The Art of the Cinematographer

by Leonard Maltin

  Erich von Stroheim directs GREED (1925) while William Daniels (left) and Ben Reynolds man the cameras.

  While most cameramen working under the studio system were versatile, of necessity, nevertheless certain ones had specialties for which they were known. Several names became synonymous with the term “glamour photography.” One of the first was William Daniels. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1895, he studied at the University of Southern California, and, presumably, it was while attending school that he was first attracted to the motion picture business nearby. In 1917 he obtained a position as assistant cameraman at the Triangle Studio; like many others at this time, Daniels was young, enthusiastic, and quick to learn. By 1918 he was a chief cameraman at Universal Pictures, and it was here that he met a unique actor-director named Erich von Stroheim, forming an association that spanned several years and included the director’s greatest films, FOOLISH WIVES (1921) and GREED (1923). The latter film, shot in large part in Death Valley, was Stroheim’s masterpiece, a meticulous production that at once earned him the title “genius” and branded him a merciless, eccentric madman. The rigors to which his company was subjected during filming are legend, and the final product, lovingly assembled by Stroheim, lasted forty reels—nearly eight hours. Reluctantly, Stroheim cut his film in half in order to reach a compromise point with his studio, Metro, but the company took the film out of Stroheim’s hands and cut it in half again before releasing it. Even in its current state, GREED remains a brilliant film. No small credit is due cameraman Daniels, who managed to capture both the harsh reality Stroheim favored in certain scenes, as well as the highly dramatic moods of others, with unnatural lighting and morbid atmosphere.

  Filming GREED brought Daniels to MGM, where he remained under contract for the next twenty-two years. It was here that he earned his reputation as a glamour specialist, particularly for his work with Greta Garbo, whose favorite cameraman he was. Norman Zierold explained, “Daniels studied Garbo’s face and body with great care. He saw immediately that she was least attractive in repose, best in close-ups or long-shots, indifferent in the intermediate range. She was better seated or lying down than standing—Daniels later shot some of her best scenes, in FLESH AND THE DEVIL and QUEEN CHRISTINA, with Garbo reclining.”

  MGM in the 1930s was, of course, the glamour studio of Hollywood, and Daniels upheld the tradition with such lush, luminescent films as DINNER AT EIGHT, GRAND HOTEL, NAUGHTY MARIETTA, and MARIE ANTOINETTE, along with most of Garbo’s pictures. At this time, Walter Blanchard wrote of Daniels in the American Cinematographer, “[He] has always striven to avoid what he considers the two greatest—though diametrically opposite—photographic pitfalls: on the one hand, routine, ‘formula’ photography; on the other, exhibiting too spectacularly individualistic a style. . . . In seeking to avoid these pitfalls, Bill Daniels has developed a style completely his own. Two successive Daniels pictures may not look in the least alike, yet both will be instantly recognizable to the camera-minded viewer by the sure precision that marks every phase of their camera treatment—a certain singing smoothness which for all its variety of technique and artistic mood is as distinctive as anything on the screen.”

  Daniels stayed with MGM through 1946, leaving to join Universal, where initially he had his first opportunity in many years to break away from glamour and remind people of his talent as a cameraman. BRUTE FORCE, a tingling prison picture, WINCHESTER 73, a grim Western, and HARVEY, a whimsical fantasy, were among his all-time finest efforts. And his work on Jules Dassin’s classic semidocumentary, NAKED CITY, won him an Academy Award.

  Daniels free-lanced for the rest of his career, working on such diverse assignments as PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE and CAN-CAN. Probably his finest work in the 1960s was on Peter Ustinov’s LADY L (1966), a visually beautiful film in which Sophia Loren never looked more ravishing. Daniels even tried his hand at producing in the 1960s, on two Frank Sinatra pictures, ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS, and ASSAULT ON A QUEEN, but he remained faithful to his first love, cinematography. He died in June, 1970, shortly before his last film, MOVE, was released.

