Photo by Douglas Kirkland

Douglas Kirkland (1934-2022) was a Canadian-born American photographer who became famous for his film stills and his photos of celebrities. Acclaimed are his pictures of Marilyn Monroe, taken just a year before her death. In the late 1970s, many of his film star photos were used for the Personality series by postcard publishing house Coral-Lee in California.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, Personality no. #60/1980. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact, 1980.

English film and stage actress, singer, and author Julie Andrews (1935) was a former child actress and singer who rose to prominence starring in such stage musicals as 'My Fair Lady' and 'Camelot'. She is best known for her roles in the films Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). Her voice spanned four octaves until it was damaged by a throat operation in 1997. In the 2000s she had a major revival of her film career in family films such as The Princess Diaries (2001) and the Shrek animated films (2004–2010).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma Couleur by Editions Le Malibran, Paris, 1989, no. MC 24. Photo: Douglas Kirkland. Caption: Jack Nicholson (1973).

Jack Nicholson (1937) is an American actor and filmmaker who has performed for over sixty years. His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and several Roger Corman films. He is now known for playing a wide range of starring or supporting roles, including satirical comedy, romance, and dark portrayals of anti-heroes and villainous characters. In many of his films, he has played someone who rebels against the social structure. Nicholson's 12 Oscar nominations make him the most nominated male actor ever. He won the Oscars for Best Actor twice – for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and As Good as It Gets (1997), and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983).


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, Personality no. 16. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / 1978 Contact. Caption: Bob Hope - Sardonic, fast-talking TV and Screen genius Bob Hope is not only Mr. Show Business but is probably the all-time world master of a great humor form, the topical one-liner"/ May, 1976.

British-born, American Comedian Bob Hope (1903-2003) started his career that spanned nearly 80 years, onstage as a dancer and comedian. He made his film debut in Paramount Follies (1938) singing 'Thanks for the Memory', which became his signature song. With Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, he appeared in the highly successful Road to ... comedies (1940-1952), and in many other films until the early 1970s. During World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars he spent much time entertaining the troops in the field. For these activities, he received five honorary Academy Awards.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality #5 Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact, 1977.

Sonny & Cher was an American pop music duo, actors, singers, and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono. They achieved fame with two hit songs in 1965, Baby Don't Go and I Got You Babe. Performing under her first name, Cher (1946) went on to a highly successful career as a solo singer and actress, while Sonny Bono was eventually elected to Congress as a U.S. Representative from California.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality #12. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact, 1977.

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. 20. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1978. Caption: Diahann Carol (sic) - Star pop singer, was born in New York in 1935. Her career has spanned a multitude of super-successful nightclub, screen and TV engagements.

On 4 October 2019, Diahann Carroll has died aged 84 of cancer. She was among the foremost African-American actors to break down long-seated prejudices in casting. Carroll was the first black performer to have her sitcom, Julia, which ran for 86 episodes (1968-1971), and the first to win an Emmy in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. She also won a Tony for her performance in the Broadway musical 'No Strings', written especially for her by Richard Rodgers, which highlighted an interracial romance without mentioning colour. Her films included Carmen Jones (1954), Porgy and Bess (1959), Paris Blues (1961) and Claudine (1974). Her conniving and glamorous Dominique Deveraux was a match for Joan Collins’ Alexis Colby, doubling the 'nasty in Dynasty (1984-1997).

A Night with Marilyn

Douglas Morley Kirkland was born in 1934 in Toronto. From the age of three, he grew up near Fort Erie in Ontario where his father ran a small suit store. His dream to become a photographer began while looking at Life magazines his father brought home from that store. He photographed his family and friends. Kirkland moved to the U.S. to attend Seneca Vocational High School in Buffalo, New York and later settled in New York.

He worked at a printing studio in Richmond, Virginia, before spending time as an assistant to photographer Sherwin Greenberg from 1957 to 1958. Kirkland began his career as a photographer at the age of 24 as a staff photographer at the US magazine Look, a large-format glossy magazine with a wide range of subjects that was founded in 1937.

In 1961, Look commissioned him to take photos with Marilyn Monroe for its 25th anniversary issue. The resulting series, 'A Night with Marilyn', which featured Monroe seductively wrapped in white bed sheets, made Kirkland world-famous. In the summer of 1962, also for Look, he produced his series on the then 79-year-old Coco Chanel, whom he accompanied with his camera for three weeks in Paris. During the filming of Cleopatra in 1963, Kirkland went to an interview that Taylor had agreed to give Look magazine in Las Vegas — on the condition there wouldn't be any pictures. Kirkland was sent on the off-chance she would allow him to photograph her. After describing himself as new to the magazine, Kirkland managed to convince Taylor to sit for a few pictures. He described it as the true beginning of his life as a photographer.

As a photojournalist for Look and later Life, Douglas Kirkland reported from Greece, Lebanon and Japan and among his assignments was also fashion work. Kirkland also worked as a photographer on film sets for some major Hollywood films, including The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) with Julie Andrews, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and the Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Over time, he portrayed more and more well-known personalities, from Man Ray to Jacques Henri Lartigue and Stephen Hawking. There were also numerous celebrities from the film, show and music business: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Sophia Loren, Bette Davis, Orson Welles, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and many more.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. CL/Personality #22, 1978. Photo: Douglas Kirkland.

