The Cameraman (1924) 🇺🇸

“Super feature of today would be impossible if it were not for the cameraman” says Foster Goss

In the subjoined article the editor of the “American Cinematographer,” official organ of the American Society of Cinematographers, discourses on the part the cameraman has played in progress of motion picture production.

The cameraman does more than merely turn the crank.

“Bromidic” — the impatient one will say — “we all know that.”

But do we? Do those who work in the film business every day fully realize the responsibility that is the cinematographer’s? Or does the subconscious conception of the cameraman as a cross between a crank-turner and some sort of mechanic still persist, spasmodic acknowledgment of his accomplishments notwithstanding.

We speak with complacency of the cinema’s being one of the world’s greatest industry and of its being the newest of the arts.

Who, basically, has been largely responsible for this remarkable progress? “The cameraman”, some one timidly suggests, and he is gazed upon in blank amazement. The cameraman, yes, the cameraman — regarded as matter of fact as the sun, or rain when there is no danger of drought. But if the sun wouldn’t shine, when the rain holds aloof — that’s a different story.

With the crude stage of the preliminary inventions placed in the cinematographer’s hands hardly a score of years ago, perhaps not enough time has passed for the cinematographic profession to be established in general appreciation — the law was old at the time of the Year Books; painting has struggled through centuries.

Nevertheless, the close and not erratic student will declare, that the present age of the “super feature” would be impossible if the cameraman — and the cameraman alone — had not made the many achievements that he has made in the past several years. Where would such productions as The Thief of Bagdad, One Glorious Day, Earthbound, The Lost World and a host of others be, if they were robbed of those phases in them that have come into being strictly through the accomplishments of the cinematographer. But those accomplishments, however, have become as matter of fact as the cameraman himself. They are no longer hoped for, but expected.

What would have happened if the cinematographers as a class had been nonprogressive, if they were content to draw their weekly stipend and settle down into the rut of “just a job”? How would the present day productions fare on a diet of 1908 photography? Or would the stage of present production have been arrived at all — with a non-flexible, non-progressive “art” having circumscribed any advance long ago. It is realized perfectly that high powered organization and brilliant talent have proved the life-blood of the moving picture industry. But would necessary capital or powerful names have been attracted to the cinema if the industry at best could have depended on an imperfect medium — namely undependable photography? No, intelligent consideration cannot deny the fundamental importance of the truly spectacular improvement of photography.

What has been behind this improvement? Laurels as an inventor for the cinematographer, either in finances or in renown? Noble prizes? No, none of them. It was, and is, all in a day’s work. The representative cinematographer, interested always in his calling, seeks the chance to make a new cinematographic creation and does it. It reaches the screen, and his fellow artists, looking at the production, not for entertainment but with a student’s interest, observe the new creation and work to embody it when the occasion demands in the forthcoming productions of their employers. What happens for the cinematographer who has discovered the new creation? Is he hailed far and wide for his brilliance? No, if the event is noted at all, it probably is to give credit to his employer for it.

And so creation after creation has come and enhanced the value of motion pictures — enhanced the value for every one identified with them. Accomplishment after accomplishment, taken in the aggregate, have made possible an art in such a short period of time that students of the history of arts are astounded.

But is the cinematographer’s participation therein on the lips of all those who view motion pictures? Hardly, when in some quarters he is not regarded as of sufficient importance to allow his name to remain on the credit titles or to mention him even in the program. His art may be paid for — if such may be reckoned in dollars and cents — but it isn’t appreciated. At any rate, his present remuneration, attractive though it may sound in the rarer instances, is not proportionate with that accorded him in the early days when pictures were really in “their infancy”. But he may take some solace in the fact that Milton is said to have wrote Paradise Lost for fifty dollars.

Perhaps the day is coming when the cinematographer will be regarded as something other than “just a cameraman, just another film worker”. At any rate, the day seems nearer than it was five years ago, but the appreciation of the cinematographer is still far from keeping apace with the progress with which he continues to imbue the cinema from year to year.

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Bert Glennon, A. S. C., an old-timer at the business and the cameraman who filmed the Famous Players-Lasky attraction, Triumph, for Cecil B. DeMille.

“Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” Left to right: Rollie Totheroth [Roland Totheroh], head cameraman; Ed Manson, publicity man, and Jack Wilson, cameraman, with Charlie Chaplin company at Summit, Cal, shooting scenes for the star’s new United Artists picture.

Merritt Gerstad [Merritt B. Gerstad], the cameraman who can make a drab hillside look like a beautiful painting. He is now photographing Jack Dempsey in his Universal series.

Antonio Gaudio [Tony Gaudio], president of the American Society of Cinematographers, and cameraman on the John M. Schenck-First National [Joseph M. Schenck] attraction Secrets, starring Norma Talmadge.

Left to right: George Crone, director; Robert H. Wagner, second cameraman, and Jack MacKenzie, first cameraman, shooting Douglas MacLean’s new Associated Exhibitors picture, Never Say Die.

