Betty Grable at RKO
RKO Pictures · 1935
- Studio
- RKO Pictures
- Dated
- 1935
- Medium
- Studio portrait
- Reuse
- Public domain in the US
RKO Pictures publicity photograph, 1935Source record & reuse status
A 1935 RKO Pictures publicity portrait of Betty Grable, made eight years before the photograph that made her famous. She is shown against a dark background, lit from the front, looking up and away from the camera. The studio's own filing marks, BG-97 and NY NC6-99, are printed in the lower right corner.
What the studio is doing here
This is a head shot with a purpose. The hair is set, the eyebrows are drawn, the light is hard enough to leave a shadow under the jaw, and the gaze goes off-camera so the picture suggests attention rather than demanding it. Everything that later publicity photography would do to the same face is already here, except the body.
The filing marks are part of the print. Studios numbered stills so a publicity department could order a specific pose, which is a reminder that these images were stock before they were icons.
Why pair it with the 1943 portrait
The collection holds both a 1935 RKO head shot and Frank Powolny's 1943 Fox portrait of the same woman. Together they show what the pin-up image actually changed: not the person, but the framing, the exposure and the assumed distance of the viewer.
Grable's 1943 swimsuit image is the one usually cited as the era's defining pin-up photograph. This earlier portrait is the same subject sold a different way, and it is the more useful picture for asking what the formula added.
