Harry M. Hess Jr., journalist, actor, photographer and an East Chop seasonal visitor in the 1950s and 1960s, died Jan. 6 in Far Rockaway, N.Y., after a brief illness. He was 94.

Mr. Hess first came to the Vineyard in 1952 as a performer at the Rice Playhouse and rented a room at the Munroe avenue home of the late Dr. Edmond A. Meras. He quickly became a part of the family, oystering in Tisbury Great Pond with the late John E. Meras, and happily sailing the Meras boat Eagle Wing all over Island waters, befriending actress Julie Harris and playwright Lillian Hellman. A native of Chicago, he bonded especially with Mrs. Meras’s Wisconsin-born mother, Metta Jane Trousdale Ross and spent evenings when he was not on stage, reading passages from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to her in his rich deep voice. A tall, handsome man — between his looks and his voice — he was not infrequently taken in those days for the Hollywood actor Gregory Peck.

Mr. Hess left the Rice Playhouse company before the summer’s end, but stayed on the Vineyard, numbering among his friends — in addition to the Meras family — the Lesnikowski family of Vineyard Haven, the late Magda Polivanov of Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, the Scott family of Lambert’s Cove and the Craig Kingsbury family of Vineyard Haven. He never tired, in later years, of recounting the tall tales he had heard before the Kingsbury fireside. A tireless reader, he numbered among his favorite books, West Tisbury resident Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World.

He bicycled everywhere on the Vineyard on a black Raleigh that he named Bertha and that he had bought at Sam Osborn’s bicycle shop in Edgartown. A decade ago, when he was no longer able to cycle around the streets of New York, where he lived, he asked that Bertha be returned to her Island home. She is now riding West Tisbury roads as the property of Caitlin Jones.

Harry Hess was born in Chicago, Ill., on July 2, 1914 and was a graduate of the University of Chicago, class of 1940. There he majored in economics. In no time at all, however, he realized that his future lay in the arts rather than in business. He began writing for the United Press news service in Chicago and then moved to New York to write for Esquire magazine before turning to a career in the theatre.

He was always particularly proud of his role in the war film Three in a Jeep in which he played a U.S. Army officer. His interest in theatre led him to London where he lived for a time.

But in the 1960s, he quit the theatre and from then on made his living largely as a photographer. He was exceptionally good at photographing children and animals and several of his photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He also provided captions for New Yorker cartoons in this period.

Although he played no musical instrument, Mr. Hess was devoted to music. He had written about Duke Ellington for Esquire and remained a lifelong fan. He spent one summer as the official photographer for the Marlboro Music festival in Marlboro, Vt.

He is survived by a cousin, Michael Ranck of Lancaster, Pa.