Slim Aarons | King of Hollywood Photography
Slim Aaron’s most celebrated image was shot on New Year’s Eve of 1957 in the Crown Room at Romanoff’s restaurant in Hollywood. Called ”The Kings of Hollywood,” it showed Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart — what Smithsonian magazine called ”a Mount Rushmore of stardom” and the novelist Louis Auchincloss ”the very image of American he-men.”
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The men are laughing. Mr. Aarons sometimes said he did not know why. In all truth, those chortling stars in ”The Kings of Hollywood,” Mr. Aarons sometimes admitted, were really laughing at him. Mr. Gable had said how bad he thought Mr. Aarons’s acting was in a small movie part.
During a career that spanned more than five decades, Aarons photographed many of the most famous faces of the late 20th century, including Humphrey Bogart, Louis Armstrong, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana and the Kennedys.
He captured, better than anyone, the affluent at ease. And to hear Slim tell the story behind his most famous works is well, priceless.
”Attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places” was his mantra.
”I knew everyone,” he said in an interview with The Independent in 2002. ”They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn’t hurt them. I was one of them.” –Slim Aarons
Jackie Onassis was a photographer herself– that’s how she met her future husband Jack Kennedy. That’s his hand in the photo.
“Three strands of pearls, makes a nice girl.” –Slim Aarons
Thomas Taylor and Bing Crosby hamming on Pebble Beach golf course 1977, photographed by Slim Aarons.
Noël Coward and Truman Capote used words to record this rarefied universe, but Mr. Aarons’s photographs in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and Life showed it.
Aarons gained entree to villas, yachts and chalets by becoming one of the crowd. He told of sailing with Katharine Hepburn and seeing a drowning man. After being rescued, the man pulled out a camera and started shooting Miss Hepburn. She threatened to break it on his head. Mr. Aarons stood by, welcomed as a valued guest, who happened to be a photographer.
George Allen Aarons was born in Manhattan on Oct. 29, 1916. He was reared in New York and New Hampshire and was an Army photographer in World War II. His twin brother, Peter, was killed in the war.Afterward, he and his Army buddy Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist, headed for Hollywood.
Slim Aarons, who won a Purple Heart, said combat had taught him that the only beach worth landing on was ”decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun.” He opened a bureau for Life magazine in Rome, where he vowed to make a career out of photographing beautiful people, doing it his own way with natural surroundings, little makeup and no artificial light. In 1951 Slim Aarons married a young Life employee, Lorita Dewart.
The photojournalist who traveled the world to capture the essence of the rich and famous and made a career out of what he called “photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,” died at the age of 89, 2006.
The family for many years lived in Katonah, N.Y., spending winters in Gstaad or Palm Beach, and summers on the French or Italian Rivieras. In New York Mr. Aarons photographed all of Leland Hayward’s stage productions. In 1974 he published ”A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life.”A sequel, ”Once Upon a Time,” in part a reprise of the first book, was published in 2003. In 2005 a third book, ”A Place in the Sun,” came out.
He had a rapport with stars: When Jimmy Stewart was approached by strangers, he joked, ”No, I am Slim Aarons.” It is likely that Mr. Aarons was the model for Stewart’s part as the fascinated watcher in Alfred Hitchcock’s ”Rear Window,” and his apartment surely inspired the one in the film.
