Paul Hesse Studio on the Sunset Strip
- Sep 17, 2025
- 4 min read
“You’ve probably heard of Paul Hesse, and if you haven’t you have seen his photographs. They are everywhere—on magazine covers, in cigarette ads, on billboards, and in the homes of just about every star in Hollywood.” —gossip columnist Erskine Johnson (April 25, 1944)
Hesse, a pioneer of color photography, opened a $250,000 portrait studio on the Sunset Strip right next to the Normandie Village (you can see a peaked roof on the left in the photo above). Designed by Milton J. Black, the white stucco and glass brick building also had three adjoining apartments (each occupied by Hesse, his adult son Donald, and talent agent Walter Kane), as well as a garage, pool, and south-facing terrace overlooking Los Angeles.
Inside the luxurious chrome-plated studio there was a modernistic dressing room for Hesse’s subjects and an upstairs waiting room for their entourages.
