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”.

Vintage Hollywood presents Willoughby’s vintage prints that document the people and the process of filmmaking. He has documented literally hundreds of Hollywood films. Willoughby’s intimate portraits of stars and directors capture the dramatic moments of Hollywood cinema both on and off the screen. This exhibition will include some of his iconic work from The Graduate, Rosemary’s Baby, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and They Shoot Horses Don’t They and features photographs of Frank Sinatra, Liz Taylor, James Dean and Audrey Hepburn.

His work is included in many permanent collections, including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.,; The National Portrait Gallery, London; The National Media Museum, Bradford, UK; The Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris; Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, CA.; The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Tate Gallery Collection, London, and The Musee de la Photographie et de l’Image, France.

In 1972 he moved to the south of Ireland with his wife, four children and his mother-in-law, Quig. They lived 17 years in a castle on COurtmacsherry Bay, where he translated Voices From Ancient Ireland, a book of early Irish poetry. Willoughby and his wife Dorothy now live in the south of France with the children and grandchildren scattered across the world.