Otto Dyar

 

Otto Dyar photographing Anna May Wong in 1932. That was the year she made Shanghai Express at Paramount with Marlene Dietrich.

Dyar was one of the great Hollywood glamour photographers of the Studio era, along with George Hurrell, Ruth Harriet Louise, Clarence Bull, Milton Greene & Eugene Robert Richee. Here are some of my favourites of his portraits.

Otto Dyar's studio & film set portraits of Anna May Wong helped consolidate her stardom in the early sound era. This shot is from her 1931 film Daughter of the Dragon.

Cary Grant, 1933

"The little bit of shyness & reserve in Grant is pure box-office gold, and being the pursued doesn’t make him seem weak or passively soft. It makes him glamorous."

- Pauline Kael

Ann Sheridan, 1940

Lillian Roth, 1929

Otto Dyar was one of three on-set still photographers during the filming of Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express, from 1932. The other two were Don English and Junius Estep. So we're not sure who took this wonderful shot of Marlene Dietrich.

Speaking of Don English, here's his shot of Otto Dyar with Marion Shilling, from 1930

Here's an unlikely subject for Otto Dyar: the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, from 1931. In 1930 Paramount producer Jesse Lasky offered Eisenstein $100,000 to come to Hollywood, where he was to make, among other projects, an adaptation of Shaw's Arms and the Man. In the end, though, his Hollywood experiment didn't result in anything significant.

Unlikely, but still a bit glamorous.

Gloria Swanson by Otto Dyar, 1934