behind the camera in pictures
An unidentified US Signal Corps cameraman attached to the Fifth Army enters Pico, Italy on May 25, 1944.
With his Bell and Howell Eyemo at his side, he walks close to the buildings to avoid sniper fire.
Ray “Swede” Fernstrom of Paramount News and the only account the site editor has found complaining about the arrival of sound news and the motorization of cameras that came with it asides from a flippant anonymous complaint in another book in her library about photogs being reduced to “button pushing monkeys.” An example of one of the 300 pound cameras Fernstrom bitches about can be seen in this post.
…Suddenly my greatest fears were realized. I was called back to New York to learn about shooting with sound. This would mean splitting my expense money with some square sound man and toting heavy junk, cables, batteries, and other mysterious paraphernalia in a truck. Oh Lord, what was happening to the fun we had? But I worked hard, studied, and learned. My first sound engineer was Glen Glenn, and the truck was a monster. I taught Glenn our angles and he schooled me in their job because without cooperation no organization can build, especially in our field. I learned to pick subjects in which sound enhanced them.
We received newer and lighter trucks and the sound equipment was lightened and reduced in size, but the cameras remained as large, heavy, cumbersome and as Rube Goldbergish as ever. They were designed by engineers and mechanics who neither had to lift or use them in the newsreel world. Western Electric designed the sound end and Akeley the camera, but it appeared both forgotten everything they ever knew. The new Akeleys had a much heavier trip and legs, which had been strengthen, all adding to the busting down of the newsreel cameraman. Along with this came cables for the camera motor, sound light, recorder and mixer. It seemed we were being entangled and wrapped in cables. But this situation began to clear up as we became a better team with more actual working experience. But one time we were too late fastening the cables.
I now had a regular sound man and a little three-quarter-ton sedan delivery truck, a Wolverine built by Reo and painted blue, red and gold, the Paramount colors, with silver touches here and there. The vehicle was a beefed-up little beauty, with overload springs and oversize tires. Every inch of the interior was crowded with equipment stacked away by newsreelmen who really knew how to design an area to hold the utmost.
My sound man was Leslie Norman, middle name Charles, who in later years became Charles Norman and worked as a sound engineer with NBC. But to me in our happy newsreel days, he was Les Norman. Les was half English and half Swede. We had a grand time together, and the expenses were doubled with him along. He was happy-go-lucky, and as let-go as any newsreelman I’d ever met. He’s deceased now; probably died in a dull bed somewhere. But during our escapades, he was a true buddy.
…Newsreels were rapidly loosing their grip on the people’s imaginations. The crash of the stock market had taken the starch out of so many things, and the arthritis in my back was killing me. Those goddamned heavy sound cameras (or was it the moonshine) had taken its toll. Norm accepted a great position out West as a sound engineer at NBC Radio in Hollywood, California, and E. Cohen told me to see the Paramount doctor about my bent spine. The doctor strongly suggested I moved to a warm climate, so the boss gave me three months’ advance salary and said, “Go and get your health back, then come back to Paramount News.”
Fernstrom ended up leaving the newsreels for good and went to Hollywood to work as a cinematographer.
At the time the Little Valley airliner crash occurred, December of 1951, George Gore was still shooting for FOX Movietone News.
On a New Year’s Eve, I was searching a northwestern Pennsylvania mountain for a lost airliner. However, it seemed to be a fruitless search and I headed my car back home. Then I heard a special bulletin on the car radio that the airliner had been sighted from the air, wrecked on a remote mountain top near Salamanca, New York. I turned the car around and, late that evening, arrived in the area just as the New Year was ushering in. I got a few hours’ sleep in a small hotel a couple of miles away from the scene of the disaster.
I awoke at 5:00 AM and readied my camera gear for the day’s work. I was taken by a tractor-driven sled up a steep snow-covered mountain, as far as the tractor could travel, to a dense forest. From there, for nearly a mile, with two cameras strapped over my shoulders, I started hiking in knee-high boots over the rough, slippery, snow-covered underbrush. As I reached the scene of the lost airliner, I met some of the rescue workers huddled besides a fire not far from the main part of the wreckage. The injured who had survived the crash, and some of the dead, had already been taken out by sled to waiting ambulances during the night.
