Henri Dauman – the French-born photojournalist who chronicled American life throughout the 1950s and ’60s – died aged 90 on September 16, 2023 at his home in Hampton Bays, as Richard Sandomir reports for the New York Times.
“Henri David Dauman was born on April 5, 1933, in Paris. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland … In May 1941, almost a year after France fell to Germany, his father was summoned and arrested by the Vichy regime and later died in the Auschwitz death camp. In July 1942, when the French police tried to break into their apartment, Henri and his mother slipped away to his Aunt Anna’s apartment … [They] soon fled to a farmhouse in Normandy.
After Paris was liberated in 1944, they returned to their apartment, but their time together was brief. His mother died in 1946 … When his relatives refused to take him in, Henri went to live in the first of two orphanages that became home. As a teenage orphan he had the freedom to work as an apprentice studio photographer, then an assistant fashion photographer and entertainment photographer for Radio Luxembourg and an agency.
In late 1950, at the invitation of an uncle, he emigrated to New York City (though he retained his French citizenship all his life) … In 1954, he began to take pictures of French politicians, artists and movie stars for France-Amérique, a New York City-based newspaper (now a magazine).
As a freelance photographer, Mr. Dauman was a one-man agency who made his mark in the late 1950s and early ’60s with pictures that had a cinematic look, a quality he attributed to his love of the movies, especially the shadowy world of film noir that he explored as a teenage orphan in postwar Paris.
Mr. Dauman’s first assignment for Life was the 1958 marriage of the actress Jean Seberg to François Moreuil in her hometown, Marshalltown, Iowa. His pictures spanned three pages.
In 1960, Mr. Dauman photographed the Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson heavyweight title fight at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. In the documentary, Henri Dauman: Looking Up, he recalled taking a few shots of the bout (which Patterson won) but noticed a Hollywood star ringside who was more intriguing: Ms. Elizabeth Taylor, in a sleeveless, low-cut dress, shouting, cringing and cheering.
‘That sequence made the story,’ he said.
Mr. Dauman followed John F. Kennedy from his campaign for the presidency in 1960 to his inauguration and eventually to his funeral on November 25, 1963. There he captured Jacqueline Kennedy, her face behind a black veil, as she walked in the funeral procession flanked by her husband’s brothers Robert and Edward. His pictures were splashed over five pages of Life magazine.
Mr. Dauman found common ground with Mrs. Kennedy by speaking French to her. Similarly, he chatted with Presley about losing their mothers at a young age. In 1960, he photographed Presley looking forlorn while waving from a train in New Jersey as he headed home to Memphis after his discharge from the Army.
‘His pictures were so much alive, even though they were a moment captured from history; each one had a life of its own,’ the photojournalist Lawrence Schiller, a friend of Mr. Dauman’s, said in a phone interview. ‘They opened the door to a different way to think about what you were viewing.’
In addition to Life, Mr. Dauman’s work appeared from the 1950s through the ’70s in the New York Times Magazine and in Newsweek, Smithsonian, New York, Epoca, Der Stern and Paris Match magazines.
In 1964, again for Life, he photographed a Pop Art gallery show in Manhattan, ‘The American Supermarket,’ in which he captured Andy Warhol standing amid shipping cartons that Warhol had painted and a stack of Campbell’s Soup cans, like the 32 he had famously painted two years earlier.
In 1996, Mr. Dauman and Time Inc. sued the Warhol estate in federal court in New York for copyright infringement over Warhol’s use of the Dauman photo of Mrs. Kennedy at her husband’s funeral for silk screen works, including ‘Sixteen Jackies’ (1964). The case was settled out of court.
Mr. Dauman met his future first wife, Denise Le Goff, at a France-Amérique event. She died in 1985. In addition to his granddaughter Nicole Jones, he is survived by his second wife, Odiana (Somar) Dauman; a daughter and a son from his first marriage, Brigitte Dauman-Suerez and Philippe Dauman, the former president and chief executive of Viacom; a stepson, Denis Somar; five other grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.”
Henri Dauman first photographed Marilyn was at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on January 28, 1958, when she graced the catwalk as part of the annual fashion show in aid of the March of Dimes charity, a fundraiser for medical research into childhood diseases.
Wearing a champagne-coloured, two-piece silk dress, Marilyn posed with Lindy and Sandy Sue Solomon, 6 year-old twins diagnosed with polio. This was Marilyn’s first public appearance after losing her baby in August 1957.
On February 5, 1959, Marilyn attended a preview of Some Like It Hot with husband Arthur Miller at the Loews Theatre on Broadway. ‘She looks lovingly at him, but Mr. Dauman did not see Miller returning her love,’ Richard Sandomir writes of the image shown above left. However, the more intimate shot seen at right suggests otherwise.
The Millers returned to the Loews Theatre on March 28 for the world premiere of Some Like It Hot. Author James Spada likened Marilyn’s glamorous appearance that evening to ‘cotton candy that glows in the dark.’
Then on May 13, Marilyn received her David di Donatello award as Best Foreign Actress – Italy’s highest screen accolade – for The Prince and the Showgirl (1957.) Fellow blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren had previously collected the award on Marilyn’s behalf at the Italian ceremony on June 30, 1958.
A crowd of 400 well-wishers greeted Marilyn and Arthur as they arrived at the Cultural Italian Institute of New York on Park Avenue, and Dauman’s photos from the event were prominently featured in the French and Italian press.
And finally, Henri can be glimpsed behind Marilyn in the image shown below, at left. ‘She was so thrilled to meet Anna Magnani, the Italian actress,’ he recalled. ‘I got them together as well …’
The Marilyn Report 
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