Eugene Robert Richee was head portrait photographer at Paramount Pictures from 1925 to 1941, creating definitive portraits of Gloria Swanson, Pola Negri, Emil Jannings, George Bancroft, Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Veronica Lake, Barbara Stanwyck, and numerous other stars at Hollywood’s second most powerful studio. Richee’s style was purposefully soft and diffused, and, although he adopted Josef von Sternberg’s spotlit lighting schemes in 1932, he resisted the Hurrell influence and declined to use hard lenses for sharp portraits.