Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe. Photos of these classic movie stars aren’t hard to find, but author Steven Rea has curated his latest compilation book to show them and several of their peers in a unique, thematic light.
The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars features more than 50 rare photographs of screen celebrities reading books; some were taken on the sets of films, while others depict the stars in their own homes or private libraries. The books that appear vary in category—thrillers, biographies, children’s books—and their inclusion offers insight as to the featured actors’ literary tastes, and possibly their mindsets at the time the photos were taken.
Rea’s new book also includes playful book-themed promotional photos, including one for The Wizard of Oz, which features the film’s primary cast members in costume, posed on top of a giant version of the classic L. Frank Baum novel. The author—Rea, not Baum—recently opened up to the Sun about his latest work, as well as how his collecting hobby evolved into nearly professional photo archiving over the last decade.
Sun: What inspired your decision to center your next book on photos of classic film actors reading books?
Rea: The idea had been kicking around for a while. With my first book, Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling with the Stars, I was able to fuse two of my big passions in life—movies and cycling. With my second, Hollywood Cafe: Coffee with the Stars, dual passions—this time, movies and coffee. I’m a longtime coffee fiend. I’m also an avid reader, so when I started looking around for images of stars reading books, or in the presence of books, the variety and diversity of the images told me this was something that might work.
Sun: How long have you been collecting rare Hollywood photographs for? When did you start becoming passionate about it?
Rea: I’ve been collecting old Hollywood photographs seriously now for about a decade. I’ve always had a few photos from favorite movies that I kept in folders, or framed—a still of Vanessa Redgrave in Blow Up!, Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep. And I would go to movie memorabilia shops in New York or Los Angeles and buy a few photos and posters here and there.
Sun: What attracted you most to the photos? What made them special in your opinion and worth collecting?
Rea: These stills are captured moments from films, but they’re also something different: taken by a still photographer on set. They aren’t isolated frames of the film shot by the cinematographer. So they are at once a recorded history of the movie and the making of the movie. And then there are the “candid” shots, and the posed studio portraits, taken by some truly amazing and mostly forgotten photographers who worked at the respective studios back in the day. Folks like George Hurrell, Clarence Bull, Bert Six, Ray Jones.
Sun: Was there a particular photograph that sparked your interest in becoming an archivist? Do you remember the first rare photo you ever obtained?
Rea: I guess at this point you could call me an archivist, but I really think of myself more as a collector—although my several thousand photos are kind of rigorously organized and preserved. The first photo that I acquired that really set me off and running, or riding, was of Glen Ford and Rita Hayworth on a beautiful French tandem bicycle; a publicity still from the 1940s Columbia release, The Lady in Question.
Sun: When compiling photos for The Hollywood Book Club, were there any stories you found surprising? Did any of the books you found certain celebrities reading surprise you?
Rea: I love the fact that Joan Collins—bare-shouldered, a bit testy looking, on a break between scenes shooting a western—is reading Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again, this literally heavy literary endeavor. And that Dennis Hopper is reading Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares while he’s at Griffith Park Observatory making Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean.
Sun: Did any of the photos inspire you to start reading any of the books featured?
Rea: I wouldn’t have read The Dud Avacado—or ever heard of it, perhaps—if it wasn’t for stumbling on the photo of Joanne Woodward curled up at home with a first edition of the Elaine Dundy novel.
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood hadn’t heard of The Dud Avacado either. Pass along book suggestions to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 24-31, 2019.
