James Wong Howe (1899-1976)

A study in concentration, circa 1940s.

“I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.”

Shooting The Alaskan, 1924.

“Sometimes it’s not how much light you use to get an effect, it’s how little you use and still make it work. There are a lot of rules to be broken in photography, and you’ve got to have courage.”

With his Academy Award for The Rose Tattoo, 1955.

[From Hollywood Cameramen, 1970, by Charles Higham]
“I have a basic approach that goes on from film to film: to make all the sources of light absolutely naturalistic. If you are in a room and the scene is taking place at a certain time of day, try to find out where the light would come from, and follow that, don’t impose an artificial style.”

Shooting Watch on the Rhine, 1943, with (from left) director Herman Shumlin and assistant director Dick Moder.

[On Humphrey Bogart]
“What I liked most about him I suppose was that he was honest, he never minced his words. Believe me, ninety-nine percent of the people in Hollywood go through life and never say what they mean, but Bogart wasn’t like that. There was no baloney about him.”

Shooting a scene from Body and Soul on roller-skates, 1947.

[From Hollywood Cameramen, 1970, by Charles Higham]

“On Body and Soul I myself got on roller-skates to shoot the boxing scenes and they pushed me around. I wanted an effect where the boxer is knocked out and he looks up into a dazzle of lights; with a heavy, fixed camera, you’d never get that.”

Holding his Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography for Hud. Leon Shamroy (right) holds his Oscar for Best Color Cinematography.

[On John Frankenheimer]
“I don’t think John really understands dramatic values; he’s more or less mechanically inclined: lenses and camera and all that. All that’s my job; he ought to worry about the story and the actors.”

With Samantha Eggar on the set of The Molly Maguires, 1970.

[From Hollywood Cameramen, 1970, by Charles Higham]

“Sweet Smell of Success was exciting; it was a pleasure to work with Sandy Mackendrick. I used varnish to give the look of the film a glitter, in the bars, many of them real in New York. I used very small bulbs; photoflood effects worked well because we had so much polish on the walls it made everything shine. The whole film shimmered; few films have that look.”

On the cover of International Photographer, 1975.

My favorite James Wong Howe-photographed films: Seconds (1966), Hud (1963), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), He Ran All the Way (1951), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Body and Soul (1947), Pursued (1947), Kings Row (1942), City for Conquest (1940), They Made Me a Criminal (1939), The Thin Man (1934), and dozens more dating back to 1923.

Leo Gordon (1922-2000)

The well-dressed hoodlum.

[To Don Siegel, after being cast in Riot in Cell Block 11]

“I don’t want to let you guys down. I can’t accept the part ... I’m an ex-con. Served five years in San Quentin for first-degree robbery. I was shot in my guts by the arresting officers. I had pulled my gun, but didn’t fire it.” (from the book A Siegel Film)

Dispensing prison justice in Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954).

“As the perennial ‘heavy,’ I’ve died of everything except old age. When I’d get home from the studio at night my daughter would ask how I’d gotten bumped off that day.” (1966 Los Angeles Times interview)

Dispensing underworld justice in The Big Operator (1959).

“Westerns are fundamental ... the morality play. There’s a good guy and a bad guy. You know which is which. You don’t have to go into the psyche to find out his parents were abusive. [The heavy is] the guy people remember.”

Partnering Mickey Rooney in Baby Face Nelson (1957).

“You get more recognition, I think, as a bad guy than a lot of these guys who’ve played heroes on long-running television shows.”

Don’t make him angry.

“Thank God for typecasting.”

My favorite Leo Gordon films: Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), Man in the Shadow (1957), Baby Face Nelson (1957), The Big Operator (1959), The Intruder (1962), Kitten with a Whip (1964), Tobruk (1967), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Bonnie's Kids (1973)

Anne Baxter (1923-1985)

On location for Jean Renoir’s Swamp Water (1941).

[On The Magnificent Ambersons]

“Orson works his players hard, but he’s wonderful to work with. Remember the sleigh scene in the picture, where I was thrown out into the snow with Tim Holt? That scene was made in a downtown ice house at two in the morning. Orson realized by dinnertime that we weren’t getting anywhere. I’d stiffen up every time I had to fall from the sleigh. So he took us all out to dinner and gave me three glasses of sparkling Moselle. After that it was easy falling out of the sleigh.” (1943 interview with Sheilah Graham)

With Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

“So far, Orson Welles is my favorite director. He gives you the feeling when you go into a scene that you are doing something no one has ever done before. He takes the trouble to know every member of his cast so well that he understands exactly how to approach him and get his best work for each scene. You get very tired, physically and emotionally, working for Orson, but it is worth it.” (1943 Photoplay/Movie-Mirror interview)

Overheated publicity shot for Five Graves to Cairo (1943).

[On her character in Five Graves to Cairo]

“Many movie parts for girls are what I call stooge roles, just a succession of reactions to things a man says and does. Mouche means ‘little fly’ in French, and by her own choice and strength of character Mouche flew in the face of destruction, fighting even Marshal Rommel himself to gain her personal goal in the war. Here was no stooge part. Just the opposite — a girl who was indomitable and decisive, and yet delicately feminine.” (1946 Saturday Evening Post interview)

Going toe-to-toe with Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950).