  Daniels films Greta Garbo and Dorothy Sebastian in A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS (1929) while director Clarence Brown looks on, at the left.

  William Daniels had a long, distinguished career as a cinematographer, but, he told Norman Zierold in his book Garbo, “The saddest thing in my career is that I was never able to photograph her [Garbo] in color. I begged the studio. I felt I had to get those incredible blue eyes in color, but they said no. The process at the time was cumbersome and expensive, and the pictures were already making money. I still feel sad about it.”

  Another glamour specialist whose career spanned many years was Harry Stradling. British-born, in 1910, he was the nephew of Walter Stradling, for many years Mary Pickford’s cameraman. The younger Stradling spent most of his life in this country, establishing himself as a chief cameraman in the 1920s, but assigned to unimportant films (he even photographed short subjects for Pathe in 1929). It was not until the mid-1930s, away from the United States, that he distinguished himself in the motion picture world. The film that marked the turning point of his career was LA KERMESSE HÉROÏQUE (CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS) (1935), a delightful French film which won instant acclaim around the world. One of its admitted aims was to capture the quality of Flemish paintings on the screen; director Jacques Feyder and Stradling worked so well together, not only in achieving this goal, but in producing a great film, that when Feyder received an offer from British producer Alexander Korda to make a film in England, he took Stradling along with him. The result was another excellent, although often neglected film, KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR (1937), starring Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat. Besides presenting low-key, impressionistic backgrounds representing Moscow, the film handed Stradling the task of filming one of the screen’s great stars, Marlene Dietrich, not long after her famous series of visual orgies with Josef von Sternberg. Stradling met the challenge, and conquered it with finesse. KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR is a beautifully photographed film.

  It led to other prestigious British assignments—indeed, some of the most important films being made in England at the time—PYGMALION, THE CITADEL, and JAMAICA INN. After this string of successes, Hollywood beckoned, and Stradling returned to America, resuming his career in Hollywood as one of the top men in his field. Of his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s MR. AND MRS. SMITH, the American Cinematographer wrote, “His treatment of Carole Lombard is a definite asset to that young lady. She is not and never has been a subject suited to conventional camerawork and lighting. Stradling gives her a simple, forceful key-lighting rather reminiscent of the style with which Josef von Sternberg, ASC, made Marlene Dietrich famous. For Miss Lombard this treatment does two things: it first accentuates her good features (while concealing her less favorable ones) and, secondly, gives her a more decided visual personality, which is greatly to her advantage. To put it bluntly, she looks better in this picture than she has in many another.”

  Daniels checks a light reading on location for VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967) in New England .

  Harry Stradling and director William Wyler (in director’s chair) film a scene with Barbra Streisand (holding dark fur) for FUNNY GIRL (1968).

  (Miss Lombard, who had a small scar on one cheek, was very aware of photography, and Stradling complimented her at the time, telling an interviewer, “She knows as much about the tricks of the trade as I do! In close-up work, I wanted to cover her scar simply by focusing the lights on her face so that it would seem to blend with her cheek. She was the one to tell me that diffusing glass in my lens would do the same job better. And she was right!”)

  Stradling did exceptionally fine work in such films as SUSPICION (again for Hitchcock), THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, which won him his first Academy Award, and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. While never stuck in a single category, through the 1950s and 1960s, his name was always most closely linked with glamour and color. Among his assignments were the leading Technicolor films of the era, and he reaffirmed h
is skill in creating pictorial beauty in 1964 when he shot Cukor’s MY FAIR LADY, winning a second Academy Award.

  When Barbra Streisand was signed to do the movie version of her Broadway hit FUNNY GIRL, Harry Stradling was faced with the challenge of giving the star a distinctive screen image. He had to diminish her unphotogenic qualities as much as possible, yet retain the image that made Streisand unique to begin with. Through careful lighting and positioning, and some of the most expert diffusion work ever seen, Stradling won out on all points, making her most appealing, without sacrificing anything of Barbra’s personality.

