Dennis “Denny” Bossone began his career in 1911 as a twelve year old copyboy at a Philadelphia newspaper and eventually worked his way up to a darkroom soup boy and then shooting on the streets. When the dirty thirties rolled around, Bossone was a newsreel cameraman. After the newsreels faded away with the rise of television, he jumped to shooting news for KYW-TV. By the time he retired after a seven decade career behind a newsreel, still and television camera, Bossone had shot just about every major story in his market: the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, the arrest of Al Capone, the Hindenburg disaster, beauty pageants and countless thousands of minor stories forgotten to time.
Bossone’s colleagues from the newsreel era recall him shouting at Queen Elizabeth II, “Hey, Queenie, turn this way so we can take your picture.” The queen complied with his demands as did her father years earlier when Bossone pulled the same stunt. He knocked out a gangster with his camera for insulting his mother and took the life jacket off a corpse as a souvenir from another story among other activities frowned upon today but considered normal in the hard-driving, cigar, whiskey and fedora era of news gathering.
After the Hindenburg disaster, Bossone was sent to cover the aftermath and recalled in an interview, “I shot them pulling all the bodies out from under the airship. They brought them into a hanger. Boy that place stunk to high heaven. They told us not to take nothing, but I managed to stuff some pieces (of the zeppelin) into the case of my tripod. The Fox Theater put together a whole movie on the Hindenburg. My stuff was put on display outside the theater. It was a big success.”
Bossone died in April of 1993.
By the time this article was written outlining Norman Alley’s views on news photography and television news, the Hearst newsreel crews were under contract with CBS News to shoot newsfilm for programs such as Ed Murrow’s See It Now.
