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Bob Willoughby, born in Los Angeles in 1927, studied cinema at the USC Cinema Department and design with Saul Bass at the Kann Institute of Art. At the same time he apprenticed with many Hollywood photographers as: Wallace Seawell, Paul Hesse, and Glenn Embree during the late 40's. His first magazine assignments were with Harper's Bazaar in the early 50's. He was soon discovered by the film studios and was the first 'outside' photographer to be hired to get space for them in the magazines, starting in 1954, when Warner Brothers asked him to photograph Judy Garland in the final number of "A Star Is Born". This proved successful for them both, (with Willoughby getting his first Life Magazine cover) and it began a 20 year collaboration with the publicity departments of all of the major studios, and provided a new link to the great magazines of the day. Popular Photography called him "The man who virtually invented the photo journalistic motion picture still". His work was literally never out of print for one week during his 20 year career in films. In 1972 he moved to the south of Ireland with his wife, four children and his mother-in-law, Quig. They lived 17 years in a castle on Courtmacsherry Bay, where he translated a book of early Irish poetry; Voices From Ancient Ireland. With the children and grandchildren now scattered to many places in the world, he and his wife Dorothy now live in the south of France.
Willoughby devised a number of technical innovations to get the photographs he needed. He financed the first successful sound blimp of a still-camera, which is now common on most movie sets. He was the only photographer working on films at the time, to use radio-controlled cameras, allowing him unprecedented access for certain shots. He had made special brackets that held his still camera on or over the Panavision cameras.
His photographs can be found in the collections of The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., The National Portrait Gallery, London. The National Museum of Photography, Bradford, UK. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills. CA., The Museum of Modern Art, Film Department, NYC, The Tate Gallery Collection, London, & The Musee de la Photographie et de l'Image, Nice, France.
