0140NOTAphrodite_LouiseCrawford

0140NOTAphrodite_LouiseCrawford

Photograph by Ruth Harriet Louise, Joan Crawford poses as Venus de Milo; used in "Olympus Moves to Hollywood," Photoplay April 1928, 34-36, 92. Richard Arlen is shown as Apollo Belvedere.

credit: "Jacket image: Joan Crawford as Venus. M-G-M/The Kobal Collection/ Louise, Ruth Harriett."

Discussed in depth by Michael Williams, Film, Stardom, Myth and Classicism: the rise of Hollywood's gods (Palgrave Macmillan: New York 2013), 1-24.

cf. Gloria Swanson posing as the same and also as Pygmalion's Galatea, also discussed by Williams, op cit.

Black and white photo of a woman in draped fabric, with a classical statue on a pedestal behind her

The article in Photoplay asserts that "Hollywood is the world's new Olympus. Hollywood is bringing back the glory that was Greece."

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.