LM: What relation are you to Arthur Rosson, the director?
ROSSON: He is my brother.
LM: I see that you worked with him, first on a picture called POLLY OF THE STORM COUNTRY.
ROSSON: Yes, that was done here on the West Coast.
LM: What precipitated your move back west?
ROSSON: In those days I was following a picture; if they wanted to do it on the East Coast, I went to the East Coast, if they were shooting it on the West Coast, I went to the West Coast.
LM: Was POLLY shot in a studio, or on location?
ROSSON: It was shot in a studio, a group of buildings at the old Selig Zoo. Pictures had been made there prior to our going there. That was with a girl by the name of Mildred Harris.
LM: At the time, did you prefer shooting in a studio or outside?
ROSSON: I wish I could answer that intelligently. Practically everything I did was difficult. The problems were so varied. In those days we worked with orthochromatic film, and with orthochromatic film the ability to photograph various colors was problematic. This was greatly simplified when panchromatic film came in.
LM: How did you compensate for orthochromatic film’s limitations?
ROSSON: By learning the usages of the film, what it permitted you to do, and what you were able to obtain. That was arrived at by experimentation—not solely, but greatly by experimentation.
LM: When you came out here, were you under contract?
ROSSON: Yes, I was, but in those days there were so few cameramen that any studio that had set up a routine of pictures to be made, if they came across such an individual, they were quickly chosen and put under some sort of a contract. As I recall, I was put under contract almost immediately after I started in the business.
LM: Did you have any choice as to which pictures you would shoot?
ROSSON: I would say that I had no choice, except that the picture was offered to me, and if I had chosen not to do it I’m sure I would have had that privilege, but if I did not accept a picture, I can assure you it was a very small number.
LM: Did cameramen become “typecast” with a certain type of picture?
ROSSON: I’m sure that did exist, but in all the years I worked in the motion picture business, I knew but one or two cameramen who were referred to along those lines. I was not. But many cameramen made a certain liaison with a certain director or a certain star, wherein they worked more or less exclusively with that director or star. That happened many times.
LM: I see that you worked quite a bit with director Frank O’Connor and his star, May McAvoy. Was that advantageous?
ROSSON: Oh yes, it was more congenial, more pleasant, a happier environment.
LM: You worked with a great many outstanding directors in the 1920s . . . Allan Dwan, for example.
ROSSON: A charming man, great director.
LM: At this point, what was your working relationship with the director, and at what point in production did you become involved?
ROSSON: A great many individuals, directors and producers, realized the importance of each and every person on a motion picture. It varied—why it varied, there are a thousand answers—but on some pictures a cameraman would be called in very early in production. Then again, he might not be called in until the first day he was going on the stage to work. I can recall numerous pictures where I as a cameraman was called in extremely early.
LM: I notice that you worked with Gloria Swanson quite often; was that a case of her liking the way you photographed her and requesting you as cameraman?
ROSSON: I cannot speak for Miss Swanson, but I had the great pleasure of photographing numbers of her pictures, and if she had not been agreeable to the results that she could see, I probably would not have worked with her. I do believe that the reason I photographed her on so many occasions was that the director who worked with her, Allan Dwan, had a very happy arrangement of working with me. He was assigned to direct her pictures, so he would assign me to photograph them.
LM: Obviously you are a perfectionist. Were you able to be a perfectionist in those days? If something dissatisfied you, were you allowed to shoot it again?
ROSSON: Yes and no. Many times one would see something you’d like to have done again; if it was agreeable to all concerned, and it was possible, it would be done. But often the question of money came up, and time, and could we get everyone together again to do it, and it was not done.
LM: Was there a special technique to glamour photography, in shooting someone like Miss Swanson?
ROSSON: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind when you say that is “What is glamour?” And I’m sure that if you ask ten persons you’ll get ten different answers. So I might have seen something in Miss Swanson’s makeup that would be desirable either to emphasize or decrease in visual importance. If that happened, I’m sure that I, with my sense of beauty, would have either covered it up or emphasized it.
Hal Rosson (right) with director Jack Conway at MGM (ca. 1932).
LM: How much could a cameraman do with a person’s face? Could you take someone who was plain and make her look glamorous?
ROSSON: I don’t think there’s any question about that, and it’s been proven a thousand and one times.
LM: How would you compare the cameraman of the silent days, who did everything, with the director of photography today, who has so many assistants helping him?
ROSSON: The same ideals are present today as they were when I began. In the early days, the cameraman had to do practically everything himself, with his own hands. Now, he has many assistants who do the actual work, but under his direction. So I would still be called upon to exercise all the various things I formerly did, but directing other people to do my work physically.
LM: One film of yours that’s still shown frequently is MANHANDLED. Do you remember the subway sequence?
ROSSON: How could one forget?
LM: What problems did you have to tackle in setting that up?
ROSSON: Oh, they varied greatly. After all, when you get into a subway car—and that was a comedy, so you had to have the comedy aspects—the results on the screen had to be crowded, but people also had to be seen, Miss Swanson had to look good, so there were many many problems you wouldn’t encounter on an ordinary scene. We had a lot of fun on that picture; it was so delightful to work on, and you were so happy to be on it that the troublesome shots didn’t seem so troublesome.
LM: Many people have criticized the studio system, saying that it hampered creativity. Did you feel this way as a cameraman?
ROSSON: I am a product of the studio system, star system, and I thought it was a very good way to make pictures. I’m sure it hampered some, but when I think of the great help it gave to so many many more than it hampered, I think it helped a great deal more than it hampered.
LM: We’re getting into the mid- and late 1920s now, chronologically; did knowing more, with more advancements being made in your field, make it less challenging for you?
