When the stars turn out this Oscar night, many will walk the red carpet in gowns and hairstyles meant to evoke the glamour of 1930s Hollywood. But glamour is not a style that can be worn. It is an imaginative process that must be inspired—and no matter how beautiful, Hollywood's retro-glamour is only a colorized copy.

To find the original, drive east to the Palm Springs Desert Museum, where a retrospective of George Hurrell's photographs is on exhibit through March 20. Hurrell (1904–1992), the quintessential photographer of Hollywood's Golden Age, didn't invent glamour, but he gave it an enduring visual idiom. In the stills he took from 1929 until he was drafted in 1942, languid ladies' downcast eyes are framed with impossibly long eyelashes (painted on the negative by the photographer). Light bounces from satin, lacquer, and bright tresses sprawled across the floor. Shadow and reflection create mystery, inviting viewers to fill in the unseen details according to their own desires. A Hurrell photo is "a beautiful Rohrschach," says collector Louis D'Elia, who co-curated the Palm Springs exhibit.