Lawrence Schiller

Newton, PA

Lawrence Schiller is an American photojournalist, film producer, director, and author. Schiller work has been featured in prominent magazines such as Life, Paris Match, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, and the Saturday Evening Post. His iconic images of celebrities, politicians, and athletes— including Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bette Davis, James Earl Jones, Barbara Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, and Muhammad Ali—showcase his technical proficiency. Schiller also directed a number of award-winning motion pictures, notably The American Dreamer with Dennis Hopper, The Executioner’s Song with Tommy Lee Jones, and his editorial direction of The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1972) won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary.

Schiller has produced many books, his most notable being with his friend and colleague, Norman Mailer. Over nearly thirty-five years, the two published Marilyn (1973), The Faith of Graffiti (1974), Oswald’s Tale (1995), Into the Mirror (2002), and The Executioner’s Song (1979), for which Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize. Schiller also co-authored (with James Willwerth) the New York Times number one best-selling American Tragedy (1996) which detailed O.J. Simpson’s trial. Schiller has consulted for NBC News, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, The Ray Bradbury Estate, and the Annie Leibovitz Studios. Upon the death of Norman Mailer in 2008, Schiller was named the President and co-founder of the Norman Mailer Center and Writer’s Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Schiller has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Briscoe Center for many years and has assisted in the acquisition of several notable archives.  In 2023, he began the process of transferring his own archive to the Briscoe Center.