  When Miss Streisand won the Academy Award for FUNNY GIRL, she thanked the many people who had helped her, including “dear Harry Stradling.” The actress was intelligent enough to know just how valuable his contribution was, for she insisted on having him on her subsequent films, HELLO DOLLY! and ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, the latter film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, giving Stradling a particularly good vehicle for his talent. Unfortunately, it was to be his last film. He died in early 1970 while filming THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT; like so many of his colleagues, he was active right up until his death, because, as with many others, cinematography was a way of life for Harry Stradling.

  The extent of a cinematographer’s contribution to the making of a film varies from one picture to another. Most of the time it is a collaboration between the director and the cinematographer; but even this is inconsistent, depending on the director’s attitude, capability, and personality, as well as the cameraman’s. One cameraman found himself in somewhat a unique situation during the 1930s; he was Lee Garmes, already a highly respected and talented man who was always something more than just a cameraman. Born in 1897, he started in the movie business in 1916, and worked as a second unit director, then assistant director with George Fitzmaurice, one of the leading directors of the time. He gravitated to camera work, and had extended working relationships with such directors as Rex Ingram and Mal St. Clair on great silent films including THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, and THE GRAND DUCHESS AND THE WAITER.

  In the 1930s he photographed many of the Josef von Sternberg classics—MOROCCO, DISHONORED, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, SHANGHAI EXPRESS (winning an Academy Award for the last)—as well as other memorable films like Rouben Mamoulian’s CITY STREETS and Rowland V. Lee’s zoo IN BUDAPEST, films made more memorable because of Garmes’ skill.

  Garmes always yearned to direct, and had several near-misses. In 1933 he was announced as the director of Lilian Harvey’s American-made vehicle MY WEAKNESS, but was replaced before filming began. He acted as associate producer on several British films (including the abortive Alexander Korda version of CYRANO which was to star Charles Laughton), and again was announced to direct a film, starring Elisabeth Bergner, that never came to fruition. Garmes did not get his chance to direct until 1938, on a Jack Buchanan musical, THE SKY’S THE LIMIT.

  He went on to film GONE WITH THE WIND (in collaboration with several other cameramen), THE JUNGLE BOOK, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, ROPE, DETECTIVE STORY, and many other fine films. But he never had any assignment to compare with the offbeat trio of films he made with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur in 1934—1935 at Paramount’s studio in Astoria, Long Island. Hecht and MacArthur, Hollywood’s leading scenarists and bon vivants, signed a contract with Paramount to produce a series of independent productions which the studio would release. The two were to write, produce, direct, and supervise each film; one of their first tasks was to hire Lee Garmes as cinematographer.

  Once in Astoria, however, it became evident that Hecht and MacArthur were too busy having a good time to tend to the serious and time-consuming job of setting up the production of a motion picture. Hecht wrote, years later, “My memory of our Astoria moviemaking doesn’t include any glow of success or burn of failure. It is a memory of a two-year party that kept going seven days a week.” He and MacArthur wanted to film the movies simply and economically; they felt directing to be unimportant, if there was a good script to start with. They considered shooting tests, making retakes, using different camera setups, all a waste of time.

  But they trusted and respected Garmes, and before too long bestowed upon him the title of “co-director.” It is safe to assume that without him, the movies never would have been completed. The finished products were CRIME WITHOUT PASSION, a bizarre story of a heel, played by Claude Rains; ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, an attempt to transfer stage-star Jimmy Savo’s magic to the screen, and THE SCOUNDREL, a magnificent vehicle for Noel Coward, supported by a cast that included Alexander Woollcott and other Hecht-MacArthur cronies (a fourth film, SOAK THE RICH, was not filmed by Garmes, but by Leon Shamroy). They are all fascinating, decidedly offbeat films; probably the best is CRIME WITHOUT PASSION, which, although it does have an excellent script, with particularly good dialogue for Rains, owes the most to Garmes. It is filled with unusual camera angles, bizarre lighting, and even has a surrealistic courtroom montage at the beginning.