Just a hundred yards ahead of the group of workers around the fire, I wearily climbed up a steep embankment to see one of the most awesome scenes imaginable. Parts of the airliner were scattered as far as the eye could see. A path had been cut through the tree tops by the lost airliner for a distance of about five hundred yards to the spot where lay half of the airliner, minus its wings. Seats, baggage and clothing were scattered for miles around. Torn bits of clothing were swinging crazily on the tree tops. I walked by a tree stump with a human torso sitting on it. Nearby lay the bare leg of the pilot, and, on ahead, beside a large rag doll, I saw the arm of a little girl which made me feel like crying.
Strange, though, when you are hurrying about filming a disaster story like this, you are too busy to realize the awfulness of the scenes you see while you fight time. The oncoming fog suddenly descended. Another ten minutes, and the thick fog that was engulfing the area made it impossible to shoot any more film.
On my way out with my completed story, I met other movie cameramen coming in from the clearing. They turned back because of the dense fog, which did not lift until the next day. I phoned my Fox Movietone News editor, Jack Haney, and told him it looked like we had a scoop as far as the first newsreel was concerned. He was pleased to such an extent that he said I would recieve a full week’s salary for the day’s work shooting a tough assignment.
That Sunday evening, after I put the film story on a plane heading for New York, I started driving back home. Six hours later, as I lay in bed, reviewing through my mind the tragic scenes I had witnessed, the one that seemed more exposed was the little girl’s arm besides the unscratched doll, which brought tears to my eyes…
Another tale from NBC News cameraman George Gore dating from 1954.
When William Remington, who was in the Washington political spotlight, was murdered by fellow inmates at the Bellefonte Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, I was assigned by N.B.C. to get a film story for release the same day.
When I arrived in Bellefonte, after visiting two funeral homes, I learned at the last one that the undertaker was just leaving to pick up the Remington body at the penitentiary. After phoning the penitentiary, I was told that no pictures would be permitted within their gates. However, I coaxed the undertaker to let me ride in the hearse. When we were on the forbidden grounds, I quickly got out and climbed inside a parked car, unseen by the guards. As the hearse left the building with the body, I filmed the necessary footage and, as it passed by, jumped in and completed my story as we arrived at the funeral home.
As a follow-up, I later filmed another story when the two suspected teen-aged murderers were scheduled to be arraigned before a judge at Clearfield, Pennsylvania. The night before, I was told by a hotel manager that the father of one of the boys had asked him for permission to sleep in a lobby chair for the night, as he was broke. The father had been given bus fare by neighbors in Georgia, and had just made an all-day bus ride without anything to eat. It was suggested that he could get food and shelter in a cell bed at the jailhouse.
Early the next morning, I visited the sheriff. After explaining the object of my presence, I was taken to the distracted father, who was suffering from cancer. As I interviewed the father, our conversation was picked up by N.B.C. in New York via telephone and tape for radio broadcast within an hour.
The father told me he had not seen his young son for more than a year since he ran away, and asked me if I could help him. I felt sorry for this sadden father who had traveled so far to see his son, so I devised a plan for him. He accepted my offer of a job to hold a movie light at the courthouse, so he would be able to see his son. We filmed the two boys, handcuffed to the guards, being brought into the courthouse and, later, their departure as they got into a waiting car. The father, beside me, made a pathetic picture as he gave a little wave as the car pulled away. This last pathetic scene provided a heart-rendering touch to the film story.
Later, while shooting a close-up scene of the judge, I told him about the father wanting to see his son and that he was waiting outside for me.
When the judge asked if I thought he should be allowed to see him, I said, “Judge, I am a father, and I suppose you are; and we, in the same circumstances, would expect help.”
The father had tears in his eyes as I told him to jump into my car. I dropped him off to see his son at the penitentiary where a meeting had been arranged by the judge.
Later, I was pleased to receive the following note from Len Allen, N.B.C. news editor:
“You will be happy to know that Today’s News thought you had done a very good and enterprising job on the Remington arraignment. Injecting the scene of the father made the story. All court stories of this nature are fundamentally routine, since you can’t do much more than get grab shots of the defendant coming and going. But adding the cut-aways on the father made all the difference in the world. The script was built entirely around him. Nice work.”
