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Sweet, Ozzie (1918 - 2013)

Genre: Illustrator

Ozzie Sweet was born Oscar Cowan Corbo on Sept. 10, 1918, in Stamford, Conn. His parents divorced when he was a toddler. When his mother, Elsie Cowan, a nurse who was also an avid photographer, married Hardy Sweet, a mechanic, the family moved to New Russia, N.Y., in the Adirondacks. He returned to Stamford, where he finished high school and also worked as an assistant to Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who had built a studio in the area.

Young Ozzie, however, also aspired to be an actor, and he moved to California, where he appeared as an extra in several movies, including ?Reap the Wild Wind? (1942), a 19th-century adventure story, directed by DeMille, that starred John Wayne.

Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Mr. Sweet enlisted in the Army, where he became a photographer. He was stationed in San Diego, where he took his first Newsweek cover, a staged photograph of a G.I. in training, peering over a rock with a knife in his teeth.

Mr. Sweet remained in the Army until after the war was over and then went to work for Newsweek. It was the Feller photograph, in June 1947, that changed the path of his career. As the story goes, it was seen by the editor of Sport, who contacted him. When Mr. Sweet protested that he wasn?t a sports photographer, the editor replied that that?s exactly why they wanted him.

Mr. Sweet was nothing if not prolific. Beyond his magazine work, he took photographs for advertisements and packaging (his picture of a collie appeared on boxes of Milk Bone). He shot antique cars, puppies and kittens for calendars. And he provided the photographs for a series of wildlife books for children, including ?City of Birds and Beasts,? focusing on denizens of the Bronx Zoo. (Excerpted from the NYT obituary, 2/23/2013).