One of America's most famous photographers of celebrities and film stars, Slim Aarons, has died. He was 89.
For decades he recorded for many of the world's top magazines, the doings of such stars as Gary Cooper, Joan Collins, Katherine Hepburn, Truman Capote and Noel Coward. He also photographed royalty .
One of his most famous pictures was of Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and JimmyStewart, all dressed up in white ties and tails standing drinking and chatting at the bar in Romanoff;s Resturant in Hollywood on New Years Eve 1957. It was labeled The Kings of Hollywood. Smithsonian Magazine called it the Mt Rushmore of Stardom.
Another of his famous pictures was the 10th Duke of Marlborough and his wife sitting on a bench in the garden of Blenheim Palace, he reading The Times, she embroiderimg the family coat of arms.
A New Yorker, Slim (real name George Allen Aarons) served during the Second World War as a US Army photographer.
Afterwards he and his buddy Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist, moved to Hollywood where his career took off. Although he was awarded a Purple Heart during the war, he often said the only beach worth landing on was one "decorated with beautiful semi-nude girls tanning in the sun."
At one time Aarons ran the Life magazine bureau in Rome He also compiled three books, whose titles reflected his life: A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of a Good Life (1974), Once Upon a Time (2003) and A Place in the Sun (2005).
He died from a heart attack and a stroke.
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