James Wong Howe, A.S.C. was simply a visionary. Greatly admired in the business, Howe’s talents as a cinematographer were highly sought after. Over his six-decade long career, Howe worked closely with a variety of directors on productions big and small and successfully navigated his way through major industry transitions including the advent of sound, color and the widescreen format. While Howe dabbled in directing, he preferred cinematography which he considered a more creative pursuit. 

He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for films including ALGIERS (’38), ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS (’40), THE NORTH STAR (’43), SECONDS (’66) and his final film FUNNY LADY (’75). He won twice, for THE ROSE TATTOO (’55) and HUD (’63). Among his favorite films to work on were THE THIN MAN (’34), VIVA VILLA! (’34), PICNIC (’55) and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (’58). But many, including himself, considered the pinnacle of his achievement to be HUD, a sweeping drama directed by Martin Ritt that included stunning shots of barren Texas landscape and one of the most poignant and beautifully shot endings in cinema history.

According to the TCM documentary directed by Daniel Raim, IMAGE MAKERS: THE ADVENTURES OF AMERICA’S PIONEER CINEMATOGRAPHERS (2019), Howe “practiced the art of the cinematographer as the highest form of storytelling and imbued it with his own engaging point of view.” Howe had a keen eye for expressive lighting and composition that accurately depicted the mood of any given story. He earned the nickname “Low-Key Howe” for his penchant for lighting that looked more natural on screen. In an interview, Howe said, “I like to cross light. I don’t like to have many shadows on the wall because every time you show one shadow it becomes another character. It intrudes upon the scene.” Howe taught himself deep focus, keeping the foreground, middle ground and background in focus and thus creating multi-layered shots. For Howe, the magic happened when the actors, director and cinematographer were all in sync with each other. He was insular in his training and didn’t watch many other films because he felt that inspiration should come from within.

Howe was an innovator from the very start, crafting new techniques that enhanced visuals while adding more emotional resonance to scenes. Many of Howe’s innovations were purely accidental. In his early days photographing actresses for studio portraits, he made Mary Miles Minter’s light blue eyes, which were difficult to photograph, darker by having her look at a piece of black velvet. Years later, while working on Howard Hawks’ WWII drama AIR FORCE (’43), a generator that was used for lighting stopped working. He was shooting a scene in which B-17s were landing on a burning field. He had his technicians wire flares while utilizing the headlights from the planes. The flickering lights and smoke from the flares resulted in a very dramatic shot that would not have been as effective had it been done with steady lights.

Often times his innovations involved some creative problem solving or experimentation. For Robert Rossen’s THE BRAVE BULLS (’51), Howe strapped the camera to the actors’ waist to create a unique point of view for the bullfighting sequences. According to the AFI, in order to film Ronald Colman shaking hands with himself in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (’37), Howe used a 3X4 foot optical glass and a double whose head and shoulders were matted out with masking tape. Then he ran the film backwards and re-photographed with just Colman’s head and shoulders and everything else matted out. 

For director John Cromwell’s ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, scenes were shot utilizing the glow from torchlights, enhanced by reflectors that produced a naturally soft image. To capture the boxing sequences in Robert Rossen’s BODY AND SOUL (’47), Howe, a former boxer himself, used eight different cameras, one of which was a hand-held camera that Howe carried while squatting on roller skates while an assistant guided him around the ring for low-angle shots. To enhance the visuals on Alexander Mackendrick’s SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (’57), Howe added Vaseline to star Burt Lancaster’s thick-rimmed glasses to make them shine giving Lancaster a more menacing appearance.

Howe’s preference was to work in black-and-white. In an interview he said, “black and white is a medium you can do many things with thematically, with filters and so on. With color you’re restricted.” While working on the Technicolor film THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (’38), he struggled to get the lighting right in the cave sequence. Howe defied Technicolor’s strict guidelines and shot the scene with less lighting than they had required. This resulted in a more natural look that producer David O. Selznick was pleased with. However, this angered Technicolor and Howe was barred from working on color films until 1949.

