Chapter 26

A Brilliant Man

Hermann Schultheis—Los Angeles

Hermann Schultheis was born to be a Californian. Born in Aachen, Germany, in 1900, he graduated in 1926 with a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering from the Institute of Technology at Aachen. Soon after he graduated, he moved to New York City, where he became an successful electro-acoustic design engineer working for Western Electric and Bell Laboratories and The Radio Electric Clock Companies of New York. Schultheis was instrumental in the development of the clock radio. He also designed an optical printer and a stereoscopic drum camera, and he worked on advancing light transmission and measuring equipment. In addition, he discovered a new process for restoring old paintings for the Art Conservation and Research Laboratory in New York City.

Schultheis married Ethel Wisloh on June 27, 1936, and two years later, they moved to California, after Schultheis was hired by Walt Disney Studios. The Schultheises immediately fell in love with the Southern California lifestyle. The charming and intelligent couple made friends easily and were sought-after guests for parties.

During Schultheis’s three years at Disney, he researched color photography, sound recording, and advanced special effects techniques. His work was used in the Disney films Bambi, Dumbo, Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

During the war years, Schultheis worked for 20th Century Fox as a research and development engineer. While there, he developed electroacoustic instruments and advanced miniature model photography.

Telefilm Studios hired Schultheis as its chief engineer in charge of technical processes and research. He designed the universal camera crane for animation, title, and model work. He was also the co-inventor of a background matte process to make live-action models appear more realistic, a process now known as a blue screen. Schultheis also did research at the California Institute of Technology, where he designed ultra-high-speed cameras and improved the technology for underwater photography. In 1949, Schultheis became the technical research librarian at Librascope, one of the first digital computer companies in the world. As a consultant, he was the go-to guy for stumped engineers.

Hermann was far from being an all-work and no-fun scientist. He was known for his great sense of humor. There are few photos of Schultheis where he is not mugging for the camera. He was also a concert-grade pianist and entertained his friends with brilliant playing.

The blond, well-built, and well-tanned Schultheis was an incessant photographer. There was nothing that Schultheis would not take a photo of: oil wells, farmer’s markets, billboards, county fairs, factories, street life, ribbon cutting ceremonies, and people standing in line. Schultheis loved the ocean and took hundreds of photos—usually with beautiful girls in the frame—of Huntington, Hermosa, Venice, Malibu, and Laguna beaches. During a time when few photographers thought about ethnic minorities, Schultheis documented Japanese, Mexican, Filipino, and Chinese Los Angelinos at work and play. Schultheis had the foresight to thoroughly photograph Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown before it was torn down to make way for the construction of Union Station.

Possibly because he was from the same city as the pioneer of modern architecture and the last director of the Bauhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Schultheis had an eye for architecture and took thousands of photos of homes and businesses in Los Angeles. Thanks to Schultheis’ work, over two thousand of his photographs of then-mundane and now-fascinating aspects of Los Angeles belong to the Los Angeles Public Library.

Hermann and Ethel lived in Los Feliz, and their house was a site to behold. Hermann had rigged the electrical system to automatically do as many things as possible directly from his desk. He could turn lights, radios, and the television on and off, open and close windows, and even serve drinks with the touch of a button.

His darkroom was his domain, neatly organized in stainless steel shelving, as was most of their home. Thousands of negatives, miles of microfilm, and a huge collection of photographic equipment filled the room.

The Schultheis living room was decorated in a tropical theme, accessorized with art and relics that they had picked up on their many trips to the Middle East and Central and South America. In the 1950s, Schultheis was intrigued with Guatemala and its ancient ruins. He annually hiked alone in the jungle looking for Maya artifacts and abandoned temples.

In May 1955, Schultheis took a trip alone to Guatemala to explore more ruins. He hired a pilot in Flores to take him deep into the jungle so he could explore the Mayan site of Tikal. Everyone warned him not to go alone and to hire a local guide to help, but he shrugged off the advice and flew into the one of the most isolated regions in the Western Hemisphere during the rainy season.

A few hours later, when the pilot landed to pick Schultheis up at the airstrip, the engineer was nowhere to be found. The pilot flew back the next day and still found no Schultheis. The Guatemalan military sent out a search party and after a week gave up the search to find him.

Eighteen months later, in November 1956, a chicle gum camp worker found Schultheis’s remains and belongings. His body was far too decomposed to determine the cause of death.

Ethel never remarried, and after she died in 1990, Schultheis’ photo collection was given to the Los Angeles County Library. While at Disney, Schultheis kept a thorough record of the work that he and his team created: thousands of drawings, photographs, film clips, graphs, sketches, and written descriptions of the techniques that were used to create the groundbreaking art of animation. The notebooks now belong to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, where it can be seen in person and online.