Re: Hollywood & Photography

[Fred Ward <fward@erols.com>]

Hey Stan,

So what s wrong with a Rollei TLR is a 50s commercial? I was a press
photographer in the late 50s (Miami Daily News), and Rollei TLRs
(Rolleiflex and Rolleicords) weres what we used. It was considered a
revolutionary development at the time (since the backward papers and
staffs around the country were still using 4x5 Speed Graphics and
Graphex cameras). 

And there was even one smart-ass college student supplementing his
Rollei work with a 35mm camera, a truly radical idea at the time. I was
using a Leica III with 35mm, 50mm, and 135mm lenses. But the old lab
hand refused to print the negatives, so if I shot 35mm, I had to process
and print them. 

I still have my original 2 1/4 inch negatives of Elvis Presley in his
dressing room and on stage at the Olympia Theatre in Miami as he made
his very first tour following his initial record hit. The stage
performance pictures are with flash on the Rollei, but the dressing room
shots are all available light, a small problem at the time with a 3.5
lens and slower b/w film than now. Prints from the set sell rather well
in Hollywood where film and record execs think it very cool to have
pictures of Elvis on their walls, showing The King as a very young and
thin man. 

Fred Ward