While acting in movies, Shirley supplemented his income by running a photographic portrait studio in Hollywood in the 1920s. He claimed that his early 1921 portrait of Rudolph Valentino was seen by director Rex Ingram and won the future star his first major film role in "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." He returned to his native Australia in the late 1920s. In 1933, he lost his lawsuit against Motion Picture Publications Inc. to have his name restored as the photographer of that famous image.