Harpo Marx didn’t have his wig handy, and he was sensitive about his baldness—or so he told young Life magazine photographer Rex Hardy. Add one crown of leaves and a dramatic camera angle, and the resulting cover shot was a portrait of the comic as a Roman emperor.
Hardy had been taking snapshots on the Stanford campus, using his 35 mm Leica on a few paid assignments and developing film in the Alpha Delta Phi kitchen sink, when the brand-new Life hired him in 1936. He was 21 and would thereafter be touted as the magazine’s youngest photographer. He was also a pilot who’d taken his first solo flight at 18. His love for flight eventually trumped his career at Life. He chose active duty as a naval aviator during World War II and a subsequent career as a test pilot for Lockheed.
Photographer, pilot and adventurer, Hardy died April 7 at his home in Monterey, Calif. He was 88.
In the few years he worked for Life, Hardy became known for his candid shots of celebrities, including Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. When film director John Ford recruited him to help produce propaganda films only months before Pearl Harbor, Hardy said he’d rather fly. Photography experience suited him to reconnaissance missions that had him piloting B-24s all over the South Pacific, from Guadalcanal to New Guinea.
“I think he would want to be remembered as a flyboy,” says Tro Harper, ’37, one of Hardy’s closest friends. “It was the freedom of flying that really appealed to him.” Following the war, Hardy tested Flying Wing and Black Widow planes for Northrop Grumman. In 1951 he married Janet Cooper, who recalled that, while they were dating, Hardy would fly by her house in San Mateo to signal that she should meet him at the airport. Starting in 1956, Hardy served as the chief pilot for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, and he was a consultant for NASA until age 75.
“He was a person you’d want in your lifeboat because he was calm and dependable, and would know everything you’d need to know,” says his son, Tom. “I think he had all the traits needed by an excellent aviator, and those applied usefully to other areas in life as well. He did not suffer fools gladly and had no time for the pompous or arrogant.”
In 1985, the Hardys settled in Monterey, where Rex pursued his love for sports cars as a member of the International Aston Martin Owners Club and attended meetings of the local “hangar” of the Quiet Birdmen, a social club for aviators. A lifelong bibliophile, his shelves were filled with novels, aviation and automotive books, histories and at least four dozen books on the Arthurian legend.
“He had a tremendous interest in the world around him,” Harper says. “He once sent me a copy of Beowulf written in medieval English and wanted me to read it. He loved good books, good food, the best of everything.”
Hardy is survived by his wife of 52 years; their son and daughter, Tom and Pip Hardy; three daughters, Carol and Lucia Hardy and Wendy Keedy, from his 1936 marriage to the late Caroline Mitchell, ’37; 11 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and one sister.