His mastery of black-and-white cinematography can especially be seen in his later work on films such as John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS. He employed 9mm fish-eye lens, used low f-stops and worked with the crew to create sets that appeared distorted and a bit offkilter. The black-and-white cinematography and the extreme angles ramp up the drama in this mind-bender of a film. For HUD, Ritt worried that Howe would not feel particularly inspired by mostly exterior shooting in a rather plain landscape. Ritt wanted to include more footage of clouds, but Howe saw the blank sky and open landscape as representative of the isolation the characters felt within the context of the story. The final scene was to be shot in a bedroom and was changed to an exterior shot that brilliantly captures the end of an era for the family. The door closes on the viewer just as the words “The End” appear on the screen. While we don’t know if this was Howe’s vision or Ritt’s, it does demonstrate how cinematography is key to evoking a message or theme to a viewer in an effective way.

IMAGE MAKERS: THE ADVENTURES OF AMERICA’S PIONEER CINEMATOGRAPHERS (2019) is a new original TCM documentary that celebrates the early visionaries who shaped and molded an art form into what it is today. The film focuses on seven early cinematographers who developed their craft through invention, practice and collaboration. These include Billy Bitzer (Intolerance [1916’], Way Down East [1920]), Charles Rosher (Sunrise [1927], The Yearling [1946]), Rollie Totheroh (City Lights [1931], The Gold Rush [1925]), William H. Daniels (Flesh and the Devil [1926], Anna Christie [1930]), Karl Struss (Sunrise [1927], Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [31]), Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane [41], The Grapes of Wrath [40]) and James Wong Howe (The Thin Man [34], Hud [1963]). I had the pleasure of chatting with director Daniel Raim, who has directed the critically acclaimed Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story (2015) and Something’s Gonna Live (2010), about his new documentary.

Raquel Stecher: Congratulations on IMAGE MAKERS. Can you tell me a little bit about how this project started?

Daniel Raim: I had met up with James Harmon Brown, who’s the grandson of Harry Stradling, Sr., ASC (Pygmalion [1938], My Fair Lady [1964]) and James Harmon Brown’s close friend Curtis Clark, ASC. They had explained to me that 2019 will be the 100th anniversary of the ASC (The American Society of Cinematographers), and they’d love to produce a documentary honoring the generation of cinematographers, the early cinematographers like Jim’s grandfather. I was immediately engaged by this subject matter and knowing that there was a documentary made in ‘92 called Visions of Light, I wanted to do something very different from that and start from the very beginning and kind of make a documentary that, like most of my other films, sort of puts the audience in the shoes of these pioneer master craftsmen and craftswomen.

I said, “Let’s find out what archival materials we have access to.” Because I want to bring them to life in their own words. That’s the most important thing for me.

It was a process of discovery, but the criteria was it’s vital that we have access to their own words.

Stecher: How did you select the seven cinematographers to be profiled in the movie?

Raim: Out of the seven that we picked, we had access to archival materials. Billy Bitzer wrote an autobiography. Gregg Toland was never interviewed on tape because he died at the age of 44—he was quite young—from heart disease, but he left behind a substantial amount of archival print interviews. In the early stages, I learned that his daughter, Lothian Toland, is still alive and well. And I said, “Lothian, I’d love to interview you about your dad… we’ll come out to Palm Springs and interview you.” She said, “No, no. I’ll drive out to the ASC clubhouse because I want to be next to my dad’s camera.” … I really want the audience to feel Gregg Toland through the presence of his camera sitting next to his daughter.

David Totheroh, the grandson of Rollie Totheroh, also came to the ASC clubhouse. This was in the very beginning of the documentary making. I had no idea that this guy’s a walking encyclopedia of his grandfather… Rollie Totheroh was one of those fascinating stories about a third baseman baseball player, who out of nowhere is thrust into the middle of some of the most important moments in cinema history… and would become Charlie Chaplin’s closest collaborator.

The ASC had this incredible archive of audio recordings done by Kemp Niver, ASC. Dating back to the '70s. Our archival producer, Martha Winterhalter, was the publisher of American Cinematographer magazine for 30 years. During that time, she had digitized these recordings.

Stecher: What do you think are some misconceptions about the cinematographer’s contribution to the filmmaking process and the director’s contribution?

