Milton H. Greene
Encyclopedia
Milton H. Greene was a fashion
and celebrity photographer. He was active for over four decades. He is best known for the photoshoots he did with Marilyn Monroe
.
, the fashion photographer known for her covers and fashion pages for Harper's Bazaar
. At the age of twenty-three, Greene was referred to as "Color Photography’s Wonder Boy" .
The majority of Greene's work in the 1950s and 60s appeared in national publications including Life
, Look
, Harper's Bazaar
, Town & Country
and Vogue
.
Along with other eminent photographers such as Richard Avedon
, Cecil Beaton
, Irving Penn
, and Norman Parkinson
, he is credited for bringing fashion photography into the realm of fine art.
Greene was initially renowned for high-fashion photography, but he is best known for his portraits of artists, musicians, film-, television- and theatrical celebrities. His ability as a director enabled him to capture the qualities that personified the real person, as he converted his vision into photographic art. He wanted to capture people’s beauty, which was in the heart, and to show people in an elegant and natural way. His gifts were his timing as well as creating rapport in which to allow oneself to be seen.
The range of Milton Greene’s subjects include such people as Marilyn Monroe
, Frank Sinatra
, Grace Kelly
, Marlene Dietrich
, Sammy Davis, Jr.
, Elizabeth Taylor
, Cary Grant
, Sophia Loren
, Groucho Marx
, Audrey Hepburn
, Andy Warhol
, Judy Garland
, Giacometti, Lauren Hutton
, Alfred Hitchcock
, Romy Schneider
, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Ava Gardner
, Steve McQueen
, Claudia Cardinale
, Paul Newman
, Lauren Bacall
, Dizzy Gillespie
, Catherine Deneuve
and Norman Mailer
as well as many others. But it was his friendship, business relationship and ensuing photographs of Marilyn Monroe for which he is best remembered.
Greene first encountered Marilyn Monroe on assignment for Look Magazine. They quickly became close friends and ultimately formed their own film production company, which produced Bus Stop
and The Prince and the Showgirl
. Before marrying Arthur Miller
, Monroe lived with Greene and his family in their Connecticut farmhouse. During this period, Greene captured some of the most famous photographs taken of Monroe. During their four years together, Greene photographed Monroe in 52 photographic sessions, including the famous "Black Sitting".
Monroe entrusted Greene with her autobiography, called My Story. He would later collaborate with Norman Mailer
on a fictional auto-biography of Monroe, entitled Of Women and Their Elegance.
His photography won him many national and international honors, medals and awards; among them the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Art Director’s Club of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Detroit. One of his last awards was from the Art Director’s Club of New York for his work in Harper's Bazaar.
Art Director's Club (New York/Chicago/Los Angeles/Philadelphia/San Francisco, and Detroit).
Visual/Technical Consultant - Bus Stop,
starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray; 20th Century Fox.
Executive Producer - NBC Paris Special, with Lauren Bacall, Christian Dior, Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan; NBC TV.
Executive Producer - A Half Hour with Candice Bergen,
sponsored by The Wool Bureau; CBS TV.
Executive Producer - Film Titles, Sammy Davis Show, A Weekly Series; NBC TV.
Producer/Director - Coty Awards.
in the 2011 film My Week with Marilyn
.
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
and celebrity photographer. He was active for over four decades. He is best known for the photoshoots he did with Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
.
Life and career
Born in New York on March 14, 1922, Milton Greene began taking pictures at the age of 14. Although he was the recipient of a scholarship to the renowned Pratt Institute, a heightened awareness of the photographic image diverted his attention to the camera and its versatility. He soon apprenticed himself to photojournalist Elliot Elisofen. Before long, his regard for fashion and the camera found him assisting Louise Dahl-WolfeLouise Dahl-Wolfe
Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was a noted American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland.-Background:...
, the fashion photographer known for her covers and fashion pages for Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
. At the age of twenty-three, Greene was referred to as "Color Photography’s Wonder Boy" .
The majority of Greene's work in the 1950s and 60s appeared in national publications including Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, Look
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
, Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, Town & Country
Town & Country (magazine)
Town & Country, formerly the Home Journal and The National Press, is a monthly American lifestyle magazine. It is the oldest continually published general interest magazine in the United States.-Early history:...
and Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
.
Along with other eminent photographers such as Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
, Irving Penn
Irving Penn
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.-Early career:Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he...
, and Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson, CBE was a celebrated English portrait and fashion photographer.-Biography:Parkinson was born in London, and educated at Westminster School. He began his career in 1931 as an apprentice to the court photographers Speaight and Sons Ltd...
, he is credited for bringing fashion photography into the realm of fine art.
Greene was initially renowned for high-fashion photography, but he is best known for his portraits of artists, musicians, film-, television- and theatrical celebrities. His ability as a director enabled him to capture the qualities that personified the real person, as he converted his vision into photographic art. He wanted to capture people’s beauty, which was in the heart, and to show people in an elegant and natural way. His gifts were his timing as well as creating rapport in which to allow oneself to be seen.
