Life Magazine Photographer Myron H. Davis, 90
CHICAGO, IL (April 20, 2010) – Myron H. Davis, 90, one of Life magazine’s early staff photographers, died at the University of Chicago Hospitals on April 17 as a result of injuries incurred when fire broke out in his Hyde Park apartment according to his son, Glenn Davis.
The photographer dropped out of his senior year at the University of Chicago in 1940 to work for the fledgling Life magazine as a freelance photographer, first through the Chicago bureau. When Davis was hired in 1941 he was the youngest photographer on the Life staff.
He was transferred to Washington, where he made memorable pictures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and of General Dwight Eisenhower at the Pentagon. Later he accompanied Eisenhower, then a war hero, to Eisenhower’s boyhood home in Kansas for a Life feature.
In 1943 Davis was sent by Life as a war correspondent photographer to the Southwest Pacific, assigned to General Douglas MacArthur's command. After covering five invasions and catching malaria in New Guinea, he received a draft notice from Chicago. MacArthur sent word that he could stay on as his personal photographer, but Davis declined.
Drafted into the Navy, he reported to Great Lakes Naval Training Station, from which he was discharged after two months due to malaria, which he had contracted in the Pacific.
Born in Chicago on July 3, 1919, Davis was the son of a Kansas school teacher who later was registrar at Morton High School in the Chicago suburb of Cicero.
Davis returned to work for Life as the war ended, making nine Life covers and a photo essay on the University of Chicago and its president, Robert Maynard Hutchins.
He quit Life in 1950 to freelance, working for Ladies Home Journal, Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post. His most celebrated photos are those of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, as lovers in the surf of Hawaii, for the movie "From Here to Eternity."
Davis is survived by his sons Glenn, of San Diego; Keith, of Georgetown, TX; and his daughter Mary, of Oak Park, IL; six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Interment is at Mt. Hope Cemetery, on Chicago’s South Side, and at Davis' request there will be no memorial service.
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