Raim: To a large degree, there’s very little study on the contribution of the early pioneer cinematographers until recently. We need to understand the directors and who they are, the artistic vision of the director. What we learn in IMAGE MAKERS is the pioneering cinematographers invented the language that became film grammar. That was an essential question I had when I first started working on this, where does the grammar of cinema come from? I certainly agree that a general audience is aware there’s a continuity. IMAGE MAKERS offers sort of a look at the puzzle…

You learn that Billy Bitzer taught D.W. Griffith about the components of storytelling. There’s action and comedy, and here are the genres. Here’s how we show it visually. Bitzer kind of invented the medium with Griffith. We don’t know anything about Bitzer or what he did. Then Griffith came into his own and was clearly a master visual artist in his own right.

Charles Rosher, who [was] Mary Pickford’s cameraman, is invited to UFA to show how he lights Pickford. Two years later, he comes back to Hollywood with Murnau and they do Sunrise (1927) together. Sunrise is one of those films I saw at film school that just blew my mind.

Then [there’s] James Wong Howe… a Chinese-American cameraman. Now suddenly you realize that this guy has an amazing sense of humor and artistry and an enormous respect from directors like Martin Ritt and impacts the ending of what John Bailey in our film calls the most important climax to any film… Hud (1963).

Stecher: IMAGE MAKERS includes illustrations by Patrick Mate, which help visualize some of the behind-the-scenes actions. Can you tell me about how you worked with Mate and why it was important to incorporate these illustrations in your film?

Raim: I’m having lunch with Patrick Mate and [writer] Michael Sragow. Mike tells us the story of Karl Brown remembering Fireworks Wilson… he was the head of pyrotechnics on Intolerance (1916). He had a stump for an arm and helped Billy Bitzer light the gigantic Babylon set with magnesium flare torches. There [are] no photographs of Fireworks Wilson. I thought there’s nobody better on planet Earth to draw and depict Fireworks Wilson than Patrick Mate, to bring to life this kind of extraordinary character who basically helped Billy Bitzer light the Intolerance night scene with those magnesium flare torches.

Patrick has this uncanny ability to inject drama and humor and personality into a historical depiction of an event and bring it to life on multiple levels. And certainly, that began in our collaboration with Harold and Lillian. In this case, we decided to go for a period look that is born out of the cartoon magazine illustrations of the time and looking at the cartoon of the Pathe Brothers from 1910… I thought it was important to use art. The criteria is I would only use an original artwork by Patrick if there were no historical photographs.

Stecher: Can you tell me about working with Kevin Brownlow and Leonard Maltin, two celebrated film historians featured in the documentary, as well as actor Michael McKean who narrated?

Raim: Working with Michael McKean with the narration [was] really great… first of all he’s a TCM fan… He is one of the great American actors who brought into his narration knowledge and love of film history. He’s so dynamic at drama and comedy. And he did all the voices as well as the narration of the different interviews. He did the voice of Billy Bitzer and William Daniels. And then there’s Kevin Brownlow… [with] his wealth of knowledge about silent film. I didn’t want to interview Kevin Brownlow just as a talking head. 

I wanted to interview Kevin Brownlow as someone who can share with us their passion and their insight. I’m interested in Kevin Brownlow as a character, not as an interview subject. I hope the film gives Kevin Brownlow the breathing space to really… connect with him as a character, and so I really try to make him comfortable to really be who he is and not edit around him but let him breathe, let the film really see him and spend time with him and not make it into sound bites. But, boy, can he talk about William Daniels.

Then of course, Leonard Maltin’s interesting because when he was 24 he came out to Hollywood for the first time to write a book that was published called The Art of the Cinematographer. I loved how just eloquent Leonard was bringing to life the contributions of Billy Bitzer, specifically, and Charles Rosher and spoke eloquently to the transition from silent to sound. He brought his own personality into it. I love the moment where he says, "And then comes sound, and all of that beauty and all of the luster of those late silent films vanishes as if a meat cleaver has been whacked down mercilessly on an art form.” For me, that’s just so much the essence of what I also want to communicate in IMAGE MAKERS: the passion that people like Kevin Brownlow and Leonard Maltin have for silent filmmaking.

Stecher: What do you hope viewers take away from Image Makers?

Raim: I hope is that when audiences continue to watch classic Hollywood movies on TCM, in this case, that they’ll be looking at the scenes with new eyes and going, “who is the cinematographer and what is the continuity of style? And how did he light this scene?” Then getting a sense of the kind of incredible contribution of the motion picture cinematographer, as well as sort of an appreciation of the art and the technology that enabled them to do what they did.