James J. Kriegsmann

His studio occupied a former Hungarian restaurant in the first floor of the Actors’ Equity Building at 165 West 46th Street, New York City, and operated for over 60 years in partnership with his two sons, noted photographers James J. Kriegsmann Jr. and Thomas O. Kriegsmann. In its time the studio was the largest headshot photography studio in the world.

In addition to his work as a photographer to the stars, Kriegsmann wrote hundreds of songs for top recording artists of the day, including the hit "The Happy Organ" for Dave "Baby" Cortez, which was the first instrumental song to reach number one on the Top 100 Billboard charts, in 1959, and has been featured in many films.

In 1940, Kriegsmann hired Brooklyn-born Eugenie "Genie" Conran, a beautiful young woman of 17, who, along with a number of other glamorous and older women, had responded to an ad for a receptionist for his studio. She worked at that position until the studio's closing in 1988. They were married on 2 October 1940, when she was 18, and had three sons, photographers James J. Kriegsmann, Jr. (b. 1942) and Thomas O. Kriegsmann (b. 1948) who took over as photographers at Kriegsmann Studios in the late 60's as the studio extended its reach to encompass headshots, commercial photography and reproduction services, becoming the leading photographic lab in New York City, and Eugene Kriegsmann (b. 1944) of Seattle. They lived in Forest Hills Gardens in Forest Hills, Queens.

Following years of work at the Strand Studio on Broadway, he opened his New York City studio in 1933 on the fourth floor of the Actors Equity Building at 165 West 46th Street, later moving to the ground floor and basement with ample room for large studio, dark rooms and reproduction labs. James J. Kriegsmann was famous for his portraits and publicity shots of celebrities from the 1930s thru the 1960s. Kriegsmann's first celebrity photographs were taken when the famous aerialist family the Flying Wallendas visited the Strand Studio where he was employed, and he was the only employee able to speak with them in their own language. Karl Wallenda and Kriegsmann would become lifelong friends.

James J. Kriegsmann (1 January 1909 – 29 April 1994) was a celebrity and theatrical photographer who worked from 1929 to the 1980s.

Kriegsmann was born on 1 January 1909, in Sadagóra, Bukowina, Austria, the eldest of four children (Rose, b. 1909; Etelka, b. 1911; and Josef b. 1913). He studied classical violin and mandolin as an adolescent, and moved to Vienna as a teenager in pursuit of apprenticeships in portrait photography, eventually receiving a journeyman's license in studio photography from the Photographers Guild of Vienna, just as the Aryanization of photographic studios began across Vienna, resulting in many of Europe's most renowned Jewish photographers living in exile. Facing rising anti-Semitism and no career prospects as a photographer in Vienna, as well as the death of his mother Fannie Kriegsman (née Koerner), Kriegsmann and his siblings left for New York via Hamburg on the S.S. St Louis on 20 September 1929, with little to no ability to speak English.