Fred Fehl was an American photographer of Viennese

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 birth and upbringing. He was the cousin of the Art Historian Philipp Fehl

Philipp Fehl

Philipp Fehl was an Austrian artist and art historian. He emigrated to the United States in 1941, and became an artist, author and lecturer at several universities. He retired as Professor Emeritus from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1990...

 and the inventor and Electrical Engineer Paul Eisler

Paul Eisler

Paul Eisler was an Austrian inventor born in Vienna. Among his innovations were the printed circuit board.- Early life and education :...

.

Fehl escaped from Vienna in 1939 with the assistance of the company he worked for, went to briefly to London, and then to New York City. The first person in America to make a career of performance photography, for over forty years he covered Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 as well as dance, opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, and music. He was the permanent photographer of the American Ballet Theater, the New York City Opera

New York City Opera

The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

, and the New York City Ballet

New York City Ballet

New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...

. His pictures have appeared in the New York Times, major national magazines, and in hundreds of books on theater, dance, and music.

Fehl took photographs of over 1,000 Broadway plays. Included are photographs of Shirley Booth

Shirley Booth

Shirley Booth was an American actress.Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950...

, José Ferrer

José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...

, Judith Anderson

Judith Anderson

Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...

, Maurice Evans

Maurice Evans (actor)

Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...

, Lili Palmer, Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...

, Louis Calhern

Louis Calhern

Louis Calhern was an American stage and screen actor.- Early life :Louis Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt on February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. His family left New York City while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he grew up...

, Celeste Holm

Celeste Holm

Celeste Holm is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement , as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable and All About Eve...

, Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

, Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

, Claude Rains

Claude Rains

Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...

, Beatrice Lillie

Beatrice Lillie

Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie was an actress and comedic performer. Following her 1920 marriage to Sir Robert Peel in England, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.-Early career:...

, Rex Harrison

Rex Harrison

Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...

, Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

, Charles Boyer

Charles Boyer

Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...

, John Garfield

John Garfield

John Garfield was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City and in the early 1930s became an important member of the Group Theater. In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner...

, Ezio Pinza

Ezio Pinza

Ezio Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas...

, Mary Martin

Mary Martin

Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

, Arlene Francis

Arlene Francis

Arlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...

, Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...

, Gwen Verdon

Gwen Verdon

Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...

, and Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

.

In addition to the American Ballet Theater and the New York City Ballet, Fred Fehl photographed the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was a ballet company created by members of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo in 1938 after Léonide Massine and René Blum had a falling-out with the co-founder Wassily de Basil...

, The Joffrey Company, Martha Graham

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...

, and the Alvin Ailey Company.

His numerous dance photographs include Martha Graham, Vera Zorina

Vera Zorina

Vera Zorina was a Norwegian ballerina, musical theatre actress and choreographer.-Background:Vera Zorina was born Eva Brigitta Hartwig in Berlin, Germany. Her father Fritz was a German and her mother Billie Hartwig was Norwegian. Both were professional singers...

, André Eglevsky

André Eglevsky

André Eglevsky was a Russian-born American ballet dancer and teacher.Eglevsky was born in Moscow, but was taken to live in France when he was eight, his mother having decided that his talent as a dancer demanded that he be properly trained...

, Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is a Soviet and American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974...

, Suzanne Farrell

Suzanne Farrell

Suzanne Farrell is an eminent 20th century ballerina and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C....

, Peter Martins

Peter Martins

Peter Martins is a Danish ballet dancer and choreographer. Martins was named man of the year by Danish American Society, 1980...

, Heather Watts

Heather Watts

Heather Watts was a principal dancer with New York City Ballet. A native of California, Ms. Watts was born as Linda Heather Watts in Long Beach on September 27, 1953. She started taking up ballet at the age of 10, came to New York at the age of 13 on a Ford Foundation scholarship to attend the...

, Darci Kistler

Darci Kistler

Darci Kistler is a noted American ballerina. She is often said to be the last muse for legendary choreographer George Balanchine.-Biography:...

, Barbara Fisher, Kyra Nichols, Alicia Markova

Alicia Markova

Dame Alicia Markova, DBE, DMus, was an English ballerina and a choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet. Most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and touring internationally, she was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the...

, Erik Bruhn

Erik Bruhn

Erik Belton Evers Bruhn was a Danish ballet dancer, choreographer, company director, actor, and author.- Biography :...

, Carla Fracci

Carla Fracci

Carla Fracci is a ballet dancer and actress. Her career highlights include Nijinsky, Giselle , Complete Bell Telephone Hour Performances: Erik Bruhn 1961-1967.-FAO Ambassador:...

, Natalia Makarova

Natalia Makarova

Nataliya Romanovna Makarova is the legendary Soviet-Russian-born prima ballerina. The History of Dance, published in 1981, notes that “Her performances set standards of artistry and aristocracy of dance which mark her as the finest ballerina of her generation.” She has also won awards as an...

, Judith Jamison

Judith Jamison

Judith Anna Jamison is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater....

, Violette Verdy

Violette Verdy

Violette Verdy is a French ballerina who has worked as a director of dance companies and in other related capacities since her retirement from performing in the late 1970s. Verdy began dance training as a small child and performed with Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées beginning in 1945...

, Allegra Kent

Allegra Kent

Allegra Kent is an American ballet dancer and actress.Born in Santa Monica, Kent studied with Bronislava Nijinska and Carmelita Maracci before joining the School of American Ballet. After graduating, she joined the New York City Ballet in 1953 at the age of 15, and was promoted to principal in 1957...

, Patricia McBride

Patricia McBride

Patricia McBride is a ballerina who spent nearly 30 years dancing with the New York City Ballet....

