Stephen Paley

Stephen Drew Paley (born March 2, 1942, New York City, United States) is an American photographer, radio producer, television producer, music supervisor and actor. His photographs have appeared in Life, Look, Vogue, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and in the books The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll. and Shooting Stars (edited by Annie Leibovitz) and Wild: Fashion Untamed (published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press). Paley has shot album covers for (among others) The Allman Brothers, Cher, Aretha Franklin, Cream, Sly and the Family Stone, Laura Nyro, Wilson Pickett, Lulu, MC5, J. Geils Band, Iron Butterfly, Memphis Horns and The Sweet Inspirations. Paley was one of the “special magazine photographers” on the films, Midnight Cowboy and Paint Your Wagon. Paley's many arts and entertainment pieces were broadcast on National Public Radio (1984–91). Callas In Her Own Words, the four-hour radio documentary Paley produced and edited about the life and career of the soprano Maria Callas was broadcast on WFMT in Chicago (2002) and an earlier version was heard on KUSC in Los Angeles (1988), and on many other stations around the country and the world. For KCRW, Santa Monica's public radio station, Paley produced three-hour radio programs on David Raksin (2004), Nelson Riddle (1986) and Atlantic Records’s years as a rhythm and blues label (1987). For KCET, Los Angeles’s public television station, Paley produced a series of programs on 1950s Googie architecture with the writer Alan Hess (1986). At Warner Bros. studios, Paley was head of music for Orion Pictures and The Ladd Company (1979–1983), supervising music for the films Arthur, Excalibur, Caddyshack, Wolfen, Night Shift, Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, and The Right Stuff. He executive produced the Academy Award-winning song, "Arthur's Theme," and then commissioned Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager to write the Grammy-winning song "That's What Friends Are For