearance was in the low-budget Sci-Fi opus Octaman (Harry Essex, 1971) opposite Kerwin Mathews.

She married a second time to composer Armando Trovaioli in 1962. They had a son, Andrew, but the couple divorced in 1969.

It seemed as if her acting career might revive when she was picked to play a role in The Godfather, (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) but she died soon before filming.

On 10 September 1971 Pier Angeli was found dead of an accidental barbiturate overdose in her house in Beverly Hills. She was only 39 years old.


Italian postcard by Turismofoto, no. 18.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 370. Photo: M.G.M.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).


Indonesian postcard.


French postcard. Photo: MGM.


Dutch postcard. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for The Vintage (Jeffrey Hayden, 1957)


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 57.


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 57.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/48.


Scene from Domani è troppo tardi/Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). Source: coralieshy (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Kate Winslet

Vivacious Kate Winslet (1975) is often seen as the best English-speaking film actress of her generation. The English actress and singer was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar for The Reader (2008).


Belgian postcard by P Magazine, no. 37 in the series 'De mooiste vrouwen van de eeuw' (the 100 most beautiful women of the century). Photo: Sante D'Orazio / Outline.


British postcard.

Heavenly Creatures

Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born Reading, England, in 1975. She is the second of four children of stage actors Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11. The following year, she appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, in which she danced opposite the Honey Monster.

Winslet's acting career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season (Colin Cant, 1991). On the set, Winslet met Stephen Tredre, who was working as an assistant director. They would have a four-and-a-half-year relationship, and remained close after their separation in 1995. He died of bone cancer during the opening week of Titanic, causing her to miss the film's Los Angeles premiere to attend his funeral in London.

Her role in Dark Season was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (Diarmuid Lawrence, 1992), the sitcom Get Back (Graeme Harper, 1992), and an episode of the medical drama Casualty (Tom Cotter, 1993).

She made her film debut in the New Zealand drama film Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994). Winslet auditioned for the part of Juliet Hulme, an obsessive teenager in 1950s New Zealand who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey). Winslet won the role over 175 other girls. The film included Winslet's singing debut, and her a cappella version of Sono Andati, an aria from La Bohème, was featured on the film's soundtrack.

The film opened to strong critical acclaim at the 51st Venice International Film Festival in 1994 and became one of the best-received films of the year. Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year.

Subsequently she played the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood in the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. The film became a financial and critical success, resulting in a worldwide box office total of $135 million and various awards for Winslet. She won both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors' Guild Award, and was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

In 1996, Winslet starred in Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. She played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin (Christopher Eccleston).

She then played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996).

In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She was cast as the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat Rose DeWitt Bukater, who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. Against expectations, Titanic (1997) became the highest-grossing film in the world at the time and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star.

Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet. Despite the enormous success of Titanic, Winslet next starred in two low-budget art-house films, Hideous Kinky (Gillies MacKinnon, 1998), and Holy Smoke! (Jane Campion, 1999).

In 1997, on the set of Hideous Kinky, Winslet met film director Jim Threapleton, whom she married in 1998. They have a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton (2000). Winslet and Threapleton divorced in 2001.


Vintage postcard. Photo: publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Since 2000, Kate Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics. She appeared in the period piece Quills (Philip Kaufman, 2000) with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The actress was the first big name to back the film project, accepting the role of a chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of the Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers. Well received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet.

In Enigma (Michael Apted, 2001), she played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker (Dougray Scott). She was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot, forcing some tricky camera work.

In the same year she appeared in Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001), portraying novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, earning Winslet her third nomination.

Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle in the animation film Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song What If, which was a Europe-wide top ten hit.

Winslet began a relationship with director Sam Mendes in 2001, and she married him in 2003 on the island of Anguilla. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born in 2003 in New York City. In 2010, Winslet and Mendes announced their separation and divorced in 2011.

In the drama The Life of David Gale (Alan Parker, 2003), she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor (Kevin Spacey) in his final weeks before execution.

Next, Winslet appeared with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004). In this neo-surrealistic indie-drama, she played Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from her mind. The film was a critical and financial success and Winslet received rave reviews and her fourth Academy Award-nomination.

Finding Neverland (Marc Forster, 2004), is the story of Scottish writer J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. The film received favourable reviews and became Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic.


British postcard by Heroes Publishing Ltd, London, no. SFC 3312.


British postcard by Anabas, Essex, no. AP647, 1998.

The Reader

In 2005, Kate Winslet played a satirical version of herself in an episode of the comedy series Extras by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie. Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award.

In the musical romantic comedy Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005), she played the slut Tula, and again Winslet was praised for her performance. In Todd Field's Little Children (2006), she played a bored housewife who has a torrid affair with a married neighbour (Patrick Wilson). Both her performance and the film received rave reviews. Again she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations.

Commercial successes were Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), also starring Cameron Diaz, and the CG-animated Flushed Away (2006), in which she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins.

In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008), directed by her husband at the time, Sam Mendes. Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film. Winslet was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance, her seventh nomination from the Golden Globes.

Then she starred in the film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008) featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in supporting roles. Employing a German accent, Winslet portrayed a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager (Kross) who, as an adult, witnesses her war crimes trial. While the film garnered mixed reviews in general. The following year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors' Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2011, Kate Winslet headlined in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain's 1941 novel and directed by Todd Haynes. She portrayed a self-sacrificing mother during the Great Depression who finds herself separated from her husband and falling in love with a new man (Guy Pearce), all the while trying to earn her narcissistic daughter's (Evan Rachel Wood) love and respect. This time, Winslet won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011) premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival. The black comedy follows two sets of parents who meet up to talk after their children have been in a fight that day at school. Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz co-starred in the film.

