Loomis Dean, a Life magazine photographer who made memorable pictures
of the royalty of both Europe and Hollywood, has died. He was 88.
Dean died Wednesday [December 7, 2005] at Sonoma Valley Hospital in Sonoma, Calif., of
complications from a stroke, according to his son, Christopher.
In a photographic career spanning six decades, Dean's leading images
included shirtless Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck trying a one-handed
chin-up on a trapeze bar, the ocean liner Andrea Doria listing in the
Atlantic and writer Ernest Hemingway in Spain the year before he
committed suicide. One of his most memorable photographs for Life was
of cosmopolitan British playwright and composer Noel Coward in the
unlikely setting of the Nevada desert.
Dean shot 52 covers
for Life, either as a freelance photographer or during his two
stretches as a staffer with the magazine, 1947-61 and 1966-69. After
leaving the magazine, Dean found steady freelance work in magazines and
as a still photographer on film sets, including several of the early
James Bond movies starring Sean Connery.
Born in Monticello, Fla., Dean was the son of a grocer and a schoolteacher.
When the Dean family's business failed during the Depression, they
moved to Sarasota, Fla., where Dean's father worked as a curator and
guide at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
Dean
studied engineering at the University of Florida but became fascinated
with photography after watching a friend develop film in a darkroom. He
went off to what is now the Rochester Institute of Technology, which
was known for its photography school.
After earning his
degree, Dean went to work for the Ringling circus as a junior press
agent and, according to his son, cultivated a side job photographing
Ringling's vast array of performers and workers.
He worked
briefly as one of Parade magazine's first photographers but left after
receiving an Army Air Forces commission during World War II. During the
war, he worked in aerial reconnaissance in the Pacific and was along on
a number of air raids over Japan.
His first assignment for Life
in 1946 took him back to the circus: His photograph of clown Lou Jacobs
with a giraffe looking over his shoulder made the magazine's cover and
earned Dean a staff job.
In the era before television, Life
magazine photographers had some of the most glamorous work in
journalism. Life assigned him to cover Hollywood. In 1954, the magazine
published one of his most memorable photos, the shot of Coward dressed
for a night on the town in New York but standing alone in the stark
Nevada desert.
Dean had the idea of asking Coward, who was
then doing a summer engagement at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, to pose
in the desert to illustrate his song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in
the Midday Sun."
As Dean recalled in an interview with John
Loengard for the book "Life Photographers: What They Saw," Coward
wasn't about to partake of the midday sun. "Oh, dear boy, I don't get
up until 4 o'clock in the afternoon," Dean recalled him saying.
But Dean pressed on anyway. As he related to Loengard, he rented a
Cadillac limousine and filled the back seat with a tub loaded with
liquor, tonic and ice cubes — and Coward.
The temperature
that day reached 119 as Coward relaxed in his underwear during the
drive to a spot about 15 miles from Las Vegas. According to Dean,
Coward's dresser helped him into his tuxedo, resulting in the image of
the elegant Coward with a cigarette holder in his mouth against his
shadow on the dry lake bed.
"Splendid! Splendid! What an idea!
If we only had a piano," Coward said of the shoot before hopping back
in the car and stripping down to his underwear for the ride back to Las
Vegas.
In 1956, Life assigned Dean to Paris. While sailing to
Europe on the Ile de France, he was awakened with the news that the
Andrea Doria had collided with another liner, the Stockholm.
The accident occurred close enough to Dean's liner that survivors were being brought aboard.
His photographs of the shaken voyagers and the sinking Andrea Doria
were some of the first on the accident published in a U.S. magazine.
During his years in Europe, Dean photographed communist riots and
fashion shows in Paris, royal weddings throughout Europe and noted
authors including James Jones and William S. Burroughs.
He
spent three weeks with Hemingway in Spain in 1960 for an assignment on
bullfighting. In 1989, Dean published "Hemingway's Spain," about his
experiences with the great writer.
In 1965, Dean won first
prize in a Vatican photography contest for a picture of Pope Paul VI.
The prize included an audience with the pope and $750. According to his
son, it was Dean's favorite honor.
In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Deborah, and two grandsons.
Instead of flowers, donations may be made to the American Child
Photographer's Charity Guild (www.acpcg.com) or the Make-A-Wish
Foundation.
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