The range of Milton Greene’s subjects include such people as Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...
, Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities....
, Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...
, Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
, Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
, Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
, Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, Giacometti, Lauren Hutton
Lauren Hutton
Lauren Hutton is an American model and actress. She is best-known for her starring roles in the movies American Gigolo and Lassiter, and also for her fashion modeling career.-Personal life:...
, Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider was an Austrian-born German film actress who also held French citizenship.-Early life:Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Nazi-era Vienna, six months after the Anschluss, into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian...
, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
, Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
, Claudia Cardinale
Claudia Cardinale
Claudia Cardinale is an Italian actress, and has appeared in some of the most prominent European films of the 1960s and 1970s. The majority of Cardinale's films have been either Italian or French...
, Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
, Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
, Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
, Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
and Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
as well as many others. But it was his friendship, business relationship and ensuing photographs of Marilyn Monroe for which he is best remembered.
Greene first encountered Marilyn Monroe on assignment for Look Magazine. They quickly became close friends and ultimately formed their own film production company, which produced Bus Stop
Bus Stop (film)
Bus Stop is a 1956 film directed by Joshua Logan for 20th Century Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O'Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray and Hope Lange...
and The Prince and the Showgirl
The Prince and the Showgirl
The Prince and the Showgirl is a 1957 American film produced at Pinewood Studios starring Marilyn Monroe and co-starring Laurence Olivier who also served as director and producer.The film was released on 13 June 1957...
. Before marrying Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
, Monroe lived with Greene and his family in their Connecticut farmhouse. During this period, Greene captured some of the most famous photographs taken of Monroe. During their four years together, Greene photographed Monroe in 52 photographic sessions, including the famous "Black Sitting".
Monroe entrusted Greene with her autobiography, called My Story. He would later collaborate with Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
on a fictional auto-biography of Monroe, entitled Of Women and Their Elegance.
His photography won him many national and international honors, medals and awards; among them the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Art Director’s Club of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Detroit. One of his last awards was from the Art Director’s Club of New York for his work in Harper's Bazaar.
Personal life
Milton H. Greene was married to model Amy Greene and they had two sons, Anthony & Joshua.Awards
American Institute of Graphic ArtsArt Director's Club (New York/Chicago/Los Angeles/Philadelphia/San Francisco, and Detroit).
Brief of Expanded Activities
Executive Producer - Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe and Sir Lawrence Olivier; Warner Bros.Visual/Technical Consultant - Bus Stop,
starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray; 20th Century Fox.
Executive Producer - NBC Paris Special, with Lauren Bacall, Christian Dior, Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan; NBC TV.
Executive Producer - A Half Hour with Candice Bergen,
sponsored by The Wool Bureau; CBS TV.
Executive Producer - Film Titles, Sammy Davis Show, A Weekly Series; NBC TV.
Producer/Director - Coty Awards.
Publications
- "But That's Another Story - A photographic Retrospective of his life's work"
- "Of Women and Their Elegance" - A Collaboration: Norman Mailer, Simon & Schuster
- "Marilyn Monroe" – A Biography by Norman Mailer, Grosset & Dunlop, Inc.
- "The Nude in Photography" - Arthur Goldsmith; Ridge Press
- "The Look Book" - Leo Rosten and Harry N. Abrams
- "The Image Makers" - Sixty Years of Hollywood Glamour; McGraw Hill
- "U.S. Camera" - U.S. Camera Publishing
- "20,000 Years of Fashion" - Harry Abrams
- "My Story" - Marilyn Monroe; Stein & Day
- "The Marcel Marceau Counting Book" - Double Day & Co
- "Life Goes to the Movies" - Time-Life Books
- "The Best of Life" - Time-Life Books
- "Life in Camelot; The Kennedy Years" - Time-Life Books
- "The First Fifty Years of Life" - Time-Life Books
- "Miltons Marilyn" -Written by James Kotsilibas-Davis and Joshua Greene
- "My Story: The Autobiography of Marilyn Monroe" The definitive autobiography of Marilyn Monroe
Major Exhibitions
- International Center of Photography - New York
- G. Ray Hawkins - Los Angeles
- Chicago Art Institute
- Nikon House - New York
- Smithsonian Institution - Washington, D.C.
- University of Massachusetts
- Musee du Marais – Paris Tokyo, Japan
- Underwood Gallery / Douglas Elliot Gallery - San Francisco
In Popular Culture
Milton Greene is portrayed by English actor Dominic CooperDominic Cooper
Dominic Edward Cooper is an English actor. He has worked in TV, film, theatre and radio, in productions including Mamma Mia!, The Duchess, The History Boys, and The Devil's Double.- Early life :...
in the 2011 film My Week with Marilyn
My Week with Marilyn
My Week with Marilyn is a British drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Adrian Hodges. It stars Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dougray Scott, Judi Dench and Emma Watson. Based on two books by Colin Clark, it depicts the making of the 1957 film The Prince and the...
.