Meet William Mortensen: Spookiest Citizen in Laguna Beach History

LAGUNA BEACH, CA—Notorious photographer William Mortensen moved from Hollywood to Laguna Beach in 1931. He set up a home, studio and photography school at 1737 S. Coast Highway, and got right to work on "A Pictorial History of Witchcraft & Demonology."

Accompanying Mortensen on the move was his favorite model of the 1920s and future wife Myrdith. The couple were wed by a local judge at the studio on April Fool's 1933.

His school became so coveted by aspiring photographers, in part due to its beautiful, disrobed models, that Mortensen moved to 903 S. Coast Highway at Thalia Street. The Babb Building's most macabre-tinged occupant may or may not haunt Thalia Surf Shop, its current occupant.

In Hollywood, Mortensen had collaborated with Cecil B. DeMille, shot film stills, and photographed such stars as scary-movie icon Lon Chaney, Jean Harlow, It Girl Clara Bow, and King Kong's love interest Fay Wray.

However, his artistic images horrified photography's establishment. They didn't approve of his hands-on manipulations nor his mastery of scientific techniques, many of which he invented. Most of all they vehemently disapproved of his subject matter: bestiality, the occult, the grotesque, witchcraft, and satanic scenes from literature where fear and death were front-and-center.

"For us, Mortensen was the anti-Christ," claimed famed nature photographer Ansel Adams.

That quote adorns the cover of a marvelous book: "American Grotesque: The Life and Art of William Mortensen." Editors Lyle Lytle and Michael Moynihan placed a second quote, from "Popular Photography," on the cover just below Adams' declaration:

"One of the greatest photographers and teachers of photography in the world."

The illustrated book is available from the Laguna Beach library, though Patch will keep renewing it until someone puts a hold on the fascinating tome. It has been the primary source for this story, and not a few nightmares.

Speaking of bestiality and Fay Wray, the cover image of "American Grotesque" is "L'amour," a black & white exterior Mortensen shot in 1935. His incarnation of love depicts a mostly nude woman splayed on the ground beneath an enormously frightening and drooling ape, who bends toward her clutching a chunky tree branch. The model is Myrdith; but Lytle and Moynihan claim the beast is an "unidentified gorilla-suited man."

Once in Laguna Beach, Mortensen befriended a director at the local theater, where the photographer was shooting Myrdith in an Elizabethan dress. George Dunham was a highly educated performer and playwright, who, according to Lytle, had grown disillusioned with staging the farces audiences preferred.

Not only had Mortensen at last found a male model willing and able to transform into anyone or any thing, but he'd made a friend and collaborator.

Dunham ghost-wrote many of the books and essays published under the photographer's name, helped run the school and studio, and created all its brochures and ad copy.

Despite Ansel Adams' condemnation, Mortensen was such a prolific image-maker and writer on all aspects of the photographic process, including many techniques of his own invention, that the grand history of photography—and of Laguna Beach—will never exclude him.

Mortensen's description of the grotesque in his book "Monsters & Madonnas" puts his work in perspective:

"Everything exists through its opposite. For pictures of calm and tranquil beauty to have any meaning, even for 'sweet' pictures to have any meaning, it is necessary that the grotesque and distorted exist.... Those who turn away from the grotesque are losing the richness and completeness of artistic experience."

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