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. People mill about, and an officer watches the site of the destroyed Castilian Products plant located at 1027 Seward Street in Hollywood. The fire on March 5, 1938 gutted this cosmetic and soap manufacturing building. A chemical tank exploded, spreading the fire endangering a neighboring film studio. It took six fire companies around the area more than two hours to put out.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
Castilian Products Corporation (Los Angeles, Calif.) Soap factories--California--Los Angeles Building failures--California--Los Angeles Fires--California--Los Angeles Lost architecture--California--Hollywood (Los Angeles) Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) Schultheis Collection photographs
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