George Gore, cameraman for FOX Movietone News, NBC News and WTAE-TV, related in his autobiography a story he covered for NBC in 1953 where he nearly found himself in a bit trouble due to a mistaken identification.
Len Allen, NBC news editor, assigned me to cover a story involving an incident which happened within twelve miles of my home. The story concerned a Pennsylvania “turnpike killer,” who was then being sought. Little did I suspect that I would be mistaken for the killer while in the process of filming the story.
Truckers were warned by radio and the press not to pull their rigs off the highway to park. Truckers had a habit of doing this to take a nap when they become drowsy. One trucker had already been murdered while asleep in the cab of his truck.
As I was driving along the turnpike, five miles west of Somerset, I noticed a large truck parked off to the side, so I stopped to investigate. As I approached the truck, sure enough, there was a truck driver taking a snooze on the front seat. As I got up on the running board and looked in, the driver sleepily opened his eyes. As I quickly leaned over to film the incident, a state trooper going by saw me crouched up on the running board and thought that here he had the killer – caught in the act! When he came up to me, I turned around and assured him that although I was about to shoot the sleeping driver – it was with my camera, for a film story to be used on the NBC news. As it was, his presence added to the value of the story.
While he admonished the trucker, I started shooting and completed the sequence of the trooper directing to the trucker to move on and a final scene of the trucker driving his rig onto the turnpike. I was thankful the trooper was satisfied, after his cautious approach, that I was not the “turnpike killer,” but was just doing my work.
The climax to this search ended a week later, when the killer was captured. I shot another story of his arraignment in Greensburg.
Spencer Allen, the first news director of WGN-TV wrote a chapter in the 1953 RTNDA TV News Handbook espousing how he believed local news should be done in the era before consultants started to turn newscasts into clones of each other. Allen’s commentary also reveals that during the infancy of local television news, some stations lived by the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality even then.
Read “Producing the Local Television Newsreel” [pdf file]
Allen also wrote an article in the Chicago Tribune a few years earlier about his staff of cameramen that can be found on this post.
Editor’s note: Leslie Mann and Ronnie Noble really were in Kenya three days earlier shooting a story on the Treetops Hotel in the aftermath of the 1954 Mau Mau Uprising.
Ronnie Noble relates a question from the public at a dog show in London and their reaction to the answer:
Three days later we were covering a dog show in London, and we had our problems. But Mann and Noble were now an established team, and we worked well together. The lighting difficulties have been overcome. Leslie had his mike in the best spot, and I was working out continuity shots. A middle-aged lady watched us for a while, and then, unable to restrain herself, she said:
“You young men must have a very exciting life!”
“Well, we do get around, ” I replied, to the question that is asked a thousand times in the life of every cameraman.
“Do you have to film animals very often?” asked the dear old lady.
“As a matter of fact,” said Leslie Mann, “three days ago we were filming a couple rhinos fighting in Kenya!”
“There’s no need to be rude, young man!” said our erstwhile friend. “I asked a civil question…and I expect a civil answer!”
And with that, she swept out.
This October 1, 1950 Chicago Daily Tribune article written by WGN news director Spencer Allen discusses five of WGN’s early news photogs – Fred Giese, Felix Kubick, Charlie Gekler, Jimmy Hayden and Leo Bartholomew.
Giese, WGN’s first chief photographer, was a former Pathe newsreel man. Gekler was trained to shoot by the Army Signal Corps during World War Two before he joined the WGN staff while Kubick, Hayden and Bartholomew were former still shooters lured away from the Chicago Tribune.
Read article “What it Takes to be WGN-TV News Lensman” (PDF format)
Universal Newsreel photographer Harry Walsh films graduates of the St. Petersburg Charm School at Al Lang Field, St. Petersburg, Florida on November 29, 1947.
Pathe News photographer Cliff Poland was also assigned to cover the charm school graduates and the footage he shot can be seen here.
Edit: Greetings visitors from The Freedom Forum. I’ve emailed a bunch of newspaper clippings to Ms Rhule regarding the circumstances of the names listed below.
Expanded post of a posting on my other blog.
