Leo Friedman - 2009
photo by Ozier Muhammad/NY Times
Leo Friedman was born in Brooklyn in 1919. His father wanted him to go to design school,
but Friedman chose the stage, appearing with Kitty Carlisle
in White Horse Inn in 1936. In the late '30s, he got a job with producer Mike Todd. At one point, Todd, who was producing
some attractions for the New York World's Fair, shoved a camera in Friedman's hands and told him to take some pictures. During World War II, Friedman served as a photographer in the Army Signal Corps in Europe.
After the war, he befriended stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and shot her midnight wedding to actor Alexander Kirkland.
. . . Jane Fonda in There Was a Little Girl, as well as what he called “the first undress rehearsal” of the nude musical Oh! Calcutta! and glimpses of the backstage romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during Hamlet.
The two split acrimoniously, dissolving their Friedman-Abeles partnership around 1970, and Friedman claims that a large portion of his work was misappropriated by Abeles and donated to the New York Public Library’s performing arts collection at Lincoln Center, as Abeles’s own.
Afterwards, Friedman decided to give his archive to New York Public Library's performing arts as well. The contribution led to an extended disagreement between Friedman and the library. According to Eric Friedman, Friedman's son, the library failed to credit Mr. Friedman with any of the Friedman photos they send out and collect monies on. Now the photos are in limbo, largely uncatalogued, caught in a dispute between the photographer and the Library.
At stake is an extraordinary theater archive: about 4,580 prints and 2,655 contact sheets representing 168 stage productions from the 1950s and ’60s, the golden age of the Broadway musical.
Citing library policy, Scher declined to allow a reporter to view the two collections in the stacks. When several sample boxes of photographs in both collections were pulled out and provided for examination, notations on the back of many of the pictures showed that the original credit to the Friedman-Abeles studio had been scratched out and replaced with a label solely crediting “Joseph Abeles Studio.” He defended the library’s practice of charging fees for reproduction rights to the pictures as an arrangement “Mr. Friedman was comfortable with.”
But in an interview on a visit to New York from his home in Las
Vegas, Mr. Friedman, then 89 and a cancer survivor, said he was most
certainly not comfortable with that, not without being paid, and, in
fact, was quite unhappy. “They’re waiting for me to die,” he said.
Friedman died of complications from pneumonia at his home in Las Vegas on December 2, 2011. He was 92
years old.
After the war, he befriended stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and shot her midnight wedding to actor Alexander Kirkland.
Gypsy Rose Lee & Alexander Kirkland - 1943
photo by Leo Friedman
He photographed the Broadway debuts of Bette Midler in Fiddler on the Roof. . .
photo by Leo Friedman
. . . Barbra Streisand in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Liza
Minnelli in Flora, the Red Menace . . .
Liza Minnelli as Flora in Flora, the Red Menace
photo by Leo Friedman
. . . Jane Fonda in There Was a Little Girl, as well as what he called “the first undress rehearsal” of the nude musical Oh! Calcutta! and glimpses of the backstage romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during Hamlet.
haircut, Toronto - 1964
photo by Leo Friedman
photo by Leo Friedman
In 1954, Friedman and Joseph Abeles, a portrait photographer, became partners in a studio at 351 West 54th Street. “The
way it worked, Abeles would be the portrait photographer, if you
wanted studio shots,” recalled Sol Jacobson, 96, a press agent
who often hired the two to shoot his shows. “You wanted scene shots, Leo
took them.”
Audrey Hepburn
photo by Leo Friedman
The two split acrimoniously, dissolving their Friedman-Abeles partnership around 1970, and Friedman claims that a large portion of his work was misappropriated by Abeles and donated to the New York Public Library’s performing arts collection at Lincoln Center, as Abeles’s own.
Afterwards, Friedman decided to give his archive to New York Public Library's performing arts as well. The contribution led to an extended disagreement between Friedman and the library. According to Eric Friedman, Friedman's son, the library failed to credit Mr. Friedman with any of the Friedman photos they send out and collect monies on. Now the photos are in limbo, largely uncatalogued, caught in a dispute between the photographer and the Library.
At stake is an extraordinary theater archive: about 4,580 prints and 2,655 contact sheets representing 168 stage productions from the 1950s and ’60s, the golden age of the Broadway musical.
Citing library policy, Scher declined to allow a reporter to view the two collections in the stacks. When several sample boxes of photographs in both collections were pulled out and provided for examination, notations on the back of many of the pictures showed that the original credit to the Friedman-Abeles studio had been scratched out and replaced with a label solely crediting “Joseph Abeles Studio.” He defended the library’s practice of charging fees for reproduction rights to the pictures as an arrangement “Mr. Friedman was comfortable with.”
photo by Leo Friedman
photo by Leo Friedman
The
career of Leo Friedman was spent taking pictures of actors in action. He photographed more than 800 shows, including Bye Bye Birdie, The Music Man, Purlie, West Side Story (link below), Silk Stockings, My Fair Lady, Barefoot in the Park, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Coco and on and on . . . .
photo by Leo Friedman
Viewfinder links:
Photographers on the Viewfinder
Net links:
NY Times ~ Leo Friedman: Stuck in a Tangled History
NY Times obit
Playbill obit
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