American film actress Faye Dunaway (1941) is a classic beauty with high cheekbones and a husky resonant voice. She had her breakthrough as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and became one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1970s with Chinatown (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Network (1976), for which she won the Oscar.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality # 130. Photo: Douglas Kirkland.

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) was an indomitable American stage and film actress, known as a spirited performer with a touch of eccentricity. She introduced into her roles a strength of character previously considered to be undesirable in Hollywood leading ladies. As an actress, she was noted for her brisk upper-class New England accent and tomboyish beauty.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality #48-1979. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

English actor Michael York (1942) is the athletic star of several Shakespeare adaptations and three popular Musketeer films. His blond, blue-eyed boyish looks and plummy accent incarnated a traditional English public-school manliness in such classic films as Joseph Losey's Accident (1967) and Cabaret (1972).


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, no. CL/Personality # 71. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1981.

Richard Burton (1925–1984) was one of the great British actors of the post-World War II period. Although never trained as an actor, he became famous on stage in most of the plays by William Shakespeare. Blessed with a thrillingly theatrical voice, Burton also became, at one time, the highest-paid film actor in the world. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role (without ever winning), and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. His adulterous romance with Elizabeth Taylor became an international scandal and their two tempestuous marriages were covered in detail by the paparazzi.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. CL/Personality 21. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1978.

American actress Raquel Welch (1940) is one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, no. CL/Personality # 52. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1980.

American actress Angie Dickinson (1931) has appeared in more than 50 films and starred on television as Sergeant Leann 'Pepper' Anderson in the successful 1970s crime series Police Woman. Her trademarks are her honey blonde hair (on the postcard she still has her original brunette hair colour), her large brown eyes, her voluptuous figure and her deep sultry voice.

Titanic

Douglas Kirkland's portrait of Charlie Chaplin from 1966 is part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. He is represented with further works in the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, which awards the Oscars, in the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the Houston Centre for Photography, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles and others.

From the mid-1970s, Douglas Kirkland lived in Los Angeles. He worked as a special photographer on over 150 film productions. Later films include Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977) starring John Travolta, Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988) with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, Titanic (James Cameron, 1997), Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), and The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013) with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Kirkland spent more than forty-five days taking still shots on the set of Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). He and director James Cameron created the picture book 'Titanic' (1998) which was the first book of its kind to reach #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and did so on both the hardcover and paperback lists. Kirkland's next book 'A Life in Pictures' was released in 2013. Douglas Kirkland has taught at the Smithsonian Institution, the AFI Conservatory in Hawaii and Los Angeles, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and the Kodak Centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

He received many honours later in life. In 1995, he received the American motion pictures Society of Camera Operators award for his life's work as a still photographer and in 2011 the President's Award of the American Society of Cinematographers. In 2003, he received the Lucie Award in the Achievement in Entertainment category in Los Angeles, which was presented for the first time that year. He received the Nastro D'Argento at the Taormina Film Fest in 2015 and the Outstanding Achievement Award from CAFA, an association of the Canadian fashion industry, in 2019. That year, the documentary film That Click by Luca Severi, which was released at the Festa del Cinema di Roma, honoured him.

Douglas Kirkland died in 2022 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88. From his first marriage to Marian Perry Wright, he had two daughters, Karen and Lisa, and a son Mark Kirkland, one of the directors of the animated series The Simpsons. He met his second wife Françoise Kemmel-Coulter while in Paris photographing Audrey Hepburn in 1966. They married in 1967 and stayed together until his death.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality # 4, 1977, no. SC1768. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

Diana Ross (1944) is an American soul singer and film actress who became one of the most successful artists in the world. She rose to fame with The Supremes and then launched a successful solo career. She received an Oscar nomination for her debut role as Billie Holiday in the film Lady Sings the Blues (1973). From then on she became a dazzling superstar with such worldwide number-one hits as 'Upside Down', 'I'm Coming Out', and 'Endless Love'.


French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. A-C 301. Photo: Douglas Kirkland. Diana Ross, cover photo for 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love' (1981).


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality # 14, 1978, no. C32305. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact. Caption: George Burns - Eighty-two-year-old star of "Oh God" still has it all together after a lifetime of success on stage and screen. An immortal still active on this earth! October, 1975.

George Burns (1896-1996) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and published author. He formed a comedy duo with his wife Gracie Allen and typically played the straight man to her zany roles. At the age of 79, Burns won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Sunshine Boys (1975) and then played the title role in Oh, God! (1977). The remarkably active, amiable old comedian continued performing until his 90s.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality # 89, 1979, no. SC17839. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

American film star Bette Davis (1908-1989) was one of the greatest actors in world cinema history. She dared to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was reputed for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies. Her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality # 18, no. C32309. Photo: Douglas Kirkland. Caption: Anne Bancroft - Star of The Turning Point and other stage and cinematic successes. Ms. Bancroft is the wife of actor-writer-producer-comic Mel Brooks, October 1976.

Anne Bancroft (1931-2005) was an American stage and film actress. She made her breakthrough with the general public with her role as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). She also appeared in several films directed or produced by her husband, Mel Brooks.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality # 11, 1977, no. C31775. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

American model and actress Margaux Hemingway (1954-1996) was the granddaughter of author Ernest Hemingway. She gained success as a supermodel in the mid-1970s and later starred in several films.


American postcard by The American Postcard Co., 1981, no. 285. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

Sources: Jackson Weaver (CBC News), National Portrait Gallery, Wikipedia (German, French and English) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 30 January 2024.