A new cover on John Kobal's Hollywood Glamor Portraits: 145 Photos of Stars, 1926-1949

John Kobal's classic pictorial, Hollywood Glamor Portraits: 145 Photos of Stars, 1926-1949, was first published in 1976 by Dover Publications, the same publisher that issued Marshall Deutelbaum's Image on the Art and Evolution of the Film: Photographs and Articles from the Magazine of the International Museum of Photography (1979), another important early title in the emergence of Brooks' reputation. (Dover also published Tom Tierney's Movie Star Vamps and Scamps Paper Dolls (2003), a book I recently wrote about.)

Kobal's book was issued while Louise Brooks was still alive; notably, this popular, nearly once ubiquitous work, was one of the earliest books to feature the actress on the cover. I still have my old second-hand copy, purchased sometime, if I recall correctly, in the mid-1990s.

I just noticed that Kobal's book has been reissued with a new, slightly different, cover (The new cover is pictured above. The original cover is pictured left.) The book features 145 full-page black-and-white photos of well known actors and actors dating from from 1926 to 1949 — including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich, Robert Montgomery, Marlon Brando, Veronica Lake and others — 94 stars in all including Louise Brooks.

John Kobal (born Ivan Kobaly, 1940 – 1991) was an Austrian-born, British based, film and phot historian historian responsible for The Kobal Collection, a commercial photograph library related to the film industry. According to Wikipedia, "Kobal had a short-lived career as an actor in early 1960s London. He was an inveterate collector: magazines, postcards, pictures, any movie memorabilia. It was a chance encounter with Marlene Dietrich in Canada in the 1950s that led Kobal to develop his affection for the Golden Age of Hollywood. He used his contacts from a BBC appointment in New York from 1964 to acquire Hollywood related photographs, eventually numbering about 4,500 images dating from the end of the silent era to about 1960. The material was then considered of little value."

Kobal was also the author of 30 books, and was responsible for organising the first exhibition of Hollywood related photographs at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1974. The critic John Russell Taylor has described Kobal's contribution to film studies as "unique"

Kobal and Brooks were friendly. They exchanged letters, and Kobal interviewed Brooks at length. That exceptional interview, which detailed many little known incidents in Brooks' life, appeared in Kobal's People Will Talk (1986). It is essential reading. The actress' name appears on the cover of the original hardback editions, and an image of Brooks appears on the cover of this paperback edition.