The Friends of Horst

Since 1930, when he himself was taken up and immortalized by the great George Hoyningen-Huene, HORST P HORST, above, has known and photographed everyone worth knowing and photographing. The entire and glamorous gamut of German film stars, Russian nobility, Parisian couturiers. The Americans who went to Europe and the Europeans who came to America, those earliest waves of Eurotrash. They're all in Valentine Lawfords forthcoming retrospective book about Horst, from which this exclusive portfolio is taken.

Marlene Dietrich (1901— ), New York, 1942. Horst: 'She came in with this terrible hat and said in that voice, Remember the von Sternberg lighting.' I said we were going to put a mirror next to the camera to get it really right. She thought that was a wonderful idea. The von Sternberg lighting had the shadow under the nose, and she would pull in her cheeks so there would be a deep shadow there. I moved the light down slightly below her face—you can see the white around her nostrils—and made the light softer, and all the wrinkles disappeared. When she went to Hollywood to make Kismet, I got a telegram asking for instructions on the lighting used in this photograph. Without makeup, her face had typicalflat German features. She projected sex, but she was not sexy."

Natasha Paley

Natasha Paley

(1905—82), Paris, 1934. The morganatic daughter of a Russian grand duke, she was married to the couturier Lucien Lelong. Horst: "She was a friend of Marie-Laure de Noailles, Niki de Gunzburg, and Fulco, the Duke of Verdura, who designed jewelryfor Chanel. She was outspoken, tough but charming. In the late thirties, she went to Hollywood, where her friends included Tallulah Bankhead, Anita Loos, and George Cukor.”

Elsa Maxwell

Elsa Maxwell (1883—1963), New York, 1937. rrIphotographed Elsa a la Madame Recamier. Elsa had an apartment at the Waldorf, for nothing, of course—everything was for nothing. She was organizing a party for Cole Porter, who had fallen off a horse and was about to be taken out of his cast. There was a whole clique in Paris—Elsie Mendl, Cole Porter, Mainbocher, Elsa Maxwell—it was entirely American. When Elsa first came to Paris she got into real trouble. It was just after the First World War, and she arrived with money from the Red Cross. Instead of delivering it to the proper person, she used it to live on, and it was discovered. Then she had no money and had to sleep on a bench—no one would take her in. She made fantastic entrances. She came to Elsie Mendls once with a squealing pig on her arm.”

Pauline de Rothschild

Pauline de Rothschild

(1908—76), New York, 1950. "She was bom Pauline Fairfax Potter in Baltimore, and was raised in Paris. She lived in Majorca, where she first designed dresses.Her town house in New York was beautiful and empty, with nothing in it but piles of books and enormous plants—hibiscus, camellias. She married Baron Philippe de Rothschild, and she rebuilt the Chateau Grand Mouton. She wasn’t actually very pretty, but when you sat down to talk with her she became the most beautiful woman in the world. Her tastes were extraordinary and original, and being married to Philippe allowed her to indulge them.

Nicolas de Gunzburg

Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg (1904-81), Paris, 1934. The son of a Russian banker and a Polish-Brazilian woman, he was known especially for his elaborate and sensational costume balls. He financed and starred in Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr. Shortly after, he left Paris for Hollywood, where his career as an actor languished. Then he moved to New York and opened a dress shop. Later he became a fashion editor.

Janet Planner

Janet Planner

(1892—1978), photographed in Paris, 1931, posing as Eustace Tilley, the figure who graced the very first—and every anniversary—issue of The New Yorker. She was Genet, the magazine’s Paris correspondent, and the photograph was made as a birthday presentfor the editors of the magazine. It was Planner who arranged for Horst s first exhibition, in Paris.

Horst: His Work and His World, by Valentine Lawford, will be published by Knopf in October. The exhibition "Horst: A Retrospective 1930-1980” opens October 3 at the International Center of Photography, New York City, and will tour the United States and Europe.