The Carmel Pine Cone
Disputed MTM pic now in the hand of P.B. photographer’s family
http://www.pineconearchive.com/140214-6.html
By KELLY NIX
Published: February 14, 2014
A 40-YEAR-OLD photograph of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” cast that was shot by a late Pebble Beach photographer is now back in the hands of his family after a two-year legal battle with a Hollywood film giant over the image.
The photo, which had been used by Twentieth Century Fox after they acquired the rights to the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1998, was shot by renowned photographer John G. Zimmerman, who captured it for a 1974 Time Magazine cover story about actresses Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper. Zimmerman died in 2002 at the age of 74.
While Zimmerman’s family owns the rights to thousands of his photos, including images from the Time Magazine shoot, the photo in question mysteriously never made it to them.
“We always assumed Time returned all of the photos to us after the story ran,” according to Pebble Beach resident Linda Zimmerman, who manages an archive of her father’s photos in Pacific Grove. “But this portrait, which captures the personalities of the cast to a tee, somehow went missing.”