Here are the men behind the camera on the first Al Christie feature, Hold Your Breath. Left to right: Gus Peterson, chief cameraman, Scott Sidney, director, and James Clemens [James H. Clemens], assistant director.

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Sol Polito, cameraman for Hunt Stromberg’s The Siren of Seville, harmonizing the coloring of the set through a dark blue filter. The Siren of Seville is being produced by Stromberg for Producers Distributing Corporation.

An on-stage shot of Fred Niblo and his chief cinematographer, Victor Milner, A. S. C. They are setup for a scene in The Red Lily, which Niblo directed for Metro-Goldwyn distribution, prior to his departure for Europe.

“Focusing up.” John Griffith Wray and his cameramen, Henry Sharp and Duane N. Mowat working on location at Palm Springs, Cal., on a new Ince [Thomas H. Ince] attraction.

Here is Harold Lloyd, star of Pathé’s Girl Shy, and his chief cameraman, Walter Lundin, A. S. C., who films all of the Lloyd laughs.

Clarence Brown, who is directing the Universal-Jewel attraction, Butterfly, and his ace cameraman, Ben Reynolds [Ben F. Reynolds]. Butterfly will be one of Universal’s big productions for the new season. Laura La Plante is star of the picture.

Cecil B. DeMille and his battery of cameramen shooting the new Paramount production, Feet of Clay at Catalina Island, Rod La Rocque, Vera Reynolds, Ricardo Cortez, Julia Faye, Theodore Roberts and others are in the cast.

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Harry E. Nichols, Herald [Exhibitors Herald] staff photographer whose camera clicks in all corners and by-ways of the picture producing capitol. Nichols, in addition to being well known among the studio folks also has a host of exhibitor friends all over the country.

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Will Show New Color Film

The Friese-Greene colour film process, developed after years of patient and devoted experiment by Claude H. Friese-Greene, will be demonstrated for the first time in America by the Spectrum Films, Ltd. at the Town Hall, New York, on Friday evening, June 27. This new color process claims for its outstanding features that the colors are more evenly defined and more softly blended than in other processes, costing less than one cent per foot more than black and white, and that ordinary positive film stock and any present camera equipment can be used, thereby bringing the hitherto prohibitive cost of colored films within the reach of even the most inexpensive productions.

Claude Friese-Greene, the 25-year-old inventor of the new British Colour Film Process which has aroused much interest in the trade.

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Sight and Sound In Theatres

by James A. Fitzpatrick [James A. FitzPatrick]

Author, Director “Famous Music Masters Series”

Patrons of picture theatres have been unconsciously educated to receive impressions through the sense of sight, supported indirectly by the sense of sound. Today, these combined senses of sight and sound are so inseparable that the motion picture theatre could hardly operate successfully without the combination. Consequently, in motion picture theatres when music is played independent of sight-action, this subconscious harmony is broken and the concentration of the audience naturally depreciates.

Some of the more observing managers have sought to feed this “sight appetite” with an interchange of colored lights and shadows during the playing of the overture, as one might wave a colored flag or toy balloon before a restless child, but the results obtained do not seem to fill the void. With a large per cent of the audience the average overture in the average motion picture theatre is nothing more than a general cue for conversation. To the patrons who really appreciate the overture music this conversation is an annoyance and it is also a source of unconscious disrespect to the musicians.

To solve this problem during the playing of an overture, something entertaining and practical is needed to hold the attention of the eye as well as the ear, and the “Famous Music Masters Series” is an effort in that direction.

In the case of “Franz Schubert,” the first-release of this series, it has been sufficiently proven to me that I am on the right track in featuring good music and the Masters who made it. Leading exhibitors and conductors have welcomed this constructive attempt to remedy an indelicacy, if not a problem, in the ideal management of motion picture theatres and orchestras.

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Roy Hunter has the enviable record of nine years with Universal. He is superintendent of photography and a very busy man.

Collection: Exhibitors Herald, July 1924

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Transcriber’s Note: Many cinematographers and other film crew are mentioned in the articles above. Here’s what little info we have about these pioneers.

Cinematographers

• Claude Friese-Greene (1898–1943)
• Tony Gaudio (1883–1951)
• Merritt B. Gerstad (1900–1974)
• Bert Glennon (1893–1967)
• Walter Lundin (1892–1954)
• Jack MacKenzie (1892–1979)
• Victor Milner (1893–1972)
• Duane N. Mowat (18??–19??)
• Gus Peterson (1893–1969)
• Sol Polito (1892–1960)
• Ben F. Reynolds (1890–1948)
• Henry Sharp (1892–1966)
• Roland Totheroh (1890–1967)
• Robert H. Wagner (1892–1950)
• Jack Wilson (1881–1979)

Publicity and Production Managers

• Edward Manson (1892–1969)

Assistant Directors and Directors

• James H. Clemens (1877–1954)
• George Crone (1894–1966)
• James A. FitzPatrick (1894–1980)
• Scott Sidney (1874–1928)
• John Griffith Wray (1881–1929)