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Endpoint: Don Ornitz (Photographer)



created on: 5/12/2025
by: bob (10367)
 
 

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General info :
Donald "Don" R. Ornitz (February 29, 1920, New York City, U.S. – January 14, 1972, Los Angeles County, California, U.S. (aged 51)) was an American photographer.

Don Ornitz was born in New York City, to parents Sadie (née Lesser) and Samuel Ornitz.
In 1928, the family moved to California, where he spent most of his life.

His father was a Jewish social worker and also wrote children’s books, novels, and screenplays. During the persecution of the Communists in the McCarthy era, Samuel Ornitz came to be known as one of the “Hollywood Ten” who were sentenced to prison terms for their “un-American activities” and put on the Hollywood studio blacklists.



As were many members of the entertainment community including Don's father, Samuel Ornitz was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but refused to testify and was fined $1,000.

Don Ornitz and his brother Arthur already started taking courses in photography at high school. Whereas the latter eventually became a cameraman for film and television, Don Ornitz embarked on a career as a professional photographer. From April 1943 he worked as a military photographer in the 166th Signal Photographic Company of the American army.
Ornitz’s assignments included the documentation of the war in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany, the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps, and the discovery of the “Nazi gold” concealed in the Merkers potash mine in Thuringia. Beginning on 19 April 1945, he took pictures in Buchenwald: the funeral service on the muster ground, the inmates’ accommodations in the Little Camp, and the mass graves downhill from the Bismarck Tower.

Don's brother was the cinematographer Arthur J. Ornitz.

After the war he returned to Los Angeles where he and his wife Marguerite raised their daughters Laurel and Ellen.

Ornitz photographed many celebrities, including Raquel Welch, Inger Stevens, Frank Sinatra, Walt Disney, and Audrey Hepburn. His obituary in Popular Photography magazine called him "the Titan of the Hollywood photographers".

He was also a photographer for several magazines, including Playboy, Travel and Camera, The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Pageant, Globe, Sports Illustrated and Life.

His photograph of boys catching insects on a windowpane was selected by Edward Steichen for the 1955 Museum of Modern Art world-touring exhibition The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors.

Ornitz died January 14, 1972, in Los Angeles County, California.
Relations :
Brother of : Arthur J. Ornitz
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Son of : Samuel Ornitz
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Item number : 71461

Submitted by : bob (10367)
on : 05/12/2025
Refined by : bob (10367)
Last updated on: 05/12/2025