Aces of the Camera — Joseph Ruttenberg (1942) 🇺🇸

Aces of the Camera XXI: Joseph Ruttenberg, A.S.C.

by Walter Blanchard

People who picture an “ace” newspaper photographer as a hardboiled newshound who goes through life with a “get-the-picture-and-to-Hell with Art” attitude ought to meet Joseph Ruttenberg, A.S.C., for Joe Ruttenberg began his photographic career as a camera-reporter for Hearst’s “Boston American,” and went on from there to win the coveted Academy Award for his artistic skill in filming The Great Waltz. Since then he has been responsible for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Woman of the Year, and Mrs. Miniver, to name only a few of the films brought to the screen with the unmistakable Ruttenberg touch impressed on every frame.

The Ruttenberg career, as Joe looks back on it now, begins very amusingly.

Back in his native Boston, ‘teen-aged Joe decided he had come close enough to man’s estate that he ought to get a job. To this end, he haunted the office of an employment agency operated by a boys’ group to which he belonged. “But to tell the truth,” says Joe, “it wasn’t so much the nice way they told me each day that there was nothing for me that made me stick to that particular agency as the fact that they were just a few doors from the plant of the ‘Boston American,’ which was one of the first newspapers in the country to put its pressroom behind big show-windows for the benefit of the public. Every day, after making sure the agency didn’t have a job for me, I’d walk down the street and spend hours gazing in at those fascinating big presses!

“Finally there came a day when, just as I was about to leave the agency, the phone rang. The girl at the switchboard hastily called, ‘Wait a minute — this may be something for you.’ A moment later she told me the phone call was from the ‘American,’ and there was a job open there for a copy-boy — if I want it!

“Did I want it —! That girl never knew how close she came to being kissed that day, for a job at the ‘American,’ near those fascinating presses, was my idea of heaven! I broke all records covering the distance from the employment office to the newspaper and starting to work!

“The job itself wasn’t particularly taxing to my young mentality. A ‘copy-boy’ in a newspaper office, you know, is a glorified messenger-boy. We sat on a bench like so many bellhops, and rotated on a ‘first in, first out’ basis in answering the Editor’s cry of ‘Boy!’ The chief task was to take the typewritten copy from him and shoot it through the pneumatic-tube conveyor to the composing-room, where it was set into type. For this, we received the princely sum of $3 a week.

“But that ‘first in, first out’ business worked in more ways than one. I learned that after a few weeks, when an economy wave hit the ‘American.’ Expenses had to be pared — including the salary of one copy-boy. As the copy-boy most recently hired, I was logically the one to be fired. Fortunately, I got word of it about a day ahead of time. As I said, I was thoroughly in love with a newspaper career, and determined to hold onto that job if I possibly could. So in the one day remaining before the axe was slated

to fall on me, I put on a display of efficiency such as I’m sure has never been seen in any newspaper office. Instead of taking things easy on the bench and rotating the calls in turn, I planted myself right at the Editor’s shoulder. Whenever he wanted a boy, I was there, Johnny-at-the-rat-hole, before he could get farther than ‘B—!’

At the end of the day, I stepped up to him with a properly crestfallen air and said I understood he was going to let me go. Instead, he told me he had had his eye on me, and because of my unusual efficiency, he was going to raise my salary 50c a week!

“He also asked me to look around and let him know what phase of newspaper work I’d like to go ahead in, as the next time there was a vacancy in that line he was going to transfer me to a better job!

“Well, I’d seen enough of the workings of the paper to know that the work of the cameraman interested me. And before long, I was promoted to the post of assistant in the darkroom.

“I hadn’t been on that job long — barely long enough to know my way around the darkroom — when a really big story broke. A big excursion-steamer down the coast was wrecked. All the available cameramen were rushed down to the dock, to shoot pictures of the survivors as they came in, and to buy up any films the excursionists might have snapped. My boss, the head laboratory-man, was off duty, leaving me alone in the darkroom. I tray-developed over 300 rolls of amateur film that night (in addition to the plates sent in by our own still-men), and made hundreds of prints. Working with wet negatives, I’ll admit I ruined quite a few shots in the printing — but enough of them came out well so that the ‘American’ had a fine display of photos of the wreck to spread across page 1 of the next edition.

“As a result of that night’s work, it wasn’t long before I found myself promoted to a full-fledged cameraman. And my first big assignment was a tough one, too. I’d worked around on routine, unimportant shots for quite a while. Then one night, right around Christmas time, we got word of a big train-wreck. Due to the holiday, none of the other cameramen were available, so I was elected — green or not.

“As I was packing my outfit to go out, one of the head men saw me putting a flash-gun and a supply of flashpowder into my kit (this was long before the days of flashbulbs) and told me that because one, of the staff men had been blinded by a misfired flash shortly before, an order from the big boss had just gone into effect banning all further use of flashpowder by the ‘American’s’ cameramen. Reluctantly, I left the flash equipment behind, and went out to cover a big night-time story minus flashlighting.

“When I came back with a nice collection of negatives, everyone was amazed and accused me of either breaking the anti-flash rule or pulling some sort of a miracle. In reality, I hadn’t done either: I’d simply worked a little trick that was possible back in those days before the synchronized flash was invented. Naturally. I wasn’t the only news cameraman on the scene; all the ‘American’s’ competitors were well represented— and they, at least, weren’t working under any taboo against flashpowder. So I simply set up my camera and, when I saw one of my competitors getting ready to fire off his flash, I’d open my shutter and let the one flash make both our pictures! The gang in the ‘American’s’ City Room got quite a kick out of the way I had let my competitors flash my pictures for me.”

