Aces of the Camera — Arthur C. Miller (1942) 🇺🇸
Aces of the Camera XVI: Arthur Miller, A.S.C.
by Walter Blanchard
When Arthur Miller, A.S.C., received the Academy Award for the best black-and-white cinematography of 1941, it climaxed a thirty-three year career of outstanding cinematography, dating back to and even before such pioneer epics as The Perils of Pauline. During those years, hundreds of pictures have flowed from Miller’s camera. They’ve been pictures of all kinds — good ones, bad ones, and indifferent ones — Westerns, comedies, musicals and dramas. But they’ve all had one thing in common: in so far as conditions allowed, each was representative of the finest cinematography of its day.
Some of them, like The Volga Boatman and “Forever,” were of Academy Award caliber, had there been such an Award in those days; others more recently have been persistent contenders for the “Oscars” for both monochrome and color.
Early in life, Arthur Miller developed two(absorbing interests — his love of fine horseflesh, and a love of making pictures photographically. As he was light and agile, his fondness for horses spurred him on to a successful career as a jockey. “But,” he says, “I couldn’t stop making pictures. Wherever I raced, I always managed to have an improvised darkroom somewhere in the stable. I’d snap pictures of the horses, the trainers, and the other boys. Between races I’d develop ‘em and sell them — three prints for fifteen cents. There wasn’t any profit in it at that price — but it was enough so I could buy more materials and take more pictures. That was all I cared for.”
Then fate stepped in. An injury put a permanent end to his riding days. When he recovered, he learned that his stable rented horses to a group of people who made moving pictures. He saw to it that he soon got the assignment of taking the horses to the studio for their day’s work.
“And there,” he says, “I fell in love. That big, brass-bound, leather-covered camera that photographed their pictures fascinated me. So did the work I saw the company’s cameraman doing. I decided that, sooner or later, I’d be a cameraman, too!
“As soon as I’d gotten well enough acquainted with the troupe to know who was who, I hit the cameraman, Fred Balshofer, who was also a partner in that old Kaybee Company, for a job.
“He said ‘yes’, (things were like that in those old days!) and I went to work in the laboratory. That was the pathway to a camera job back in 1909, and believe me, it put you through a real course in practical photography. Today, if you work in a film-laboratory, your job consists mainly of putting film onto a developing-machine or taking it off, without any particular need for ‘knowing why.’
“But in those early days, it was different. You began — at least I did — in the room where they perforated the film; most studios and labs bought their film unperforated, as it was cheaper, and perforated it themselves. Then you went out as an assistant in the negative developing room, helping to wind film onto the developing drums and racks, carrying things around, and making yourself generally useful in a hopeful and unskilled way.
“From there, you usually went for a while into the department where they toned and tinted positive film. After that, you spent quite a while in the chemical mixing room, learning how to mix developers for negative and positive film, learning just what each chemical did, and so on.
“From there, you went into the printing room, and learned about that part of the work. From this, you went into the positive developing department, and began to put some of what you’d learned to work. Finally, you emerged into the negative developing room again as a really skilled laboratory-man. The next step up was to the king-pin job of the whole lab — that of negative timer, where you had the responsibility of deciding just how much development a given negative should be given, and how it should be printed.
“That spot was the parting of the ways. If you wanted to stay in lab work, your next promotion was to laboratory superintendent. But it was also the jumping-off place for those of us who wanted to go into camerawork.
“By this time, you’d spent anywhere from six months to a couple of years or more learning all there was to know about film and photography, so folks just naturally assumed you understood camerawork, too. A few years later, if you wanted to switch from the lab to a camera job, you’d go out as somebody’s assistant. But when I finished my apprenticeship in the lab, there was no such thing as an assistant cameraman. When you landed a camera job, they simply handed you a camera — and you went out and shot a picture!”
“The Perils of Pauline” wasn’t Miller’s first picture, but it was very close to it. Between the thorough training he had received in Balshofer’s lab, and his own inherent instinct for photography, he “made good” from the start. He soon became one of the ace cameramen of the Kaybee company and, incidentally, a member of the first professional organization of cinematographers, New York’s Cinema Camera Club which, with the Static Club of California, was one of the two forerunners of the present A.S.C.
“Those,” he says, “were the days! In the morning, you’d load your camera, and the whole troupe would start out, cheerfully riding the trolley-cars to whatever location had been picked. If you needed help getting your camera-cases aboard, the actors — even the stars — would gladly lend a hand. They’d paint scenery and move props in the studio, too! At any rate, after your day’s shooting, you’d all ride the trolley home, with most, or all of your picture in the filmcase, with story and characterizations shot ‘off the cuff’, improvised as you went along. It wasn’t Art — and with the biggest stellar salary around $75 a week, you could hardly call it even a business. But we had a lot of fun making pictures in those carefree old days!”
When the “infant industry” began its trek to California, Arthur Miller, too, came West, and joined the New York Motion Picture Company at Inceville — a seaside ranch which is now an unmarked spot in the heart of one of Southern California’s most exclusive seaside residential districts. From this association, he joined the Lasky Studio — forerunner of today’s Paramount — where he soon teamed up with Director George Fitzmaurice, and for many years was the camera half of a partnership which turned out some of the industry’s most artistically-photographed productions.
