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You are visiting an amateur website, without commercial purpose, neither cookies nor trackers. It is intended for librarians and collectors to present and hopefully complete our inventory of the promotional images from George Pal's movie The Time Machine

Part 4.2 : Set References

from the Don Coleman Collection

The images of this chapter are movie set stills used as references to ensure the continuity of the sets and accessories between the shots. All these photographs were taken by Frank Shugrue (1910-1995) who was the "Still Photographer" on the filming, although he was not credited, as it was common at that time.

At the M.G.M., these images were printed on 8x10 inches photo paper with a black info bar that had the date on which the photo was taken, the production number of the film, the name code of the photographer, and the number of the photo.

As we said earlier, it is by this code "SHUG", and by no other source, even the best informed, that we know that Frank worked on the filming of The Time Machine, as it is also the case for Forbidden Planet and numerous other movies.

The photo numbers are sometimes very high because it often happened that Frank Shugrue, like all the "still men", take over a hundred photos a day (pictures of the sets, so, but also costumes, actors during the rehearsals or the shootings, or during breaks outside the camera field).

These images were gathered in a "Key Book" used for the needs of the different crew members (set decoration, photography, lighting, script super­vision...). Another part of this "Key Book", which was then going to be sent to the publicity department to serve the promotion of the film, also included these famous "Scene Stills" taken at the time of the shoot that are today highly sought-after, as well as these so charming "Behind The Scene" pictures or the publicity stills made in a photo studio installed for the occasion.

Since the release of the film in 1960 and during all these decades, no one had found it necessary to identify the photographer, of which so many collectors still seek today what became cult images. We do not claim to have discovered Frank Shugrue, but we are happy to have helped out his name from oblivion. He is now starting to be finally recognized and mentioned by a few passionate cinema connoisseurs.

The set stills are presented here in the chronological order of their shooting and therefore in the order of the filming of the movie scenes. All the images presented in this section come from The Time Machine Project, the fantastic website run by Don Coleman. In the past, we had seen a few that have sometimes been reproduced here and there, but they are, for the most part, never seen before. We are very proud to share these extremely rare photos with you, and this was only made possible thanks to the generous loan of Don Coleman who granted us permission to display them on these pages.