Peter Basch

Peter Basch (September 23 1921 - March 22 2004) was a prominent magazine and glamour photographer who lived in New York City. The main body of his work was produced in the fifties and sixties.

Early life

Peter Basch was born in Berlin, Germany.

Peter was the only child of Felix Basch and Grete Basch-Freund, both prominent theater and film personalities of the German-speaking world.

In 1933 the family came to New York. It is said in the family that Germany had just passed a law forbidding German Jews from emigrating, and that Felix took that as a cue to get out. Fortunately the family were American citizens because Felix's father, Arthur Basch, was a wine trader who lived in San Francisco. Arthur had (again, this is unsubstantiated family rumor) decided that America was too wild in the Gold Rush days, and decided to emigrate back to Germany, where, he supposed, an educated Jew could live a cultured, peaceful life. Arthur kept his American citizenship, and passed it to his children and, thence, to his grandchildren.

In the United States

When the Basch family arrived in New York in 1933, they opened a restaurant on Central Park South in the Navarro Hotel. The restaurant, Gretel's Viennese, became a hangout for the Austrian expatriate community. Peter Basch had his first job there as a waiter. While in New York, Peter attended the De Witt Clinton High School.

Felix's career as a director, actor and writer had been stymied by his emigration, so the family moved to Los Angeles in his effort to get film work. He worked in approximately 25 movies over the next ten years before dying of liver cancer in 1944. During those years, young Peter was sent to school in England. He returned to the United States in 1936 (?) and joined the Army. He was mobilized in the Army Air Corp's First Motion Picture Unit, where he worked as a script boy.

Career

After the war, he started attending UCLA, but his mother, Grete Freund, asked him to join her back in New York. The parents had decided that Peter should be a photographer (they had considered actor, but felt, due to Felix's frustrations with his career, that only a native-born English speaker could make a career as an actor), and Grete obtained a photography studio for her son. The studio was at 33 West 67th Street.

In 1950 (?) Peter met Jacqueline Bertrand (or, in full, Jacqueline Clara Marie-Marguerite Bertrand), a model/actress from Quebec. They were married in 1951. In 1952 Michele Basch was born, and in 1956, Peter Michael Basch.

For twenty years, Peter Basch's career flourished. He was a man of tremendous energy who took pictures of thousands of celebrities, artists, performers, dancers, actors, starlets and glamour-girls in America and Europe. His photos appeared in many major magazines such as "Life", "Look" and "Playboy".

He died in New York City at 2:22 AM, 22 March 2004 from complications resulting from cancer.