, José Limón

José Limón

José Arcadio Limón was a pioneer in the field of modern dance and choreography. In 1928, at age 20, he moved to New York City where he studied under Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. In 1946, Limón founded the José Limón Dance Company...

, Dame Margot Fonteyn

Margot Fonteyn

Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias, DBE , was an English ballerina of the 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time...

, Agnes de Mille

Agnes de Mille

Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.-Early years:Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors...

, Anton Dolin

Anton Dolin

Sir Anton Dolin was an English ballet dancer and choreographer.Dolin was born in Slinfold in Sussex as Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay but was generally known as Patrick Kay. He joined Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1921, was a principal there from 1924, and was a principal...

, Alexandra Danilova

Alexandra Danilova

Aleksandra Dionisyevna Danilova was a Russian-born prima ballerina who became an American citizen....

, Maria Tallchief

Maria Tallchief

Maria Tallchief was the first native-American prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is best known for her time with the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1965.-Early life:...

, Lupe Serrano, Tanaquil LeClerq

Tanaquil LeClerq

Tanaquil Le Clercq was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, but her dancing career was ended when she was stricken with polio and paralyzed from the waist down....

, Jillana, Diana Adams

Diana Adams

Diana Adams was an American dancer, leading dancer for the New York City Ballet from 1950 to 1963 and a favorite of George Balanchine, later became a teacher and a dean at the School of American Ballet. Adams was born in Staunton, Virginia and died in San Andreas, California....

, Rosella Hightower

Rosella Hightower

Rosella Hightower was an American ballerina who achieved fame in both the United States and Europe.-Biography:...

, Gelsey Kirkland

Gelsey Kirkland

Gelsey Kirkland is an American ballerina. Kirkland joined the New York City Ballet in 1968 at age fifteen, at the invitation of George Balanchine. She was promoted to soloist in 1969 and principal in 1972...

, Cynthia Gregory

Cynthia Gregory

Cynthia Kathleen Gregory is an American ballerina.-Career:Born in Los Angeles, Gregory’s parents encouraged her to take up dancing when she was five, hoping exercise would stem a history of childhood illnesses. By age six, she was en pointe...

, Karin von Aroldingen, Kay Mazzo, Fernando Bujones

Fernando Bujones

Fernando Bujones was an American ballet dancer.Born in Miami, Florida to Cuban parents, Bujones is regarded as one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century and hailed as one of the greatest American male dancers of his generation.Bujones' first formal ballet classes were in Alicia Alonso's...

, Jacques d'Amboise, Edward Villella

Edward Villella

Edward Villella is an American ballet dancer and choreographer, frequently cited as America's most celebrated male dancer at the time....

, Alicia Alonso

Alicia Alonso

Alicia Alonso Martínez is the Cuban prima ballerina assoluta and choreographer. Her company became the Ballet de Cuba in 1955....

, and many others.

Fehl's opera photographs include the New York City Opera, the San Carlo Opera, Alexander, Igor Kipnis

Igor Kipnis

Igor Kipnis was a well-known American harpsichordist and pianist.-Biography:Born in Berlin, the son of Russian bass Alexander Kipnis, Igor Kipnis moved to the United States with his family in 1938. He learned the piano with his maternal grandfather, Heniot Levy; attended the Westport School of...

, Margaret Severn

Margaret Severn

Margeret Severn was an internationally acclaimed dancer who was most famous for using more than a dozen different Benda masks in The Greenwich Village Follies of 1921....

, Roberta Peters

Roberta Peters

Roberta Peters is an American coloratura soprano.One of the most prominent American singers to achieve lasting fame and success in opera, Peters is noted for her 35-year association with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York...

, Norman Treigle

Norman Treigle

Norman Treigle was an American operatic bass-baritone, who was acclaimed for his great abilities as a singing-actor, and specialized in roles that evoked villainy and terror....

, Judith Raskin

Judith Raskin

Judith Raskin was an American lyric soprano, renowned for her fine voice as well as her acting.Raskin was born in New York to Harry A. Raskin, a high school music teacher, and Lillian Raskin, a grade school teacher. Her father aroused her childhood interest in music, leading her to study violin...

, Dame Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....

, and Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...

.
He photographed the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 Concerts at Lewisohn Stadium

Lewisohn Stadium

Lewisohn Stadium was an amphitheater and athletic facility built on the campus of the City College of New York. It opened in 1915 and was demolished in 1973.-History:...

. His photographs of conductors and musicians includes Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...

, Dmitri Mitropolous, John Browning

John Browning

John Moses Browning , born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world...

, André Watts

André Watts

André Watts is a classical pianist and professor at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University.-Life and early performances:...

, Alesander Brailowsky, Eugene List

Eugene List

Eugene List was an American concert pianist and teacher.-Early life:Eugene List was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He spent his formative years in Los Angeles, California where his father Louis List was a language teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and his mother, Rose, a...

, Lorin Maazel

Lorin Maazel

Lorin Varencove Maazel is an American conductor, violinist and composer.- Early life :Maazel was born to Jewish-American parents in Neuilly-sur-Seine in France and brought up in the United States, primarily at his parents' home in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. His father, Lincoln Maazel , was...

, Andre Kostelanez, Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.- Origin :Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century...

, Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss was a German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Music career:He was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922. His father was the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs...

, Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...

, Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...

, Julius Rudel

Julius Rudel

Julius Rudel is an American opera and orchestra conductor who emigrated to the United States from Austria at the age of 17 and studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He then forged a 35-year career with the New York City Opera, from 1944 to 1979, and was the Music...

, and Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

.

The US Library of Congress holds many Fred Fehl photographs and books. http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&BBID=1791365&v3=1, http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&BBID=3313617&v3=1.

External links

• Fred Fehl Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
  University of Texas at Austin
  The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
  
  
• http://fredfehl.com