Photos of Hollywood icons on show in Rome

(ANSA) - Rome, June 26 - Portraits of the stars of American cinema are on show at Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni until September 17.
    The exhibition presents 161 photographs taken between the 1920s and the 1960s, featuring the likes of Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn. The images come from the archives of the John Kobal Foundation, which has over 4,000 portraits in its possession.
    "Hollywood Icons. Fotografie della Fondazione John Kobal" shows how the stars' success was largely due to the group of set photographers including Clarence Sinclair Bull, Eugene Robert Richee, Robert Coburn, William Walling Jr, John Engstead, Elmer Fryer, Laszlo Willinger, A.L. Whitey Schafer and Ted Allan.
    For example, Garbo can be said to have been 'created' on the set of her first film, Torrent (1926), by photographer Ruth Harriet Louise.
    Similarly, Paramount's head portrait photographer Robert Richee helped launch the myth of Marlene Dietrich by using lighting from above to conceal her less-than-perfect features. The exhibition starts from the legends of silent cinema Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford before focusing on the protagonists of the first sound films such as Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Cary Grant and then on to the giants of post-war cinema including Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It also shows how a film star is 'made' and presents the life and career of the film historian and collector John Kobal, who understood the importance of the photographic material produced in Hollywood. His pioneering work involved digging up the careers of some of the masters of photography during Hollywood's golden age, encouraging the artists to redevelop their forgotten negatives and organising exhibitions of their work all over the world. photos: Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, Audrey Hepburn