Rex Simpson Hardy; LIFE photographer
Hyfler/Rosner
APRIL 18, 2004, SUNDAY, FINAL EDITION
Rex Simpson Hardy -- photographer for LIFE Magazine
BYLINE: Michael Taylor
Services will be held in Pebble Beach on Thursday for Rex
Simpson Hardy, a multi-talented man who was one of LIFE
Magazine's first photographers and went on to become a
decorated naval aviator, a civilian test pilot and collector
of that quintessential British car, the Aston Martin.
Mr. Hardy died of cancer April 7 at his home in Monterey. He
was 88 and, with the exception of three years in England,
had lived since 1958 in Los Altos Hills, Santa Rosa and
Monterey.
Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Hardy was raised in Southern
California and attended Beverly Hills High School. While
still in high school, he bought a used 35mm Leica camera and
then developed his talent while at Stanford University,
according to his son, Thomas Hardy of San Francisco.
Mr. Hardy was the photographer who shot the famous LIFE
cover of Aug. 22, 1938, showing Fred Astaire hoofing it with
Ginger Rogers. He also did cover shots of Harpo Marx, as
well as Lucius Beebe, the author, bon vivant and owner of
elaborate private railroad cars. Mr. Hardy was blessed with
being in on the ground floor of one of the great eras of
photojournalism, working with such star photographers as
Peter Stackpole, Carl Mydans, Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel
Adams and Edward Steichen.
In an interview he gave 11 years ago for John Loengard's
book, "LIFE Photographers: What They Saw," Mr. Hardy talked
about the lucky chance that brought him to LIFE -- a friend
was opening a Los Angeles office for the magazine and hired
Mr. Hardy for $30 a week during his senior year at Stanford.
"My three covers were all surprises to me," Mr. Hardy told
Loengard. "Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers had been
taken on a movie set where they were rehearsing. I was just
snapping away and made 30 or 40 pictures. Months later, the
magazine came out with one of the photographs on the cover.
"I took Harpo Marx at a weekend party in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. He didn't have his wig and was sensitive about
his baldness, so he made a little crown of leaves and put it
on. I snapped his picture, and again to my surprise, there
was Marx posing like a Greek emperor on LIFE's cover. The
third was just as coincidental. Some editor suggested I go
see Lucius Beebe, who was a well-known bon vivant at the
time. We hit it off, and he put on a fancy vest and a top
hat and wore a heavy watch chain across the vest."
Mr. Hardy worked for LIFE out of Los Angeles and New York,
but in 1939, he tired of disagreements with one of his
bosses and also began to realize that maybe he wasn't cut
out for the life of a photographer.
"I lacked the talent that the rest of these people had, as
well as the temperament," Mr. Hardy told Loengard. "I guess
I lacked the ego of the performer. ... It was a kind of
world that I didn't feel comfortable in."
With World War II nearing, Mr. Hardy followed his budding
love of aviation, joined the Navy and was trained to fly.
"From that, I went to the Solomon Islands (in the Pacific
theater) as the commander of a big B-24 bomber, which had
one of the four bomb bays converted to mapping cameras." He
had found his niche, "so I simply stayed in aviation the
rest of my life."
Compared to snapping movie stars for LIFE, his new
occupation was a bit riskier.
"He was flying reconnaissance missions," Thomas Hardy said,
referring to overflights of Japanese-held islands in the
Pacific during World War II. "He'd be dropping huge flash
bombs to light up the targets and then the Japanese Zeroes
(fighter aircraft) would be up in the air and he'd have to
hightail it back home."
Chuck Tucker, an 84-year-old retired test pilot who had
known Mr. Hardy since 1947, said his friend would fly "the
advance airplane on many Navy strikes. He took the first
photos and he had some pretty hairy escapes. On one of them,
he told me, they'd lost two of the four engines."
"They were getting ready to ditch in the ocean -- they were
running out of fuel -- but somehow, by tossing stuff
overboard and flying for a god-awful amount of time, they
made it back to land," Tucker said. Mr. Hardy received the
Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Gold Star.
Tucker said Mr. Hardy was a "very educated guy and an
Anglophile. He loved everything that had to do with the
British. He could rattle off the names of every British king
that ever was."
Mr. Hardy also had an Aston Martin DB2, from the early
1950s, and three Aston Martins from the 1930s. His son said
he used the old cars for daily transportation and, unlike
many collectors, he would drive his precious cars to classic
car shows, rather than haul them in trailers.
After the war, as flight department chief in the special
weapons division of Northrop Aircraft Co. (now Northrop
Grumman), Mr. Hardy flew a myriad of aircraft, including the
P61 Black Widow, his family said.
After leaving Northrop, he spent 15 years as chief pilot for
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. (now Lockheed Martin Corp.)
and managed the firm's corporate air transport department,
based at the San Jose Airport.
In 1978, Mr. Hardy joined a small group of retired pilots
and air traffic controllers in NASA's Aviation Safety
Reporting System and edited NASA's monthly aviation safety
bulletin Callback. In October 1987, he formally retired, but
kept writing his monthly column, "Still Squawking."
In addition to his son, Mr. Hardy is survived by his wife,
Janet Hardy of Monterey; a sister, Alice Grady of Laguna
Niguel (Orange County); four daughters, Carol Hardy of Port
Townsend, Wash., Lucia Hardy of Eugene, Ore., Wendy Keedy of
Riverside, and Pip Hardy of Cambridge, England. He is also
survived by 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Thursday's services will be held at 4 p.m. at Church of the
Forest, Robert Louis Stevenson School, Forest Lake Road,
Pebble Beach.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, This LIFE Magazine cover of Ginger Rogers
and Fred Astaire was snapped in a movie studio and later
graced the magazine.
