Tracking Her Father’s Footsteps
Capturing photos of Hollywood stars was photographer Joe Ackerman’s passion. He operated in a media landscape that was a bit more innocent and less intrusive and perhaps less hungry for the intimate details of popular radio, television and film stars and their lives. Over four decades, Ackerman would collect more than 5,000 autographed photos from established performers to the up-and-coming stars.
Recently, San Pedro resident, Julie Anderson, self-published a glossy hard-bound 192-page book as a homage to her father’s passion.
To curate this book out of 5,000 photos, Anderson chose the most reputably recognizable actors from the golden age of Hollywood including the likes of Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Clark Gable and others — the list just goes on.
“I took those people knowing how important they were to film at that time,” Anderson said. “My father did get a lot of other actors. There were also actors who starred in a lot of different movies but never really became as popular.”
Ackerman’s family was well aware of his hobby but it wasn’t until Anderson published The Golden Age of Hollywood that they understood the depth of his passion.
“He was very private,” Anderson said of her father. “We didn’t even know a lot of the things that he had done such as going out to premieres and stuff like that. A lot of it, he did when he was younger.”
Anderson, who was the second eldest of five children, said her father wasn’t the type of person who would go out and tell everybody everything. She said he felt there was more of his hobby that he did for his own enjoyment.
But he didn’t keep this hobby just for his own enjoyment. He began presenting slideshows featuring his photography and the stories he picked up along the way as he captured his photos.
“For a lot of the places he had put in the manuscript where he did a slideshow and he presented this to different groups in the area, during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. And at that time there were quite a few different places where the stars would go, they would go to the Brown Derby, and they would go to Hollywood Boulevard … they go shopping,” Anderson explained. “They do normal things like everybody else. So back at that time, they were more at ease with being out in the public. Not like today’s Paparazzi.”
Anderson said her dad made it very clear to his family that when he sought an autograph, he would be polite … be a gentleman, and respectful of the stars and say to them, “May I have your autograph?” If they said no, he understood.
Anderson shared an oft-told story of a single interaction between her father and four-time Oscar- winning actress Katharine Hepburn. Anderson explained that her father would go to various events he knew Hollywood actors would attend, like charity tournaments. And so at a charity tennis tournament, he encountered Hepburn who was coming off one of the tennis courts.
“My dad went up and asked her if he could take her picture. She said, ‘Sure, no problem.’ My dad then said, ‘Well do you want to put your tennis shoes down?’ Because she was holding her tennis shoes. ‘I thought maybe you’d want to put them down and not have them in the picture.’ The actress looked at him and said, ‘No, absolutely not. These are my lucky tennis shoes and they’re going to be in the picture.’”
Anderson explained that the story became the quintessential characteristic of Katharine Hepburn for Anderson.
“She was very sweet and everything,” Anderson said. “So [my father] enjoyed that interaction.”
Anderson said of her father’s interaction with the “titan of the skies’’ and Hollywood producer, Howard Hughes, that he didn’t consider him important enough to obtain his autograph. Anderson surmised that it had to do with the timing by which her father encountered Hughes, whose years as a trailblazing aviator were long behind him, even if he owned an airline in his namesake.
“[By the time my father met him] Howard Hughes was a recluse. He had called my dad to find out if he could get some hearing aids because he was having problems with his hearing, and he just wanted to make sure … because he was a germaphobe and all that… that nobody would touch any of the hearing aids. My dad couldn’t say that, no, no one’s going to touch these [hearing aids].”
So Hughes ended up not buying any.
Hearing aids for use on film and television stages was the basis of one of two businesses Ackerman would build that would tie him to film and television production in Hollywood.
Ackerman had patented hearing aids that would allow directors to speak with actors as they’re performing and founded a company that allowed him to rent sound equipment to production teams around Hollywood.
Anderson explained that because her father had patented certain hearing aid technology, he also started working with different sound studios in the film and television industry using his earpiece technology that would allow the director or whoever to talk to the actors without stopping the film from rolling. They could just tell them stuff through this earpiece which later became the ear pieces they use now for music videos and concerts.
“My dad, he worked on a lot of movies back in the ‘80s and ‘90s and 2000s … namely movies where they had a soundtrack. And so they had to incorporate that,” Anderson explained. “So they work with Bette Midler on The Rose. He worked with Robert De Niro on the musical drama New York, New York. He worked on TV shows like Seinfeld and so that brought it full circle for him. So he really enjoyed it.”
Anderson relied on what she learned in her college history courses about black and white films.
“The talkies silent film and then it progressed, to color, with sound quality and everything,” Anderson explained. “I wanted to show that progression, the photos that it started out with, people who were from the silent era all the way through [the talkies]. And then it turned into color.
Anderson also did it this way because she wanted to follow suit The Wizard of Oz, when the movie started out in black and white and progressed to color.
San Pedro has always celebrated its mark on Hollywood. This Los Angeles Harbor Area town has two film festivals and scores of film credits as site locations. Its last remaining theater built at the start of the golden age of Hollywood still stands in its downtown core. At least with the Los Angeles Harbor International Film Festival, we are reminded of the stars that made the film world go round during the golden age of Hollywood. In the case of Joe Ackerman’s family, the golden age of Hollywood is passed down from generation to generation as family lore, allowing Ackerman’s memory to live on.
To purchase the book, visit https://joeackermanshollywood.com.
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