We know what you’re like. You love a bit of old school Hollywood glamour, the beautiful people, the famous names, the top down and the sun out, the tipsy giggle of an ingenue, the scent of California in the evening, and the musky odour of power and cigar smoke. If we’re right about that, then believe us when we say that a visit to galerie hiltawsky in Berlin needs to be added towards the top of your to-do lists.
Lawrence Schiller made his name photographing the biggest Hollywood star of the age, of maybe any age. Marilyn Monroe was filming what would be her last picture, the comedy short Something’s Got to Give; Schiller’s documentary pictures were an intimate portrait of the troubled star, and the work made his name. Film stars were a favourite of Schiller’s, and he seemed to have a talent for capturing them at the height of their powers. He didn’t go in for the standard studio shots though. The image of James Earl Jones from 1968 is an astonishing “oh-my-gosh-it’s-James-Earl-Jones” double-take moment, and not just because he’s trying to strangle himself, and Alfred Hitchcock’s typically scene-stealing cameo in the wing-mirror of Tippi Hedren’s convertible on the 101 is a simply brilliant composition. It wasn’t all Hollywood fluff, however, as his documentary work in the moments after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald brilliantly attest to. The deadline for this unmissable show is 7 June.
Lawrence Schiller
Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Schiller
Late afternoon at a bar in Mission Valley,
California, San Diego, 1958
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Schiller
Buster Keaton, MGM back lot, 1965
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Schiller
Robert Kennedy, last campaign April, 1968
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Schiller
Hollywood Pool, Los Angeles 1963
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Schiller
James Earl Jones, Barcelona, Spain, 1968
Photo by Lawrence Schiller
© Copyright Polaris Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved.
