Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937. A man and his friends attempt to make a human pyramid in Santa Monica. Two men stand on the sand, one in front of the other; a third sits on the shoulders of the man in front, and a fourth stands on the shoulders of the man in back. A fifth man faces them and seems to be directing this acrobatic stunt. A woman that is sitting farther back watches them; bathers can be seen even father still, swimming in the ocean.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;15 x 11 cm. Photographic prints
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