Title supplied by cataloger.; 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. In 1927, Paramount Pictures purchased 2,700 acres of the old Rancho Las Virgenes (now Agoura Hills) for use as a "movie ranch." William Hertz bought the southeast portion in 1953 and built a permanent western town utilizing Paramount Pictures' old prop storage sheds. In 1980 the National Park Service purchased the land and today the Paramount Ranch Western Town is the only working movie western town in the National Park System. The scaffolding and flat faces of the Western town set at Paramount Ranch is visible through the desert scrub against the backdrop of hazy mountains that fade into the sky.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
Paramount Pictures, Inc Motion picture studios--California--Los Angeles County Motion pictures--Setting and scenery--California--Los Angeles County Motion pictures--Production and direction--California--Los Angeles County Unincorporated areas--California--Los Angeles County Mountains--California, Southern Santa Monica Mountains (Calif.) Paramount Ranch (Los Angeles County, Calif.) Malibu Creek State Park (Calif.) Panoramic views Schultheis Collection photographs
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