Veronica "Rocky" Cooper: The Best Photographer of Husband Gary Cooper!

Veronica Balfe was born May 23, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York. 

In 1933, Cooper met twenty year old Veronica Balfe, known as Rocky to her friends.  A New York debutant socialite (with Park Avenue and Southampton addresses), her father, Harry Balfe, Jr., was the son of a wealthy industrialist and financier and she was the neice of Cedric Gibbons, the well known Hollywood art director at MGM (as well as the designer of the Oscar, the Academy Awards Statue), whose wife was the actress Dolores Del Rio.  In 1930 Rocky moved to Los Angles (with a chaperone, since she was only seventeen and had just abandoned her finishing school) to flirt with a movie career under the name Sandra Shaw.  By her own admission she wasn't the world's greatest actor, but she had a beaufiul face and gorgeous figure--not particularly unusual in Hollywood.  What was disarmingly unusual was her poise and intelligence, well-bred, elegant style, and being ironically, something of a tomboy.  She was a national skeet-shooting champion and loved swimming, skiing, and riding.  Cooper was immediately smitten and soon he and Rocky became something of an item in Beverly Hills society.  The year she met Cooper she'd been in Hollywood three years and had made three films.

Just six months after they met, Cooper asked her to marry him, and the wedding took place in New York on December 15, 1933.  Rocky maintained her own identity even though her husband was a celebrated movie star, and Cooper surprised the gossip columnists by leaving behind his party-going bachelor days quite happily.  Their only daughter, Maria, was born four years later.  Marriage and fatherhood did nothing to damage his image as the most elegant man in the movies, driving around Hollywood in his chartreuse Duesenberg convertible, aptly named "The Yellow Peril" because of his fast driving habit.

His daughter, Maria Cooper Janis says:

With her camera, my mother, Veronica Cooper documented the life of our family in the group of personal photograghs I've selected for this book (Cary Cooper: Enduring Style).  "Rocky" was a great shot and she kept many meticulous red-leather bound albums.  The pages were filled with festive events, and intimate and private moments with my father.  But she also set about preserving more adventursome memories of their skiing forays in Sun Valley and Aspen, shooting, riding, and their many trips around the world.  There are pictures of poeple well known to the public as well as family friends, interspersed with shots of my father taken by some of the  premier photographers of the day, along with a few pictures he took himself.

She passed away in February 16, 2000 in New York, New York of natural causes.

Here are some examples of her work:

 

With Grace Kelly

Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis

 

Below are a few of Cooper with "Rocky":

 

 

With his family including Maria:

 

 

And the other part of his 'family', love of animals:

 

 

Here is Maria's celebratory book of her father:

 

I highly recommend it!  Thanks for shaing the memories, Maria!

Eric Carpenter: Sexy Ava Gardner Photographer Among Others

Eric Carpenter was born July 8, 1909 and as a young man he began working as a plasterer during the depression. 

Eric Carpenter worked at MGM, aside from a couple of short breaks, from 1933 to the 1960s.  Elevated from office boy, he succeeded Virgil Apger as Bull's assistant and continued in that capacity until he got his union card.

"(I did this) on the condition that I worked in the gallery and not as a still or publicity photographer, because that area was all sewn up.  I didn't have my own gallery, so I set up one on the set and shot there.  That was the end of 1939.

My first solo assignment--and this was a case of make or break--was to photograph Norma Shearer.  She was trying out new photographers at the time and she wanted someone loyal to her.  If she approved, I was in.  Lucky for me she did.  We did an outside session down by her beach house.  I had already learned a lot by watching Hurrell and Bull, but my 'style' was trial and error."

He finally became a portrait photographer at precisely the moment when MGM was cultivating a new crop of stars--Lana Turnerr, Esther Williams and the popular team Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.  A decade later Carpenter photographed Marilyn Monroe when she made 'The Asphalt Jungle' (1950).  He 'photographed her,' wrote Kobal, 'in a pose and clinging dress similar to what he'd successfully used with Lana Turner, most of whose poses had been variations of those dreamed up for Harlow.' In an interview after he retired, Carpenter told Kobal, "The stars were about the only ones who appreciated what you were trying to do.  As far as the producers and executives were concerned, it was just publicity.  They couldn't have cared less."

He also worked as a uncredited still photographer on many great films including 'The Wizard of Oz' for which he did some wonderful Kodachrome stills, 'Singing in the Rain,' 'The Swan'--Grace Kelly's last film--'Gigi', 'Ben Hur,' and 'Please Don't Eat the Daisies' with Doris Day.

