Frames of Fame

Every picture tells a story. And photographer Leo Fuchs has a story for every one of his pictures.

Before he became a movie producer (“Gambit,” “Malone”), Fuchs was one of the world’s leading “special photographers” on movie sets in Europe and North America in the 1950s and early ‘60s.

A “special photographer,” Fuchs explains, “means I was a magazine photographer and would make arrangements with the studios to go on to films and shoot whatever I thought was publishable and then send them to my agents, who would sell them to magazines.”

Eighty photographs taken by Fuchs over a 12-year period will be exhibited beginning Friday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Grand Lobby. “Shooting Stars: Photographs by Leo Fuchs,” which continues through Oct. 14, includes color and black-and-white photographs taken on the sets of such films as “The Nun’s Story,” “Irma la Douce,” “Lover Come Back,” “Exodus” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

On a recent afternoon, the 72-year-old Fuchs discussed his craft while touring his exhibit at the academy. Walking slowly with the aid of a cane, Fuchs stopped in front of a stunning but simple color portrait of Gregory Peck.

“We were sitting playing cards at his house because he was a good friend of mine,” Fuchs recalls. “At one point, I said to him, ‘Let’s go out in the garden and see if we can do some portraits. The studio could use them.’ So we walked out in the garden and sat down and took the picture. It was that simple. So you see, you don’t need to have all the lights.”

Hanging opposite the Peck photograph is a moody picture of George Peppard from the 1963 war film “The Victors.” Peppard is holding a gun and standing in the aisle of a church in Italy. “This is something I staged with George in a church in Anzio,” Fuchs says.

As matter of courtesy, Fuchs would always show his subjects his photographs before he sent them to his agent. “The actors trusted me,” he says. “I was able to get these people to do things for me. I was able to get to know them. They knew I wouldn’t do anything to make them look ugly.”

Of course, Fuchs had a few tricks up his sleeve. “Sometimes I would put in a few pictures that weren’t very flattering,” he says. “I would go, ‘That’s no good’ and tear them up, which is a very good ploy.”

Also on display is a montage of pictures of Dorothy Malone dressed as Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Marlene Dietrich and Anna Magnani. Even more clever are comical studies of Rock Hudson and Doris Day as Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery, the Keystone Cops, Tarzan and Jane and Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy.

“Rock actually was responsible for me coming to America” to work with the studios, says the Austrian-born Fuchs, who lived in Europe in the ‘50s. “I had befriended Gina Lollobrigida on [the set of] ‘Solomon and Sheba.’ At the end of the film, she said, ‘Why don’t you come to Rome to do a picture I am doing with Rock Hudson?”’

“So I went to work in Rome on ‘Come September.’ One day, Rock said to me, ‘Why don’t you come to California to work on “Lover Come Back” [with Day]?’ I said, ‘Nobody asked me,’ and he said, ‘I’m asking you.’ The next thing I got was a telegram from the head of publicity from Universal inviting me to California to work on ‘Lover Come Back.”’

Fuchs was a special photographer on most Universal films made between 1961 and 1965, including “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Cape Fear,” “40 Pounds of Trouble,” “Strange Bedfellows” and “Bedtime Story.”Fuchs arrives at a couple of portraits of a young, striking Paul Newman that he took on the set of “Exodus” 32 years ago.

“Paul had it in his contract that [director Otto] Preminger couldn’t shout at him,” Fuchs says, smiling. “Preminger was impossible! One day in Jerusalem, we were shooting on the terrace of the King David Hotel. It was one of those nervous days because we had 20 minutes to shoot a dusk shot. Preminger lost his temper. Paul turned to him and said, ‘Otto, you’re shouting.’ And things calmed down.”

Fuchs sold his first picture for a whopping $5 when he was barely a teenager. “The story goes something like this,” says Fuchs, who emigrated with his family from Vienna in 1939.

“I lived in Brooklyn and my father read a Yiddish newspaper called the Day,” Fuchs recalls. “One day in Brooklyn, Eleanor Roosevelt came to do a speech. I took a camera and went to the theater and made a picture of her. That night I developed it and the next morning, instead of going to school, I called the Day and said, ‘I have this photo of Mrs. Roosevelt, will it interest you?’ They said yes and I brought it in and sold it for $5. It was my first sale of pictures.”

Fuchs quit school at 14 to apprentice with the man who ran Globe Photos in New York and struck out on his own two years later.

“My first job was at the Zanzibar nightclub,” Fuchs says. “I was 16. The press agent hired me to sit and wait for celebrities to come in every night. I would photograph them and print the pictures very quickly. I would run to the 11 newspapers and wire services that existed in New York at the time and pass them out to all of them. I was guaranteed $15 a week. The first celebrity I ever photographed was Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. Then I started doing cheesecake pictures and sold them to cheesecake magazines.”

Fuchs then served as a Signal Corps cameraman in Germany from 1951 to 1953 and stayed in Munich after his discharge. “There was a picture [shooting] in 1954 called ‘Magic Fire,”’ Fuchs remembers.

“I met the production manager and I talked him into hiring me to do production stills. When that picture was over, I left Munich and went to Rome. Then I ran into the same production manager and he gave me a job on the picture ‘Lisbon.’ From then on, every time there was a movie I tried to go on [the set]. I got to know all the press agents.”

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“Shooting Stars: Photographs by Leo Fuchs,” Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Grand Lobby, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; weekends, noon-6 p.m. Friday through Oct. 14. Admission is free. For information, call (310) 247-3000. “The actors trusted me. I was able to get these people to do things for me. I was able to get to know them. They knew I wouldn’t do anything to make them look ugly.”