In the course of digging up names online through newspaper archives, one occasionally comes across obituaries. Some are short and to the point, others are many inches of praise. Sadly they all have one thing in common – they are names of newsies who died on the job doing what they loved. Some are still recalled, such as KREM’s Gary Brown whose name is occasionally brought up around Spokane’s Bloomsday and has a television photography award named after him by the SPJ Inland Northwest Chapter (at least there was a local Gary Brown Award for general news photography a few years ago, don’t know if its still exists). Most however, are sadly forgotten, lost to the distance of time.
Therefor as an attempt to do the right thing and correct this travesty, the editor of this site has sent a note to keepers of the list at Newseum pointing out the names of thirteen newsreel and television photogs, one editor, two soundmen, one anchor and two reporters who are not included on the Journalists Memorial as of 2009.
The list pointed out to the Newseum:
Theodore Girard “Shorty” Randolph, cameraman, International Newsreel
Randolph drowned in the Columbia River at Stella, Washington on April 23, 1927 after a blast of rock being cut away for the Ocean Beach highway fell into the river and the resulting wave swept Randolph and his camera into the river.
Charles Ralphael Traub, cameraman, Pathe News
Killed when an out-of-control car crashed into Traub while he was on assignment covering an attempted land speed record at Daytona Beach, Florida on March 14, 1929.
Allyn Alexander, cameraman, FOX Movietone News
Lewis Tappan , soundman, FOX Movietone News
Alexander and Tappan were killed in an Army bomber crash while on assignment covering a news story on May 28, 1935 in the Sequoia National Forest, California
James Pergola, cameraman, Pathe News
William Pitt, editor, Pathe News
Pergola and Pitt were killed in an airline crash in the Uinta Mountains of Utah on October 18, 1937 while on assignment covering a story on the safety of transcontinental airline travel. [more info on James Pergola and William Pitt]
Marshall McCarroll, chief photographer Los Angeles Office, Paramount Newsreel
McCarroll was killed in an airplane crash while on assignment filming airplanes in flight on May 10, 1940 in Los Angeles, California.
Fred Bayliss, cameraman, Paramount News
Bayliss was killed in a crash of an Army transport plane while on assignment in the Western Desert, Egypt on July 8, 1943 [additional info on Fred Bayliss]
Lee Doran, cameraman, Universal Newsreel
Doran was killed in Upper Marlboro, Maryland in a traffic accident while returning to New York from an assignment covering the Naval Academy graduation in Annapolis on June 4, 1948.
Marshall Wallace, cameraman, Television News Service of New York
Killed in an airplane crash while on assignment in Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic on August 5, 1955.
Ian Murray, cameraman, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Murray was killed in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada on August 22, 1955 after a bucket on a crane failed while he was testing camera equipment while on assignment covering the World Boy Scout jamboree.
Roy Edwards, cameraman, News of the Day
Edwards was killed in a news helicopter crash into the Hudson River, New York City on October 12, 1958 while on assignment filming a newsreel on the arrival of a new ocean liner.
Dan Preuhs, photographer, KYW-TV
Bill Loomer, soundman, KYW-TV
Preuhs and Loomer were killed in a news helicopter crash while on assignment filming a charity jogging event on July 14, 1979 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Cole Bunzel, anchor, KXLY-TV
Bunzel was killed in a automobile accident on US Highway 195 south of Spokane, Washington on January 12, 1978 while en-route to Pullman to cover then Vice President Walter Mondale’s speech at Washington State University.
Doug Rives, reporter, KING-TV
Rives fell 200 feet to his death from the top of Bridal Veil Falls while on assignment covering a story about hiking in the Cascade Mountains near Index, Washington on August 13, 1981.
Dan Sullivan, photographer, KTVB-TV
Mary Shore, reporter, KTVB-TV
Sullivan and Shore were killed when airplane KTVB-TV chartered to cover a story at the Idaho Power Substation crashed shortly after takeoff in Hailey, Idaho on September 21, 1987. [additional info on Dan Sullivan and Mary Shore]
Gary Brown, photographer, KREM-TV
Gary Brown and a helicopter pilot were killed after news helicopter crashed due to hitting guy wires of tower located behind station after returning from covering Bloomsday on May 5, 1985.
