Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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DOCUMEM \\<\ FILM NEWS Gregg To land. FilmMaker by LESTER KOENIG Illustrated by HARRY HORNER LESTER KOENIG is a member of the Editorial Committee of the 'Screen Writer' he was able to gain first-hand knowledge of Gregg Toland's camera technique during the production of 'The Best Years of Our Lives' "If you study the faces about you, you will find they are not all the same color." : several years ago, a leading European film 1 nan came to Hollywood, saw Citizen Kane, '•ind told its cameraman, Gregg Toland, that le was 'the greatest cameraman in the world". "No,' said Gregg. That isn't so.' 'Really,' replied the European, 'who is 1 letter?' Gregg named two cameramen, then added. I'm only third best.' Gregg may not be the best, or even third jest cameraman in the world. But it is true that ; le is universally acclaimed, and a great many people abroad consider him one of the great irtists of the film. Unlike other creative and talented people i vho come to Hollywood after coming to naturity and reputation in the theatre, litera I ure. radio or related media, the growth of the | :ameraman because of the nature of their vork. has been indigenous to Hollywood. For hat reason, understanding a man like Gregg Toland, is to understand one of the strongest ispects of the complex Hollywood character. 3regg is what I call a film-maker, and a pro essional. The start of the Toland career was not very pectacular. It began in 1919, when he was an )ffice boy at the Fox Studios on Western Kvenue. One day he looked up and saw a ameraman on a parallel, cranking away. T never forgot that sight,' Gregg said, somevhat embarrassed by his youthful romanticsm. 'It seemed so glamorous and I made up ny mind that's what I wanted to be.' 'Didn't you have any previous interest in )hotography? Boy turns hobby into paying imposition, and all that sort of thing?' 'No,' he said, i didn't have the faintest inerest in photography. It just seemed exciting o sling a tripod over your shoulder, and it eemed mysterious to go into a dark room and oad film.' He laughed. And besides, an office >oy in those days made twelve dollars a week, nd an assistant cameraman made eighteen.' 'Do you still feel being a cameraman is "exiting" and "mysterious"?' I asked. 'Yes, I do,' he said. He said it in a way that howed he knew it wasn't the sophisticated hing to admit. Gregg is not a naive man, and ie knows how ridiculous enthusiasm for your /ork can make you appear to your friends, 'et, the fact that Gregg can still feel this e\jitement and mystery gives him a decided ad vantage over some of his more jaded colleagues. Gregg worked as an assistant cameraman for a good many years through the 'twenties, through the golden days of Hollywood's prosperity and madness, days when Tom Mix. William Farnum and Theda Bara were stars on the Fox lot. His first jobs were on two-reel Al St John comedies. 'By the way,' Gregg said. 'I'll tell you frankly I was a very good assistant. I made sixty dollars a week when the others were only making twenty-five or thirty. But 1 was worth it. I was proud of the camera. I used to stay on nights and polish it.' Finally, in 1929, the hard work paid its dividend. Gregg left the assistant ranks and teamed with George Barnes to photograph his fust picture. The Trespasser, starring Gloria Swanson, and directed by Edmund Goulding. 'We had twelve cameras shooting simultaneously to cover various set-ups, and we had two sound tracks going. In those days we didn't know how to cut sound, so we'd shoot the sound in one solid unit, and then cut the film from our twelve cameras to fit the track. Since all our cameras ran continuously, one some days we had 30,000 feet of rushes.' The early, experimenting days of sound were the formative period for Gregg's technique. After The Trespassers, he did more pictures with George Barnes: The Devil Dancer starring Gilda Grey, and The Rescue starring Ronald Colman. His first picture on his own was Eddie Cantor's The Kid from Spain, which Samuel Gold"Wyn produced in 1931. It was a musical and it was made before the days of the playback. Instead of the current practice of pre-recording a musical number and then photographing it to synchronize with the sound, the orchestra wis recorded as it played on the set. Gregg had to keep two cameras going together. When one would move in for a close shot, the second would be moving back for a long shot. The men who made pictures in those days had to be the inventors of their own technique. Today, Gregg feels we may have lost something, a stimulus to our creative thinking, because so much of the inventing has been done before. In the past, many brilliant things reached the screen because a technical problem had to be overcome by men of imagination who had no one to stand over them and say, \ ou can't do it that way. because this is the way we always do it.' In a very real sense, as a partial list of his over forty films indicate, Gregg grew to maturity with the medium: Tugboat Annie (1933). Roman Scandals (1933), Nana (1934), We I Again (1934), Les Miserables (1935), Splendxi (1935), Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936). Beloved Enemy (1936), Dead End (1937). Kidnapped (1938). Intermezzo (1939), W inhering Heights (1939), Long Voyage Home (19 Grapes of Wrath (1940), Ball of Fire (1941 1. Citizen Kane (1941). The Little Foxes (1941) During the war Gregg served in the US Navy where he made films, in the Pacific, and later in South America. In 1945, he returned to the Goldwyn Studios, where he has been working almost consistently for over twenty years, to do The Best Years of Our Lives Gregg's value as a cameraman transcends the concrete aspects of his work in the films he has photographed. He is a highly articulate man, who has done a great deal of creative thinking about the function of a cameraman in the complicated series of personal and technical relationships which are necessary to the making of a film. In trying to work out some standard of judging photographic quality, he found the conventional criteria inadequate. For example, the terms contrast, texture, balance and composition are used in judging the quality of photography. A scene is well photographed, supposedly, if the cameraman has been guided by accepted principles regarding these elements. It is customary to balance off the faces of various actors in a scene so that there are no jarring contrasts. However, it you study the faces about, you, you will find they are not all the same colour. To be true to reality, the cameraman would have to recognize that, and accept it. 'Yet,' Gregg explained, in The IU u >ur Lives when Fred Deny (Dana Andrews) comes home to his father (Roman Bohnenland stepmother (Gladys deorge). I was criticized because I didn't eliminate the contrasts in the tone ol the faces. It was done deliberately. I wanted to allow the audience to see the white, unhealthy appearing Stepmother, the drmkflushed father, and the healthy young bom(Continued overh 0