In 2012, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In Jason Reitman's big screen adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel Labor Day (2013), she starred with Josh Brolin and Tobey Maguire. Winslet received favourable reviews for her portrayal of Adele, a mentally fragile, repressed single mom of a 13-year-old son who gives shelter to an escaped prisoner during a long summer week-end. For her performance, Winslet earned her tenth Golden Globe nomination.

Next she appeared in the science fiction film Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014), as the bad antagonist Jeanine Matthews. It became one of the biggest commercial successes of her career. This year, Winslet also appeared alongside Matthias Schoenaerts in Alan Rickman's period drama A Little Chaos (2014) about rival landscape gardeners commissioned by Louis XIV to create a fountain at Versailles.

Next she can be seen in the crime-thriller Triple Nine (John Hillcoat, 2015), the sequel in the Divergent series: Insurgent (Robert Schwentke, 2015) and in The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015).

Since 2012, Kate Winslet is married to Ned Rocknroll, a nephew of Richard Branson. The couple has a son, Bear Blaze Winslet. They live in West Sussex.


Kate Winslet sings What If. Official Music Video. Source: Chris Horton Productions (YouTube).


Trailer for The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008). Source: Associated Press (YouTube).

Sources: Tom Ryan (Encyclopedia of British Film), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

G. L. Manuel Frères

Today in our series on film star photographers two French brothers, Henri Manuel (1874-1947) and Gaston Manuel (1880-1967). Between the two World wars, their studio G. L. Manuel Frères portrayed 'tout' Paris: Auguste Rodin, Mistinguett, Eric Satie, Josephine Baker, Aristide Bruant, Colette, Jules Renard, Yvonne Printemps et cetera.


Mistinguett. French postcard by FA, no. 67. Photo: H. Manuel. Collection: Didier Hanson.


French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. French postcard by A.N. Paris, no. 22. Photo: Henri Manuel.


Yvonne Printemps. French postcard by Editions A.N., Paris, no. 24. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.

Dancers and actresses from the music halls and casinos

Henri Manuel was born in Paris in 1874. His brother Gaston was six years younger and born in 1880, also in the French capital.

In 1900, the two brothers opened their portrait studio in Paris, G. L. Manuel Frères (Gaston Lucien Manuel Brothers)

They specialised in portrait photography. Henri Manuel quickly became renowned as a photographer of people from the worlds of politics, art and sports, as well as a photographer of art and architecture.

Notable authors they portrayed include Tristan Bernard, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Sacha Guitry, Paul Morand, and Marcel Pagnol. Other figures include Louis Barthou, prime minister of France in 1913; Georges Clemenceau, statesman and twice prime minister; Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch, allied supreme commander in World War I; Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles; and Raymond Poincar president of France from 1913 to 1920.

Henri also produced postcards of dancers and actresses from the music halls and casinos and his name is sometimes appended to Reutlinger postcards, indicating there was a collaboration of some form.

Soon his portraits were used by news agencies, and in 1910 Manuel's studio began providing a commercial service to news agencies for photographs known as 'l’Agence universelle de reportage Henri Manuel'.


Sylvie. French postcard. Photo: Manuel. The caption goes: 'Souvenir d'un bonne soirée' (Memory of a nice night). On the verso lines from the play Vieil Heidelberg.


Victor Boucher. French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 22. Photo G.L. Manuel Frères.


Nazimova. French postcard, no. 344. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Saint-Granier. French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 52. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.


Vera Korène. French postcard. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères. Collection: Didier Hanson.

The naked reality of imprisonment

From 1914 till 1944, Henri Manuel served as the official photographer of the French government. Manuel also produced numerous photo reports during official ceremonies.

The studio became the largest photographic studio in Paris and a leading centre where young aspiring photographers such as Paris-based American photographer Thérèse Bonney might go to work.

In 1925, the brothers moved their business to 27 rue du Faubourg in Montmartre, where they expanded their business into fashion photography for the likes of Chanel, Patou, Poiret and Lanvin.

Manuel worked for thirty fashion magazines and especially for La Femme de France (1922-1935), Les Grandes Modes de Paris (1906-1931), Les Modes de la femme de France (1922-1935), and Le Petit Écho de la mode (1928-1936).

Between 1928 and 1932, Henri Manuel was also the remarkable witness of the Clairvaux prison. He took 132 shots of Clairvaux which give a striking image of the French prison system in the first half of the twentieth century. He photographed the naked reality of imprisonment, labour, discipline for the hundreds of prisoners but also the environment of their guards.

By 1941 the studio had produced over a million images, spread between fashion photographs, news agency photographs, personal portraits and other images.

The studio was sequestered during the Second World War, and the majority of the photographic plates have been destroyed after 1945.

Some 600 plates survived and were purchased by the state in 1988. They are held at the photo archive of the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

Henri Manuel was married with Rachel Camille Meyer. He died in 1947 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Gaston died in 1967.


Raquel Meller. French postcard by Cinémagazine Edition, no. 339. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.


Colette Darfeuil. French postcard by Europe, no. 588. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.


Cécile Sorel. French postcard by E.C. (Editions Chantal), Paris, no. 59. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères, Paris.


Damia. French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), no. 49. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.


Käthe von Nagy. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6850/2, 1931-1932. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères, Paris / Ufa. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Check out our other posts on film star photographers. See the links at right under the caption 'The Photographers'.

Sources: Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine (French), L'Est Eclair (French), John Toohey (Luminous Lint), Wikipedia (English and French).