Bob Willoughby | Vintage Hollywood

Exhibition Dates: August 9 – September 20, 2008

This exhibition of work by Bob Willoughby will feature vintage prints from 1950s, 60s and 70s Hollywood cinema. Willoughby studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California. He then went on to study design with Saul Bass at the Kann Institute of Art. In the late 1940s, he apprenticed with Hollywood photographers Wallace Seawell, Paul Hesse, and Glenn Embree.

In 1954, while working for Harper’s Bazaar, Willoughby was hired by Warner Brothers to photograph Judy Garland in the final number of A Star is Born. He became the first “outside” photographer to shoot on what were originally closed film sets. This opportunity resulted in his first Life Magazine cover and twenty year collaboration with the publicity departments for all the major studios.

Willoughby devised a number of technical innovations to get the photographs he needed. He financed the first successful sound blimp of a still-camera, which is now commonly used. He was the only stills photographer at the time to use radio-controlled camera, allowing him unprecedented access for certain shots. He also made special brackets that held his camera on or over the Panavision cameras. In 2004, Willoughby received the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Still Photography for Motion Pictures. Popular Photography called him “the man who virtually invented the photojournalistic motion picture still”.