Hyfler/Rosner
A LIFE OF FLIGHT, PHOTOGRAPHY
Photographer/aviator Rex Hardy was known by friends and
family as a modern Renaissance man
By KATHRYN McKENZIE NICHOLS
Herald Staff Writer
Photographer/aviator Rex Hardy was one of those rare men,
one possessing an adventurous spirit but also treasuring
home and family.
Hardy, 88, died April 7 at his Monterey home with Jan, his
wife of 52 years, by his side. He had been diagnosed with
cancer the year before.
The 19-year resident of Monterey was known by friends and
family as a modern Renaissance man, having enjoyed careers
as a photographer, test pilot and NASA consultant on top of
his longtime fascinations with aviation and automobiles.
"Flying was really the biggest part of his life," said Jan
Hardy. "If you asked him what he was, he would say, 'An
aviator.'"
"He was modest, but with much to be proud of," said his
daughter, Pip Hardy. "He inspired a lot of people."
Hardy's zest for life revealed itself in his many passions.
One was cars: He showed his lovingly restored automobiles at
the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and won a prize there
for his 1935 Ulster LM20, a retired LeMans-winning race car.
But he may be best remembered by the world at large for the
photographs he took for Life magazine in the 1930s,
featuring glamorous stars of Hollywood's Golden Era such as
Tyrone Power, Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart.
Hardy was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 9, 1915, into a family
of lawyers. His grandfather and father were judges; his
mother had studied law but did not pursue it after marriage.
Hardy attended Stanford University, where he discovered
airplanes and photography about the same time. He made his
first solo flight when he was just 18.
He became enthralled with hand-held Leica cameras, which
eventually led to his first career. He was hired by the
fledgling Life magazine at age 21. The magazine was an
immediate success, in no small part because of its coverage
of Hollywood movie idols.
Hardy became known for his photos of the stars at play, a
far cry from the carefully controlled studio portraiture
then in vogue. And so he took pictures of Jimmy Stewart and
Bing Crosby at the racetrack, Joan Crawford cuddling her dog
and George Gershwin at the piano.
"To my acute embarrassment, I was invariably billed as
'Life's youngest photographer,'" Hardy recalled in a 1997
interview with The Herald.
One of his most famous photos is the image of Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers that appeared on the cover of Life in
1938, dancing something called "The Tam." His two other Life
covers were of Harpo Marx and Lucius Beebe.
Numerous other pictures and stories by Hardy, including a
photo essay about voodoo in Haiti, appeared in the pages of
Life. His work was later honored at an exhibition of his
photographs at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences in Beverly Hills in 1996.
Hardy studied photography with Peter Stackpole and came to
know Edward Steichen well. He also struck up friendships
with photographers Margaret Bourke White and Ansel Adams.
Just before World War II, Hardy was recruited to join film
director John Ford in producing training, propaganda and
other films for the armed forces. He requested active duty,
however, and was soon in training at Pensacola to become a
naval aviator. Hardy was aboard the USS Saratoga when it
arrived at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 11, 1941.
Because of his photography experience, he was charged with
equipping aircraft with mapping cameras and training pilots
in photo reconnaissance techniques. He flew PBY Catalinas on
anti-submarine patrol in the Caribbean and photo
reconnaissance in PB4Ys, more commonly known as B-24
Liberators, in advance of all Pacific campaigns, including
Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
Hardy also served in the naval reserve and upon retirement
was promoted to captain. Among his many military awards were
the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with Gold Star,
and Presidential Unit Commendation.
After the war, he went to work for Northrop, where he helped
flight-test the Flying Wing and Black Widow, eventually
became chief of the flight department, special weapons
section, and on many occasions served as Jack Northrop's
personal pilot. In 1956 he went to work for the new Lockheed
Missiles and Space Co. as chief pilot.
He married Janet Cooper in 1951 after his first marriage
ended in divorce. During their courtship, Jan Hardy said, he
would fly Black Widows from Los Angeles to San Francisco on
test flights, and "buzzed my house in San Mateo so I would
know when to meet him at the airport."
The Hardys lived in Los Altos for many years but also lived
for three years in England, one of Hardy's favorite places.
Upon returning to Los Altos in the early 1970s, Hardy became
projects manager for NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting
System, and founded its safety bulletin, "Callback."
Hardy would go on consulting for NASA until age 75, when he
finally retired for good.
The Hardys moved to Monterey in 1985, because they had often
vacationed on the Peninsula and had friends in the area.
"After England, it was his favorite place," said Pip Hardy.
Reading, writing and relaxing were his priorities during the
past two decades. Hardy frequently wrote articles on
aviation and his other passions, including some for The
Herald. He embraced computers, purchasing an Apple Macintosh
early in the 1990s. When macular degeneration caused his
eyesight to fail, a large monitor enabled him to maintain
contact with the outside world via e-mail and the Web.
He had a long love affair with Aston Martin cars and was an
honorary vice president of the international Aston Martin
Owners Club.
Pip Hardy said her father maintained his regular regimen
until the day before he died, rising early to shave, sitting
outside on the deck to smoke his pipe, listening to a
talking book and enjoying a martini with two olives before
dinner.
In addition to his wife, Hardy is survived by his sister,
Alice, of Orange County; his children, Carol Hardy of Port
Townsend, Wash., Lucia Hardy of Eugene, Ore., Wendy Hardy
Keedy of Riverside, Pip Hardy of Cambridge, England, and Tom
Hardy of San Francisco; 11 grandchildren; and four
great-grandchildren.
A service will be held at Church in the Forest, Forest Lake
Road, Pebble Beach, at 4 p.m. April 22. It will be followed
by a gathering at the Montsalas Clubhouse off Old Salinas
Highway in Monterey.