  Hecht and MacArthur were right in placing great importance on a good script, but if they supplied the content for their films, it was Lee Garmes who provided the form. Hecht knew it, too, even if he didn’t want to admit it on the printed page; when he was given the opportunity to direct again, later in his career, he always hired Garmes. The results were always intriguing: ANGELS OVER BROADWAY in 1940 (on which Garmes again received co-director credit), SPECTER OF THE ROSE in 1946, and ACTORS AND SIN in 1952.

  Lee Garmes (seated) and crew do a complicated scene with Olivia de Havilland for LADY IN A CAGE (1964).

  Director Archie Mayo (white shirt) and cameraman Sol Polito (directly below camera lens) ready a shot for THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936) with Humphrey Bogart. Bette Davis, and Leslie, Howard. Onlookers include cast members Dick Foran, Slim Thompson, Joe Sawyer, and (seated far right) Charley Grapewin.

  Most of the studios had regular production teams in the 1930s and 1940s, both in front of and behind the camera; these people worked together to give each studio its own distinctive style, which could easily be recognized by any discerning movie-goer. You knew it was a Warner Brothers movie by the type of subject matter, the thunder of Max Steiner’s music, the hard-boiled dialogue, snappy pace, inevitable presence of Frank McHugh or Alan Hale . . . and the photography of Sol Polito. Born in 1892, Polito drifted into the movie industry in the teens, and became a cameraman. By the 1920s, he was a very competent craftsman, working on Westerns and action pictures by the score. In the late 1920s he joined First National Pictures, shooting Ken Maynard Westerns and various program pictures. With the Warner Brothers-First National merger, and the emergence of Warners as one of the leading studios in the talkie era, Polito’s assignments became more important. With Darryl F. Zanuck in charge of production, Warners concentrated in the early 1930s on tough, lightning-paced pictures “torn from today’s headlines,” as some of the ads used to say. Polito’s sharp, straightforward photography complemented the style of these films perfectly; among his pictures were FIVE STAR FINAL, UNION DEPOT, THE DARK HORSE, BLESSED EVENT, THREE ON A MATCH, and I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG. He photographed some of the Busby Berkeley spectaculars, as well as assorted vehicles for James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Bette Davis, teamed with Warners’ corps of first-rate directors (Michael Curtiz, Ray Enright, Lloyd Bacon, etc.).

  But Polito was not a man of limited talent; like actors and directors, he had simply been typecast with a certain kind of picture. As Warner Brothers’ style changed in the late 1930s, so did Polito‘s—abandoning the harsh, realistic lighting of his early pictures, for softer, more attractive effects. The height of his metamorphosis can be seen in what is probably Polito’s finest film, THE SEA HAWK (1940), one of the all-time great swashbucklers, directed by Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn. There are individual scenes in this film—one, in which Flynn’s pirate crew mounts a neighboring ship—that are simply breathtaking. Yet at no time is there a beautiful shot for its own sake; every frame is utilized to m
ove the story forward. Tony Thomas, Rudy Behlmer, and Clifford McCarty, in their book The Films of Errol Flynn, wrote, “. . . Sol Polito’s high-contrast black and white photography is a highwater mark in opulent, dramatic lighting and composition in the classic style. His and Curtiz’ love of the moving camera—in, out, down, up, sweeping, or cruising laterally—was extraordinarily effective.”

  Director William Keighley and Polito rehearse a scone with Billy Mauch for THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER (1937).

  In the late 1940s, Polito left Warner Brothers—it hardly seemed possible—and did a few more films before retiring. His retirement came at around the same time that Warners, along with most other studios, started to slide downhill from the peak it had reached in the 30s and 40s. Perhaps it was appropriate for this master cameraman to leave the studio at this time, rather than suffer the indignity of training his expert eye on much of the filmmaking that followed.

  This identification of a certain cameraman with a certain studio was not always pleasing to the Hollywood corps of cinematographers. Once a studio established a style, it was imposed on everyone working there. In 1942, an editorial on the subject appeared in the American Cinematographer: