F. Brown, 90; Took Photos for The Times

Frank Quinn Brown, a longtime photographer with the Los Angeles Times, has died. He was 90.

Brown died Feb. 16 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla of complications from pneumonia.

A native of Salt Lake City, where as a boy he delivered newspapers on horseback, Brown came to California in the late 1930s and found work in a camera store before joining The Times in 1942.

As a staff photographer, he covered fires and parades, sporting events and such Hollywood celebrities as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Mae West, as well as U.S. presidents, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon and Harry S. Truman.

One of his more memorable photographs, colleagues recalled, was taken in the aftermath of a gangland shooting in the early 1950s.

It showed a waitress in a bowling alley stepping over a body while carrying a tray of drinks. Although The Times didn’t publish the picture, it was later picked up by Life magazine, which gave it prominent play.

Often working with Charles Hillinger, a roving feature writer on the staff, Brown took cruise liners to Hawaii for a series of stories on the voyages and spent time on the islands doing feature stories well before Hawaii became a state.

He also photographed Alaska in the days it fought becoming a state and the Galapagos Islands in 1960, when an unemployed Seattle tugboat operator tried to start an American colony.

The eclectic Brown played piano, was a tournament contender in tennis and golf, and designed and built two of his own homes--the first in the Mt. Washington area, where he used adobe because he could not get lumber for the wartime construction, and the second a retirement home in La Jolla after he left The Times in 1976.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Gethine; and a sister, Gladys Boyle of Oakland.