The Press: Picture Business

A little phrase which for a generation has been ubiquitously but impersonally part of the entire U. S. Press, last week expanded itself into a complete, interesting little news story, then subsided and became, modified inwardly but not outwardly, just the same little phrase again: “©Underwood & Underwood.”

From behind the anonymity of their credit line, which appears under photographs of every conceivable nature in U. S. newspapers, magazines, textbooks, albums, the Brothers Elmer and Bert Underwood stepped out to announce that they had sold control of their firm to seven younger executives.

The Underwood dynasty will not die, for among the seven purchasers who have been running the business since the brothers retired five years ago, are two more Underwoods, each a vice president: C. Thomas, son of Elmer; E. Roy, son of Bert. The other new owners are President Ben D. Jennings, Laurence E. Rubel, Artist-Illustrator Lejaren ‘a Killer, M. D. Behrend, Leo G. Hessler.

Forty-eight years ago, peddling books from door to door in Kansas, Bert and Elmer Underwood threw up their jobs. They had discovered that stereoscopic pictures sold much quicker than books. In another year they had canvassers all over the Midwest selling those double-ended postcards which nice people used to slide into felt lined holders and peer at through the marvelous lenses that showed you the real Matterhorn, the actual “Scene at Brighton Beach.” Aware that prosperity lay in “World Educational” pictures, the brothers shouldered their bulky cameras and in 1896 went to Europe. They “did” Egypt, Palestine, the Orient, establishing foreign offices as they went.

The year 1898 found Brother Bert in Thessaly, where Greece and Turkey were at war. The war-ravaged territory suggested the idea of a newspicture service. Bert worked his way back to Athens, developed his plates, sent the prints on to Brother Elmer in London. Elmer made a layout, sold it to the London Illustrated News for 60 guineas ($307). The idea was so novel that he got $300 more from a New York paper for the same scenes. Thus began the first newspaper picture service.

Brother Bert had a way with women and, to the utter amazement of the London Graphic editors, turned up with an intimate photo of Queen Victoria at breakfast with two princesses. When the good queen died, Bert photographed, solemnly and well, the coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra. Elmer, too, got along well with royalty. Armed with a special permit from the Tsar he penetrated the secrecies of Peter and Paul fortress and—unheard of!—photographed the tombs of the Tsar’s imperial ancestors. Thereafter an array of grand dukes and even His Holiness the Metropolitan (head of the Russian Orthodox church) could hardly wait to sit for Brother Elmer. Elmer repeated the performance in Sweden, won from King Oscar praise that paved his way through all Scandinavia. Henrik Ibsen, ill and unable to walk, was gladly wheeled before the lens of the ubiquitous young man from Kansas.

The War dealt a blow ultimately fatal to the Underwoods’ newspicture business. There was no room in the hulls of ships for photographs. In Moscow, Berlin, Hungary, great stores of negatives were lost. Underwood & Underwood then concentrated on U. S. portrait sales and began to make advertising illustrations. How wise they were they learned a decade later. The daily press’s own picture services (International, P. & A., Acme, A. P.), operated at a loss for the sake of the papers’ prestige, now spend fabulous sums to get a picture ahead of the opposition. Underwood & Underwood could never have competed profitably in that race as it is run today.

The Underwoods’ advertising illustration business bids fair to surpass even its portrait work. In New York, Washington and Chicago, illustration studios are equipped like motion picture studios to make the posed “shots” which appear in advertising layouts as drawing room or beach or mountain scenes. The news and portrait files contain more than 2,000,000 negatives;1,000 correspondents over the world serve Underwood with pictures.

Brothers Elmer and Bert live quietly at Summit, N. J. When, occasionally, they travel, they take their cameras.