With his spirited and beautiful portraits, Carpenter quickly became the favorite photographer of the studio's rising young stars, like Ava Gardner and James Craig, among others.  His rapport with Lana Turner began when she signed with MGM and lasted up to her departure from the studio in the late fifties.  Carpenter was responsible for the most of her torrid, memorable gallery portrait sittings.  His photographs of her are lush and immediate in dazzling whites and sophisticated, plungingly deep backs.  More dynamic than almost any of the other glamour portraits of the era, their effect recalled the Harlow portraits and and anticipated the ones of Monroe at Fox in the early fifties--acres of white fur, opalescent skin, poses inviting by thier ease.

Carpenter once explained:

"The only secret of good work is to get the star to have confidence in you so that you can try to do something interesting.  Stars appreciated what you were trying to do.  The publicity department kept asking for glorified passport photos, which was what the newspapers could use.  It was a fight to get some shading into those pictures."

After the war Carpenter left the profession to join his brother in the shipyard business, but by 1950 he went back at MGM, this time as a production still photographer--a job he held until his retirement in the sixties--working on films like 'Quentin Durward' (1955), 'Beau Brummel (1954), and 'Mutiny on the Bounty' (1962).

He passed away on June 16, 1976 at the age of 66 in Hollywood, California.

Here are some examples of his work:

Clark Gable

Anna Neagle

 

Kathryn Grayson

 

Ann Southern

Ann Southern

 

Ava Gardner and Ava with her then husband, Mickey Rooney below:

 

 

Cyd Charisse

 

 

Elizabeth Taylor

Grace Kelly

Joan Crawford

 

Yvonne DeCarlo

Marilyn Monroe

 

Judy Garland

Lana Turner

 

 

Lucille Ball

 

James Steward

His Stamp

 

 

 

Bud Fraker, famous Audrey Hepburn "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Photographer among other stars

Bud Fraker was born in 1916 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He became interested in photography and decided to go California to pursue a career. In 1934 he studied photography at Los Angeles City College and began working part-time at the Columbia Studios stills laboratory under his brother William 'Bill' Fraker, who was the director of the department.  Following his brother's death, Fraker was hired by Hollywood photographer A. L. 'Whitey' Schafer at Columbia.

Soon after he became the Director of Still Photography at Columbia Studios and took many photos of the stars in the late 1930s.

He moved on from there with Schafer in 1942 to work for Paramount studios in the Publicity Photography Department and assisted in the portrait gallery.  Upon Schafer's death he became the studio's own Director of Still Photography, which he did in the 1940s to the 1960's.

Among the films he did still photography on included "Twentieth Century," with Carole Lombard, "King Creole" with Elvis Presley and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with Audrey Hepburn.  He took the famous portrait photos of her with the long cigarette holder, Tiffany diamond jewelry and black dress.

As a matter of fact, although he photographed many of Paramount's top stars, his most enduring work records Audrey Hepburn during the production of her first two films as a star, 'Roman Holiday' (1953) and 'Sabrina' (1954).

After that he decided to leave Paramount and he began doing freelance work for other studios while running his own photo lab. He retired in 1979.  He passed away in 2002.

Anita Ekberg

 

Anna Magnani

 

Anne Baxter

 

Barbara Stanwyck

 

Betty Hutton

 

Marlon Brando

 

Carole Lombard and John Barrymoore

 

Dean Martin

 

Elvis Presley

 

Clark Gable

 

Ginger Rogers

 

Tragic star Inger Stevens

 

Lizbeth Scott

 

Paulette Goddard

 

Sophia Loren

 

Rosemary Clooney

 

Jane Russell

 

Shelly Winters

 

Sylvia Lewis

 

Elizabeth Taylor

 

Vera Ellen

 

William Holden

 

The photographer had a great relationship with Grace Kelly as well as Audrey Hepburn as you can see below:

 

 

 

Grace below with Fraker:

 

The famous sessions with Audrey during filming and publicity shots made for the filming of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

 

 

 

 

 

Audrey's great love of animals shown below:

 

Filming 'Tiffany's':

 

 

 Other shots of Fraker taking photos of Audrey:

 

 

 His famous photos of Audrey with the long cigarette holder have influenced many art illustrators as shown below:

 

 

Go to Deviant Art for more.  A great place to find art of all kinds.