Wish List

During his brief career, Nelson Evans photographed some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.  Among them: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, Lon Chaney, Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson and Colleen Moore.  But there were many more that apparently did not sit for an Evans portrait, so I decided to put together a list of those who I wished he had photographed (the list only includes actors who were active during Evans' career).  It goes without saying that I have not seen every photo taken by Evans and so it is possible that some of the following actors did have a portrait taken by Evans.  If I come across one or someone out there points me to one, I will edit the list accordingly.

And so, my wish list:

-Marion Davies   With her beautiful eyes, Davies would have been the perfect subject for Evans.

-Edna Purviance  For whatever reason, there seems to be fewer portraits of Edna than would be expected, so maybe it's not too surprising that she never worked with Evans.

-John Barrymore  Evans didn't typically photograph men's profiles, but I would think he would have made an exception in this case.

-Richard Barthelmess  Perhaps not the most exciting subject for a portrait, but I wonder how Evans would approach the task.  UPDATE: from the July 1919 issue of Motion Picture Magazine.

-Jobyna Ralston  Another seemingly ideal subject for Evans.

-Harold Lloyd  With or without glasses?

-Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy  Even though they were still a few years away from becoming a team, I lump them together here for convenience sake.

-Mabel Normand  Okay, Evans took lots of photos of Mabel for her movie Mickey.  But I have yet to come across an actual portrait of her by him.  Mabel seems to have favored New York photographers over those in Los Angeles.

-Elsie Janis  Of everyone I have listed, Janis is the most surprising one to have never been photographed by Evans.  Both were natives of Columbus (he grew up just 3 miles north of her house, which sat across the street from the Ohio State University campus) and she was a very close friend of Mary Pickford, who frequently worked with Evans.  I'm still holding out hope that there is a photo out there somewhere...

There's a few famous names missing from my list.  That's because there is some evidence that Evans did photograph these actors, but it's far from solid fact.

-Charlie Chaplin  I've seen an early photo of Chaplin with the Evans signature, but I came across another photo that appears to be from the same shoot that was attributed to Albert Witzel.  While it's possible that Evans did an apprenticeship with Witzel, the date of the photo (1914) would put Evans out of the picture, so to speak, as he was back in Ohio at the time.  But it is something I need to research further.

-Lillian Gish  One of my complaints about John Kobal's Evans-centric book Hollywood- The Years of Innocence is the lack of attribution to almost all of the photographs, except to say that most of the photos were by Evans.  One of the photos in the book is a group shot of Gish along with her mother, sister Dorothy, Mary Pickford and Mildred Davis.  Evans photographed other Griffith actors, so it's possible that the photo is by him.  The book also includes a still of the great Babylonian set from Griffith's Intolerance.  Does that mean it was taken by Evans?  Wish I knew!

-Alla Nazimova  Two Nazimova photos appear in Kobal's book, one explicitly credited to Evans, the other not.  However, the uncredited one (outside the Garden of Alla) seems more likely to be an Evans than the one attributed to him!

If anyone finds an Evans photo of any of the actors listed above, let me know.