All told, Ruttenberg spent eight years with the “American,” and then opened a successful portrait and commercial studio of his own. During this period, he did a great deal of work for Joseph Urban, the famous stage designer. Urban’s work, as this writer remembers it, pioneered the modern technique of using dramatic lightings to achieve dramatic effects on the stage. In his production set-design, lighting and stage-groupings or compositions were combined to unusually high artistic effect, and the work that Ruttenberg did with Urban at this time, photographing actual sets, designers’ models, and sketches with different systems of normal and colored lighting, undoubtedly had a lasting influence on Ruttenberg’s camerawork.

During this association. Urban took Ruttenberg on an extended tour of Europe’s theatrical centers. “I was supposed,” he says today, “to photograph stage settings in the various places we visited. But as a matter of fact, I exposed a total of 17 negatives on the whole trip. It was a wonderful experience, though, and even though I didn’t take many pictures, I learned a great deal that has since been very helpful to me.”

It was at about this time, too, that the movie bug began to bite Joe Ruttenberg. He bought an old movie camera and, setting up a small laboratory, for a year or more he photographed and produced a local newsreel for the Loew theatres in the Boston area. He got a very thorough grounding in the fundamentals of motion picture work through this, for in addition to photographing his stories, he had also to develop his own negative, edit the weekly reel, and make the prints and titles himself.

The newsreel venture ended abruptly, however. One day a big story came along just at the reel’s deadline. Joe himself went out with his camera to cover it — a spectacular fire — and rushed the exposed negative back to the laboratory where his partner, a strictly non-technical man, was to rush the film through development. When Joe returned to start making the prints, he found that the negative had shrunk so badly it would not go on the printer: his partner had tried to make the film dry more quickly by immersing it in alcohol! “So,” as Joe says, “there wasn’t any newsreel that week — and when the shouting was over our newsreel was a dead duck!”

But the experience this venture had given Ruttenberg had been enough to decide him that making motion pictures might be his forte. So he sold his equipment, picked up his savings, and headed to New York, which was then a major center of production. For a newcomer to get a camera job wasn’t very much easier in those days than it is now, and Joe had the unpleasant experience of watching his slim savings dwindle while the studios, with surprising unanimity, informed him that no job was available for him.

Finally came a day when the last of Ruttenberg’s carefully-hoarded savings vanished. And here his story takes on a Horatio Alger-esque turn. A cousin of Joe’s learned he was in New York and, probably sensing what must be happening to Cousin Joe’s savings, kidnapped him bodily to share his apartment until a job presented itself. Then, in true Alger style, came a call from the old Fox East Coast Studio that there was an opportunity for Joe to start work immediately as an assistant cameraman!

From this point on, Joe Ruttenberg was on the right track, headed forward at full steam. He didn’t remain an assistant very long — hardly more than long enough to learn the ropes of studio cinematography. Then one day the cameraman whom he was assisting retired from the picture after an argument with the director, and Joe was asked if he felt capable of carrying on and finishing the picture. He felt he could — and proved it by finishing the picture in such fine style that from then on he remained a First Cameraman.

He was one of the cinematographers, too, who helped keep New York going as a production center long after the greater part of the industry had moved to Hollywood. Finally, however, some seven or eight years ago, he, too, came to Hollywood. And it is since then that he has done his finest work. Winner of the Academy Award for The Great Waltz, and repeatedly in the nominees’ circle for almost equally outstanding photographic achievements, Joe Ruttenberg is one of those rare cinematographers who stamps every scene he films with the unmistakable imprint of his artistic personality.

This doesn’t in the least mean that he gives every scene the same technical and artistic treatment; he doesn’t, but even though he varies his lightings, compositions and general treatment to match the mood of the story, he maintains always an indefinable pictorial touch which stands out as clearly as any written signature.

Ruttenberg has no use for “formula” photography. “No two stories or scenes are ever exactly alike,” he’ll point out, “and even the same scene would probably be different if you did it twice with different actors or different directors. So if you want your photography really to fit the action and mood of the scene, how in the world could you do it if you tie yourself to a strict formula of photography ?

“I’ll admit our work would be a lot easier if we could reduce it to a handy formula of ‘so much key-light there, so much filler-light to balance it there, and so much lighting arranged so, and so, and so, to light the set.” But working that way would rob our pictures of the elements of realism and dramatic feeling which do much to bring the story and action really home to the audience. And you can only make things real, and key them properly to the dramatic mood of the scene, by suiting your photography to the individual requirements of each scene as it comes along.

“Sometimes this may mean going right against accepted rule-book formulas of lighting and composition. So what? If your scene or your picture are better for it, who cares if you break a few photographic taboos?

“I do think, though, that except where for a definite dramatic reason you’re trying to show something as visually unattractive, a cinematographer should try to make his compositions as pleasing as possible. After all, the audience has to focus its eyes and its attention on the comparatively small rectangle of the screen for an hour and a half or two hours, and good compositions are a lot easier to look at than bad ones! Remember, too, you can use your compositions to help center attention on whatever is the most important part of a scene, thereby making things that much easier for the players and director.

“All told, if I have anything like a ‘system,’ it would be something like this: begin by making the best possible composition with whatever you have at hand. Then arrange your lighting so that the scene and effect are really believable — and there you are! As long as you start with a good composition and end with a believable effect, you can’t go very far wrong, no matter what you’re photographing.”

End.

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Collection: American Cinematographer, September 1942

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