Bud Fraker

Bud Fraker was born in 1916 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He became interested in photography and decided to go California to pursue a career.

Soon after he became the Director of Still Photography at Columbia Studios and took many photos of the stars in the late 1930s.

In 1934 he studied photography at Los Angeles City College and began working part-time at the Columbia Studios stills laboratory under his brother William 'Bill' Fraker, who was the director of the department. Following his brother's death, Fraker was hired by Hollywood photographer A. L. 'Whitey' Schafer at Columbia.

Upon Schafer's death he became the studio's Director of Still Photography, which he did in the 1940s to the 1960's. Among the films he did still photography on included "Twentieth Century," with Carole Lombard, "King Creole" with Elvis Presley and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with Audrey Hepburn. He took the famous portrait photos of her with the long cigarette holder, Tiffany Diamond jewelry and black dress.

He moved on from there with Schafer in 1942 to work for Paramount studios in the Publicity Photography Department and assisted in the portrait gallery.

As a matter of fact, although he photographed many of Paramount's top stars, his most enduring work records Audrey Hepburn during the production of her first two films as a star, 'Roman Holiday' (1953) and 'Sabrina' (1954). After that he decided to leave Paramount and he began doing freelance work for other studios while running his own photo lab.

He retired in 1979.