To promote their films and talent, the Hollywood movie studios went to great lengths to find that perfect image that would catch the eye of potential moviegoers, with scantily clad women and pets among the common cliches. This historic photograph, taken in a scenic setting at a sandy beach in Santa Monica—not far from Hollywoodland, itself on its way to becoming the mythical Hollywood—was sent eastward in the dead of winter; eventually circling the globe, it debuted in China the following summer, some nine months later. While one might assume the picture is a typical Hollywood film studio publicity still the evidence points elsewhere.
Dimitri Tiomkin and Albertina Rasch, the New York-based in-demand husband-wife composer-choreographer creative duo looking to expand their concept of American ballet, were in Los Angeles for Hollywood Bowl performances of their music and dance numbers during late summer 1929, during which time they signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to provide ballets with music to the studio’s sound films.
Within a month of signing with MGM the photograph, seen below, was staged at the beach. Pictured in white bathing suits with a rare monogram on the upper left leg—whose exactly?—are members of the Albertina Rasch ballet troupe “rehearsing one of their numbers,” with Dimitri Tiomkin casually dressed and sporting a hat, looking stylish and sophisticated seated at an upright piano conveniently plopped down on a piece of plywood just steps away from wet sand and the surging surf.
While this “rehearsal” did coincide with the making of the Ramon Novarro starring vehicle, Devil-May-Care, with a music score by Herbert Stothart and ballet music for the Rasch dancers by Tiomkin, that filmed ballet took place on a set dressed as the gardens of the chateau at Grenoble and presented as an entertainment for Napoleon with no sand or surf in sight (for technical reasons the Rasch MGM ballets were all recorded indoors on sound stages).
In the days before the photograph was snapped, publicist Ray Coffin, looking to expand his outreach had joined forces with others in New York, London, and Paris to form the Los Angeles office of International Publicists, Ltd. Tiomkin and Rasch were among his first clients, namely “bigger personalities” with international appeal, and this photograph likely resulted from that association. Lending credence that Coffin was behind the photo, and not MGM, is the caption that promotes Tiomkin and Rasch, but not a film or studio.
By the time the photo was published in a Florida newspaper in late September, Tiomkin had already returned to New York to complete his music score for the stage production, Aha! A prominent news photo syndicate, Underwood & Underwood, was responsible for sharing the image widely in November and December.
Someone did a thorough job of distributing the photo. Beyond our shores, imagine living in China and picking up the latest issue of the premier illustrated literary and artistic journal of the era, Rubezh (Рубеж), a popular weekly magazine for the Russian diaspora in the large urban cities of Harbin and Shanghai.
There in a June 1930 issue showcasing the work of a Russian emigré artist under the title, “The career of a musician,” sits Tiomkin surrounded by the bevy of dancers with interlinking arms.
Loosely translated the caption reads, “To the host of Russians who have moved into Hollywood for a major career, one was added not so long ago. This is Dmitry Temkin, piano player and composer.” Dubbed the “Great One,” Tiomkin adds that musicians in Hollywood are highly respected.
Seen at the top of the photo, the tell-tale geological outcropping at Castle Rock beach may no longer exist. Castle Rock was a natural coastal landmark, a prominent formation rising out of the ocean between Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, popular with families and tourists in the 1920s and 1930s.
The area’s growth decimated the iconic location; dynamited to expand the Pacific Coast Highway in 1945, all that remains today are a few rocky remnants.
Screenshot, Castle Rock beach, image ©Google Earth 2025
Among the more than 10,000 photographic prints in the Ernest Marquez Photograph Collection at the Huntington, the image below of eight dancers in various poses with Grecian style costumes on a boulder surrounded by the surf on a beach, presumably in Santa Monica at Castle Rock beach, struck a chord with Patrick Russ. Could they be the Albertina Rasch dancers?
Today, in addition to this website, our featured photograph can be found at the Library of Congress and Getty Images.
Sources
Hollywood Daily Citizen, August 22, 1929, page six. On International Publicists, Ltd.
“Joyful Mood in Physical Manner,” Bayonne Evening News, November 22, 1929
“Interpret Joyful Mood in Dancing,” Wichita Eagle, U. & U. Photo, December 1, 1929
Rubezh (Рубеж), No. 26 (issue 127), June 1930, page 11. Courtesy Olivia Tiomkin.
(Castle Rock Entertainment, the production company founded by the late Rob Reiner, is named after a fictional Maine town of the same name that serves as the setting of several stories by author Stephen King, which itself is named after the fictional mountain fort in William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.)