The story behind the photo
Kings of Hollywood
Four film stars in white tie at the bar of Romanoff's in Beverly Hills, all four laughing at the same joke. Nobody looks at the lens. That is why this Slim Aarons photograph still feels like an evening you were at yourself.
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Romanoff's, Beverly Hills
In the 1940s and 1950s Romanoff's was one of Hollywood's regular haunts. The restaurant belonged to Michael Romanoff, who liked to present himself as a Russian prince, although he had invented the title himself. Stars came to dine, to be seen and to meet each other away from the film set.
According to the archive caption, Aarons took this photograph at a New Year's party at Romanoff's. The caption gives no year.
Who is at the bar
From left to right: Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart. Four of the biggest names of their day: Gable of Gone with the Wind, Heflin of Shane, Cooper of High Noon and Stewart of It's a Wonderful Life and Vertigo.
Gable rests one hand on the counter, Cooper holds his glass to his chest and screws his eyes shut with delight. White bow ties, white waistcoats, a carnation in one lapel. At the edge of the frame a fifth guest looks the other way, as if he has just missed the joke.
Why this photograph works
Nobody is posing. The four men look not at the camera but at each other, and the laugh runs like a wave from left to right along the row. The camera is a guest here, not an audience. The caption does not say what they are laughing at, and perhaps that is just as well: you fill it in yourself.
The dates in the caption give the picture added weight in hindsight. Gable died in 1960, Cooper in 1961. An evening with these four standing so easily together at a bar would not come round often again.
On the wall
Kings of Hollywood is a landscape image with a calm, almost classical composition: four figures in a row. It suits a hallway, a study, the wall above a sideboard or a home bar. Next to Aarons' sunlit pool photographs, such as Poolside Gossip, this evening scene makes a fine counterweight.
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