During this period, he had an assignment on which his laboratory training must have proven invaluable. In 1923 he and “Fitz” went to Rome to produce a film called The Eternal City. On that job, he was one of the few cinematographers who had no chance either to complain that the laboratory was murdering his negative, or praise it for saving his bacon. For four days a week he photographed scenes for the picture. The other three days, the troupe rested — but Arthur worked, developing and printing the negative he had photographed! They had rented what Miller calls “an alleged film laboratory” in Rome. Before starting production. Miller washed out the plant’s developing tanks, patched up their racks, installed an American printer, and turned it into a first-class film laboratory, in which all the negative for the production was successfully processed.
All told, he and “Fitz” made two trips to Europe, including one on which he visited rural England and Wales, in unconscious preparation, perhaps, for filming How Green Was My Valley some twenty years later. The Miller-Fitzmaurice partnership endured for many years, not only at Lasky, but later with Samuel Goldwyn, consistently turning out films of outstanding pictorial quality. In the later twenties, he became for a while part of Cecil DeMille’s short-lived independent producing venture, filming, with Peverell Marley, A.S.C, The Volga Boatman, and a number of films starring Leatrice Joy, who still remains his favorite actress. There followed brief engagements with Pathé, and with Universal.
Then, ten years ago, he was persuaded to go to the old Fox Films Studio for one picture. He has been there ever since, and judging by his performance on How Green Was My Valley, he is likely to be there for many years to come. He directed the photography of virtually all of the Shirley Temple pictures, in both black-and-white and Technicolor, while she was the “little princess” of the studio, and filmed most of the studio’s other luminaries — including the beloved Will Rogers — as well.
His twin hobbies are horseback packing on hunting-trips, and making home movies with his 8mm. camera. On his next vacation, he plans to film an 8mm. story of a mountain-lion hunt, preferably in Kodachrome. His film-library includes many reels of candid shots, made in the studio and on location during the filming of various of his 35mm. productions, and reel upon reel of self-filmed travelogues.
His approach to a production is characteristically studious. “Wherever I can,” he says, “I like to study the script thoroughly beforehand, and figure out just what I want to get out of each scene and sequence. When we start shooting, I try, as far as conditions will let me, to realize that advance planning in the actual shooting.
“In this, the director with whom you’re working, and the executives for whom you’re making the picture can do a great deal to make or break the photographic job you deliver. There are directors who seem to defy you to get even decent photography — men to whom photography, good or bad, doesn’t seem to mean a thing. And then there are men like John Ford, who directed How Green Was My Valley. Ford appreciates the value of good photography, not only from a decorative standpoint, but for its dramatic value, as an aid to his own work. He’ll go out of his way to help you. Working with John Ford, even on the most difficult sort of a production, is a pleasure which cannot come any too often to any of us.
“It’s just the same with producers. There are some whose only idea of photography seems to be to get a crisp, recognizable image, and maybe conceal the leading lady’s wrinkles and the hero’s extra chins. If you try to take even a few minutes longer per scene in the interests of good camerawork, you very quickly learn their opinion of such useless foolishness!
“And then there are producers like Darryl Zanuck. I don’t believe he lays any claim to being a photographer himself, but he has an instinctive appreciation of good photography and what it means to a picture. He honestly wants his pictures to be the best-photographed in the industry — and he backs this up by going far out of his way to give his cinematographers every opportunity to do outstanding work. Let one of those non-photographic directors interfere with even a single day’s work — and as soon as the rushes are screened, Mr. Zanuck makes it his business to find out what’s interfering with the camerawork, and correct it. He’s the only producer I know who feels that retakes to improve the photography are as commendable as retakes to improve direction or acting.
“He thinks pictorially to a degree that very few other producers do, or can. He has an uncanny ability of viewing the rushes, not just as isolated scenes, but as parts of a coherent whole. For instance, we had some sequences in How Green Was My Valley which, if you looked at them alone, were pretty drab and uninspiring examples of photography. Most producers would have thought something was badly wrong with the camerawork: but Zanuck had such a clear image of the story in his mind that he knew just how essentially that unattractive visual mood fitted into the overall pattern Ford and I were trying to create. He even complimented us on it!
“I’ve only known one other producer who had such a feeling for photography. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that one of my picture’s strongest rivals for the Award was Sergeant York, which Sol Polito, A.S.C., photographed for Jesse Lasky.
“Zanuck’s camera-mindedness makes things better for all of us out at his studio. For example, he is one of the very few producers who have ever had the wisdom to put at the head of their camera department an experienced cinematographer — in this case, Daniel B. Clark, A.S.C. Dan works with us and for us — and the results show on the screen in every picture. Just as an example, with Laboratory Chief Mike Leshing [Michael S. Leshing], he has worked out a system of coordinating our use of exposure-meters with the laboratory’s excellent processing, and done it to such a degree that even on the most difficult effect-shots the cinematographer doesn’t have to worry about the laboratory. You just shoot it as you see fit: then, if you have the ability to do the job in the first place, your rushes will show up on the screen exactly what you put on the film! Granting always the requisite ability on the part of the cinematographer, a condition like that gives you confidence and a free hand to go out and really try to put better things on the screen.
“All told, making a picture like How Green Was My Valley isn’t any one-man job; it calls for cooperation all along the line, from the studio head right on down. With that kind of support, a Director of Photography just naturally gives the picture everything he has, and maybe a little more that he wouldn’t have if he didn’t feel so strongly that everyone was trying so hard to help him turn out better work!”
End.
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Collection: American Cinematographer April 1942
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see other entries of the Aces of the Camera series