As the celebrated photographer of the stars, in the days when Hollywood glamour was of the old school and its celebrities still had secrets, Bob Willoughby has more claims to fame than most.

These rare images capture some of them. They form part of a collection, including unpublished pictures of Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn, which will be auctioned this month at a landmark Bloomsbury Auctions sale.

Collectors will bid for 16 of Willoughby's prints, which capture Hollywood greats off-guard, jazz heroes at work and, in one example, Elizabeth Taylor starstruck by Marlene Dietrich.

The veteran photographer, now 81, told The Times yesterday of the parties and concerts that led to the prized shots, all of which languished in drawers for up to 50 years before being put on the market by a private vendor.

It is the first time that the photograph of a dancing Truman Capote will have been seen by the public. The writer was dancing with the actress Tuesday Weld at a ball held by the Hollywood networker Dominick Dunne in 1964. Willoughby, then 36, was documenting the event for Vogue.

He recalls: “They were asking me to join them, saying, 'Come on, Bob. Dance with us!'. It was my claim to fame that Truman Capote asked me to dance, but I must say, I was chicken. I was working that night, so I couldn't mix business with pleasure.”

Another shot shows Elizabeth Taylor looking overawed by Marlene Dietrich when she dropped by the set of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

Willoughby said: “That picture says something really interesting to me. Liz was the biggest star in that period in Hollywood, and here she is nervously touching her wig and, I feel, looking in awe of Dietrich, a star of another era. I was really pleased to catch that very feminine gesture.”

A total of 230 lots will go up for auction on May 22 to celebrate the opening of Bloomsbury Auctions' new photography department. They range from obscure daguerreotypes to iconic work by Man Ray, Diane Arbus and Alexander Rodchenko.

Like the rest of this collection, Willoughby's photographs of Gerry Mulligan playing the saxophone and Big Jay McNeely enthralling the crowds will go under the hammer at a starting price of £1,000-£1,500.

Willoughby, who was born in Los Angeles but now lives in France, said: “These pictures came out of something that I love.

“You can see this is a kind of history of my work, and I think it reflects a lot of my best photographs. I'm just interested to see how they sell.”

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