Chambers dictionary defines the word "glamour" as "fascination, enchantment, groomed beauty and studied charm". Corresponding to this definition, the portraits of film stars snapped by the celebrated photographer Wallace Seawell, who has died aged 90, certainly had glamour. Known simply as Seawell, he produced his most resonant work in the 1950s and early 1960s when the Hollywood studio star system was still functioning healthily, and iconic fan magazines such as Photoplay continued to publish highly stylised photographs of stars, which gave them an aura of inaccessible, divine beauty.
Among those that Seawell immortalised were Elizabeth Taylor, Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren (from the start of her Hollywood career), Audrey Hepburn, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak, Paul Newman, Ava Gardner, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Doris Day and "blissfully married" young couples such as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, and Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. (One of Seawell's regrets was never having photographed Marilyn Monroe.)
Many of these photos fed the studios' publicity machine, which relied on the box-office drawing power of stars far more than today. Taking advantage of the advances in light-reflective cosmetics, lighting and optical technology, each photo made a fashion statement and endorsed the star's screen persona. Seawell liked to use large, 10in x 8in negatives to capture every detail, and although he preferred his black-and-white work, his colour photographs, when blown up, resembled portrait paintings. "I was very careful about light, about having the right background," he said.
Howard Hughes, to whom Seawell was under personal contract at RKO Pictures for a while producing publicity stills, claimed that the photographer "could make a pig look beautiful". According to Ron Avery, president of the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive, "Seawell's portraiture and his way of shooting was from a time that no longer exists - when you had a celebrity in front of the camera and you had their attention for just that purpose and you had them there for an hour or more and you had the time to do wonderful shots and really put your heart into it. It wasn't a quick grab shot."
Seawell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, from where he graduated with honours in 1940. He then became chief set designer and fashion photographer at the Eastman Fashion Studio in New York.
After serving in the army signal corps during the second world war, when he produced and designed nearly 50 training films, he moved to Los Angeles and took a job with Paul A Hesse, a leading commercial photographer on the West Coast. When Hesse retired in 1963, Seawell set up a studio in the music room of a large ornate antique-filled home in West Hollywood. For 35 years, he shared the house with the Broadway star Carol Channing and her publicist husband Charles Lowe.
In 1998, Channing filed for a divorce, claiming that she and her husband had only had sex twice in their 41-year-long marriage, and that her husband had spent her money on Seawell like "a drunken sailor". Both claims were hotly disputed, with Lowe saying that Channing "has lost her mind ... insanity ran in her family, and this is a result of it," while Seawell, then 82, announced, "I'm independently wealthy. I have a million-dollar home in Los Angeles ... Channing is just out for publicity. She can't do another Broadway show because she can't remember lines any more, so now she's decided she's going to go on the lecture circuit and help other abused women get their lives back together? It's ridiculous!" (Lowe died before the divorce came through.)
Apart from Channing, many of the entertainers Seawell photographed became personal friends. "You could really get to know the stars then," he recalled. "They threw big parties in their homes, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to most of them. I was a good dancer, so I got to dance with everybody. I guess Natalie Wood was my favourite partner."
Other distinguished people who came to the house to be photographed included President Lyndon B Johnson, the Shah of Iran, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, King Farouk and Ronald and Nancy Reagan, putting them all in their best light.
· Wallace Lacy Seawell, photographer, born September 16 1916; died May 29 2007