M. Alberts; Stars’ Photographer

Hollywood portrait photographer Maxwell Sergis Alberts, who launched his studio in the Beverly Hills Hotel with the legendary screen vamp Theda Bara as his first subject, has died of a heart attack, relatives said. He was 76.

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Alberts moved to Los Angeles with his parents in the 1920s. He became an apprentice to his father, Sergis Alberts, also a portrait photographer.

At 18, he opened the studio in the Beverly Hills Hotel and later operated the Maxwell Studio in San Diego before returning to Hollywood to take over his father’s studio after the elder Alberts died in 1940.

Listed in Who’s Who of American Photography in 1943, Alberts photographed such celebrities as Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Howard Hughes and Eleanor Roosevelt. His grandfather had been the official court photographer to Russian Czar Nicholas II, his daughter said.

Alberts, who died Tuesday, is survived by two daughters, Anita, a Los Angeles publicist, and Andrea, a New York photographer; a brother, Cecil, of Sacramento, and a sister, Clarice Matteson, of St. Paul, Minn.

The family asks that contributions be sent to the Los Angeles Free Clinic or the American Heart Assn.