Harry W. Gerstad — Little Close-Ups of the A. S. C. (1922) 🇺🇸

Harry W. Gerstad, A. S. C, has had a varied experience in the movie game, but the experience he likes best to talk about (when one can get him to talk) is that he had filming the famous Fox [William Fox] series of kiddie pictures like “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Babes in the Woods” and “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.” These pictures gone, but never to be forgotten, were the first to exploit children on a large and spectacular scale.

Balboa had pioneered in “Little Mary Sunshine” with Baby Marie Osborne and followed that success with a series featuring Baby Marie and, later, Gloria Joy, but Fox was first to spend a fortune on films for children and Harry Gerstad was the fortunate man to photograph them.

These were the pictures that brought out such promising talent as Francis Carpenter, Virginia Corbin [Virginia Lee Corbin], Bennie Alexander [Ben Alexander], Mary Jane Irving, and many other clever children.

It was Mr. Gerstad’s clever handling of the photographic values that made these pictures really great notwithstanding the vogue for kiddie pictures did not last. In Jack and the Beanstalk particularly Mr. Gerstad demonstrated what could be done with a motion camera in the hands of a cameramaster with a free hand to shoot according to his own ideas and not entirely the director’s.

Mr. Gerstad went from the kiddies to Theda Bara, whom he photographed in her greatest Fox picture, Salomé, and following this he did “The Man from Bitter Root” with William Farnum. Later he photographed William Desmond in “Women Men Love,” “The Broadway Cowboy,” “Don’t Leave your Husband,” “The Fighting Man,” etc.

Mr. Gerstad’s early training was with Selig [William Nicholas Selig] and he earned his spurs in The Spoilers and “The Rosary.”

His present affiliation is with Ben Wilson [Ben F. Wilson] at the Berwilla Studios.

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Collection: American Cinematographer, February 1922

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