Phil Stern

True, the old saw goes "a picture's worth a thousand words." But in photographer Phil Stern's case it's simpler: A good picture is worth a pithy remark. A blue one-liner. Perhaps some sparky aphorism -- with legs, of course. Just as long as the image is straight and to the point. Much like the man who made it. If you're lucky enough, Stern might invite you inside his home, and give you a little more back story on a particular image.

Generally a picture is worth a thousand words, but in the case of Phil Stern it is worth a lot more, so this review will be short; his pictures speak for themselves. The photos in this large-format collection, 11 1/2 by 14 inches, are as real as Life -- and printed on better paper. The three sections of photos -- "World War II," "The Jazz Life Behind the Scenes" and "Hollywood" -- are breathtaking in their immediacy.

Generally a picture is worth a thousand words, but in the case of Phil Stern it is worth a lot more, so this review will be short; his pictures speak for themselves. The photos in this large-format collection, 11 1/2 by 14 inches, are as real as Life -- and printed on better paper. The three sections of photos -- "World War II," "The Jazz Life Behind the Scenes" and "Hollywood" -- are breathtaking in their immediacy.

True, the old saw goes "a picture's worth a thousand words." But in photographer Phil Stern's case it's simpler: A good picture is worth a pithy remark. A blue one-liner. Perhaps some sparky aphorism -- with legs, of course. Just as long as the image is straight and to the point. Much like the man who made it. If you're lucky enough, Stern might invite you inside his home, and give you a little more back story on a particular image.

Once upon a time, before she was the ultimate screen sex symbol, before she became an icon and source material for generations of writers and artists, Marilyn Monroe was a working actress. She died 50 years ago this Sunday at the age of 36 from an overdose and in the intervening years the actual person has disappeared behind the myth of "Marilyn Monroe. " A visit to her place of rest at the Westwood Village Memorial Park offers testimony to the power of her memory. The wall of her crypt had to be replaced multiple times because of fans who made a pilgrimage there to caress, embrace and kiss it. But she was real, and to those who knew her Monroe was a devoted, if troubled, actress who took her craft seriously.

Sunday is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death.  One of the many disappointments to befall the actress'  tragic life was her struggle to have a child, having suffered multiple miscarriages. Very few images of a pregnant Monroe exist but famed celebrity photograper Phil Stern found himself at the right place at the right time during her last pregnancy with third husband, playwright Arthur Miller. In 1958, Look magazine assigned Stern to capture what studio mogul Sam Goldwyn saw through his office window.

Why is Marilyn Monroe still an American icon 50 years after her death? She is endlessly analyzed in films and biographies; her image appears on T-shirts and posters; her popularity is reflected in the 52,000 Marilyn-related items for sale on EBay. My USC students, fixated on contemporary pop culture, know little about 1950s Hollywood stars, except for Monroe. Like everyone else, they puzzle over her death, respond to her beauty, recognize her paradoxes: the ur-blond child-woman, the virgin-whore of the Western imagination.

Photographer Phil Stern, 85, is the legendary "Chronicler of Cool." His iconic black-and-white images include actor James Dean (coolly smoking), actor John Wayne (coolly smoking), drummer Shelly Manne (coolly smoking) and the Sinatra Rat Pack (coolly smoking). Before earning his reputation shooting Hollywood and the jazz scene, Stern fought in World War II. He photographed plenty of young warriors. They too were often captured smoking.

NEW YORK - A tiny apartment in a run-down industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn is not where you'd expect to be looking at original color negatives of Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Newmar and Sophia Loren - especially using a bare light bulb and sheet of typing paper as a light box. But that is what happened on a recent night, when the iconic commercial and celebrity photographer Bert Stern - perhaps known...

FOR Los Angeles-based photographer Art Streiber, the Academy Awards ceremony is one of the last places in Hollywood where a shutterbug can capture "honest moments" with celebrities. "It hearkens back to the work of Phil Stern or William Claxton, who had a lot of access to celebrities because they didn't have the big [publicity] machine we do now," he says.

Visual art with a pop-cultural bent (or is it pop culture with a visual art bent?) has turned into a running theme on the Los Angeles scene. The latest is “American Icons,” a photography show that not only focuses on pop cultural heroes, but will take place starting Thursday in that most populist of venues, the outdoor commons of a shopping mall - the Americana at Brand in Glendale. Daniel Miller, who owns Duncan Miller Gallery, says he first conceived of the exhibition of 21 images of star performers and a boxing great, Muhammad Ali, as a regular show for his usual space on Venice Boulevard.