About Bill Cogan
January 4, 2020
Bill Cogan was born 100 years ago in Brooklyn, New York. During the Great Depression when he was in his teens, he would often wander through the free museums in Manhattan, studying the Rembrandts, which he was particularly drawn to. He went to photography school at the beginning of the 40s and worked for a time as an assistant at a fashion photography house.
In the mid-40s when his younger brother, Lionel, suddenly decided to take off on a trip to California, Bill went along to chaperone. Lionel got to Southern California, took one look around, and was ready to return home. Bill was hooked on Hollywood.
He found many aspiring actors in need of head shots, and his style of theatrical photography was perfectly suited to the decade. In Hollywood in the 40s, known and unknown actors could be found just walking down the street. One day Bill ran into Vincent Price leaving a stage show in makeup, and Bill asked him to pose. This photo of Vincent Price is one of the earliest Bill took in Hollywood.
Bill started a family, taking a day job in 1947 as lighting director at the new television station at KLAC in Hollywood, where Betty White and Leonard Nimoy also worked behind the scenes. In the early 50s, Bill and his wife and baby daughter (a son would follow) relocated to San Francisco, where he specialized in photographing performers at the SF Ballet, the SF Symphony and the SF Opera.
Because of Bill’s Hollywood background, he also worked as a freelance photographer, and ended up at events for movie actors passing through the City. The collection presented here is a sample of some of his favorite actors, which he printed in his darkroom before his passing at the end of 2009.