[On All About Eve]

“I patterned Eve after the understudy I had in a Broadway play when I was 13. She actually threatened to finish me off. She was the bitchiest person I ever saw.”

Basking in her Oscar for The Razor’s Edge.

“The Razor’s Edge contained my only great performance. When we shot the hospital scene in which Sophie loses her husband, child and everything else, I relived the death of my brother, whom I adored and who died at three. It gives me chills right now to think of it.”

A libidinous Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (1956).

“I’m an actress, not a personality. It’s more successful to be a personality. But can you use it in every role? I don’t spill over into everything I do. I do what I do from inside someone else’s skin.”

Beauty, brains and brilliance.

“I wasn’t afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure.”

My favorite Anne Baxter films: Swamp Water (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), All About Eve (1950), I Confess (1951), The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

Showing his range in Marty (1955).

“The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you’re in front of the camera or when you’re on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting. What you’ve gotta do is find out what the writer wrote about and put it into your mind. This is acting. Not going out and researching what the writer has already written. This is crazy!”

Playing with knives in From Here to Eternity (1953). 

“The greatest compliment I ever had in my life was one day, I was talking to Montgomery Clift. We were sitting all by ourselves in an empty studio, and we saw a door open. And a man and a woman walked in. We paid no attention. We went right on talking. And suddenly I was engulfed in these huge arms. And the voice said, ‘You’re the son of a bitch I wrote about when I wrote that book.’ [From Here to Eternity] And it was James Jones himself. And he said to me, ‘Keep at it, kid. I love what you’re doing.’ ” (interview with Dan Lybarger)

Playing with pitchforks in Violent Saturday (1955).

“Spencer Tracy was the first actor I’ve seen who could just look down into the dirt and command a scene. He played a setup with Robert Ryan that way. He’s looking down at the road, and then he looks at Ryan at just the precise, right minute. I tell you, Rob could’ve stood on his head and zipped open his fly and the scene would’ve still been Mr. Tracy’s.”

Showing one of his badass faces.

“I hate hippies and dopeheads. Just hate them. I’m glad we sent them off to war. They came back with a sense of responsibility and respect. We should have grabbed the women, given them a bath, put a chastity belt on them, and put them in secretary school.”

Giving Lee Marvin the business in Emperor of the North (1973).

“Where can we find the great actors we had yesteryear, guys like Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper and Edward G. Robinson? You know, I was talking to Lee Marvin the other day and we agreed that we were the last of a breed. We’re the last who had the opportunity of working with these fine actors. I feel very humble. It makes me feel that I’ve got to try that bit harder.”

Keeping cool on the set of The Wild Bunch (1969).

“Everything I do has a moral to it. Yes, I’ve been in films that have had shootings. I made The Wild Bunch, which was the beginning of the splattering of blood and everything else. But there was a moral behind it.”

My favorite Ernest Borgnine films: The Mob (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953), Vera Cruz (1954), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Violent Saturday (1955), The Vikings (1958), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ice Station Zebra (1868), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Emperor of the North (1973)

Agnes Moorehead (1900-1974)

The actress whom Orson Welles said could play anything.

“Acting is a difficult and sometimes a discouraging, sorrowful profession. It’s also the most ephemeral of the arts. A painter can preserve his work, but an actor cannot. Even motion pictures come and go.” (interview with Ronald L. Bowers)

Magnificent with Joseph Cotten in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

“Of course I wanted to play the Stanwyck part in Sorry, Wrong Number. It had been written for me by Lucille Fletcher, and I must have done it on radio about 18 times. I went to Hal Wallis at Paramount when they were casting it to put my hat in the ring, but he said he owed Barbara a picture and that I could have a supporting role. I said no. I’m not bitter about it, I let the chips fall where they may and go on from there.... They played my recording constantly on the set.” (interview with Ronald L. Bowers)

Cousin Lily in Summer Holiday (1948).

[On Method acting] “The Method school thinks the emotion is the art. It isn’t. All emotion isn’t sublime. The theater isn’t reality. If you want reality, go the morgue. The theater is human behavior that is effective and interesting.”

Soon to receive comeuppance from Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage (1947).

“Materialism has brought about confusion and decadence. The youth of today have their eyes open to what harm has been done by measuring a man by the size of his bank account, and I feel sorry that so few of them know where to turn because they have lost respect for those closest to them.”

The malevolent Countess Fosco in The Woman in White (1948).

[On transitioning from radio to television] “I never thought anything about it. There are lots of times that you can’t make the change from the stage to the pictures, or from the pictures to the stage.... The only thing that I feel is the difference is the fact of the medium being either small or large. But as far as emotional values are concerned, there’s no difference at all. The playing isn’t different.” (1971 radio interview with Chuck Schaden)

 Dispensing tough love to Eleanor Parker in Caged (1950).

[On her most challenging role] “They’re all challenging. I don’t know a role that isn’t challenging.... If it isn’t a challenge, why do it?” (1971 radio interview with Chuck Schaden)

Sam and Endora bewitch a TV generation.

“I’ve been in movies and played theater from coast to coast, so I was quite well known before Bewitched, and I don’t particularly want to be identified as a witch.” (1974 New York Times interview)

My favorite Agnes Moorehead films: Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Journey into Fear (1943), Dark Passage (1947), Caged (1950), Magnificent Obsession (1954), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)