ROSSON: No; the challenges were always there, and I presume that they are there as much today as they were then. When I worked in the picture business, I had great fun. I loved my work, I loved doing my work. I have to believe that the man today does not have as much fun making pictures as I did. I used to get to the studio at the crack of dawn sometimes, in order to see what I had done a day or two before. I was so happy with my work, I wanted to see it on the screen. I had the best time in the world, and for that I was paid.
LM: Let me ask you about some people you worked with: Gregory LaCava.
ROSSON: He was a charming man, a nice man.
LM: I read that he felt the best way to make a picture was to keep a partylike atmosphere on the set.
ROSSON: That’s a very good description of Gregory LaCava and his working methods. All of his pictures, as I recall them, were very humorous, and just one big laugh on the stage. If you weren’t enjoying yourself, and Greg was on the stage, he would have known it, and he would have asked you to leave
. . . he only wanted humor around.
LM: Were some directors more visually oriented than others?
ROSSON: Yes and no—because you’re taking in such a huge number of individuals, I don’t know how to pin it down to yes or no.
LM: Let’s get specific, then. How about Josef von Sternberg?
ROSSON: Joe von Sternberg was an individual, and working for him one had to learn a lot—you would wind up with the knowledge of a lot of things you hadn’t known before. But he was a great inspiration; he always wanted you to do what you wanted to do, even if it was at variance with what he had in mind. “Well, let’s do it your way and see. If by chance it’s what we want, we’ll keep it; if not, we’ll change it.” He was always prodding you—try it, try it, never mind about the front office or the back office. I enjoyed working with him. There were times when he would be a little difficult—I don’t know who isn’t—and there were times when he would drive you out of your mind. But he got you to try to do it the way you wanted to. Plus the fact that he was a nice person.
LM: Victor Fleming?
ROSSON: Ah! Victor Fleming was my pal, so there was a great deal of personal influence working with Vic. I always believed he was a master showman as far as the mechanics of the making of films were concerned. Victor always knew what he wanted, and if by chance you didn’t quite know how to do it, he would come up with a solution. Victor Fleming knew as much about the making of pictures as any man I’ve ever known—all departments. He was a craftsman of the first order, he was a machinist, he did the mechanics. I doubt very much if he lacked the knowledge to answer any solution mechanically.
LM: Did he deliberately strive for challenges, then?
ROSSON: I don’t think he strove for them, but they were always there.
LM: Mal St. Clair?
ROSSON: Mal St. Clair had formerly been a cartoonist, and he carried into his picture-making the background of a cartoonist. Everything always was a lark for him. He made that picture GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, and nobody made it quite like St. Clair.
LM: Did he ever try to get effects in the camera that would be cartoonlike?
ROSSON: I never got that impression, but if there was a laugh connected with it, you did it with that in mind. He was an enjoyable man to be around.
LM: Harry D’Arrast?
ROSSON: Harry D‘Arrast was an interesting man, and I don’t think he had any theatrical background in any way, shape, or form. He came to this country, got mixed up with Chaplin and a group that was around here. He had a very happy liaison with Adolphe Menjou, and they became terribly friendly, because they had an awful lot in common. So Harry D’Arrast directed pictures with Menjou, and it was a very enjoyable association. He was very gifted in the making of pictures with the so-called French touch.
LM: Now we’re coming to the transition period into talkies; it’s been said that visual creativity stopped when sound came in. Do you think so?
ROSSON: The use of sound completely revolutionized the business. I recall when THE JAZZ SINGER opened, it was a bombshell. I was working on a very important picture, terribly important, which had been a fantastically successful Broadway show, ABIE’S IRISH ROSE. It was a terribly costly picture. We’d gone into production on that picture long before THE JAZZ SINGER; so, as we all know, THE JAZZ SINGER opened, and it was such a success. We were practically finishing ABIE’S IRISH ROSE when that opened. Long before the next morning arrived, I was notified by telephone that we were re-opening ABIE’S IRISH ROSE the next morning. We went back to work on the film with sound, and that was a tremendously exciting moment, a big moment in my life of making pictures. One of the things that we had was a death scene, and the Jewish boy’s father was a cantor (I hope I’m not mixing this up) and he sang the Kol Nidre. [Ed. Note: Rosson is probably thinking of The Jazz Singer.] And when that hymn came from the loudspeaker in the projection room, it was a fantastic moment.
LM: What kind of problems did you face with sound?
ROSSON: So many varied problems . . . I thought at the time, if all these things are necessary to put sound on the screen, no one will ever make a sound picture, it was so fantastically overwhelming.
LM: At the time did you think they were going to eliminate silent films?
ROSSON: I personally did not. I felt there was a very definite place for sound, but I never thought that the silent picture would be eliminated one hundred percent. Because in looking at a picture, in my experience, the individual added to what was on the screen. For instance, there was no sound originally, as we know it, and I don’t recall ever missing the sound, because I think the individual put up on the screen the sound he wanted. I thought the silents gave out a universal sound that the individual expressed for himself. Therefore, I don’t think that I was ever conscious of the loss of sound. I never did think that sound would eliminate the silent picture.
LM: Could you still be the cameraman you were in the early talkies?
ROSSON: Yes, because there was another avenue for me to pursue; it must have helped me. It certainly excited me, and if it excited me it had to help me.
LM: Do you remember the first time you worked with color?
ROSSON: Yes I do. Permit me if I go around this a bit: I was under contract to the MGM studio, and Mr. Eddie Mannix called me in one day, and said, “We’re loaning you out to David Selznick. I want you to go over to his studio tomorrow morning and get ready to photograph his picture.” I asked what was the picture, and he said GARDEN OF ALLAH. I said, “I’d love to do it, but who’s going to direct it?” He told me Richard Boleslavsky. So the next day we started to work on the picture; I went back to the studio that night, I called up Mr. Mannix and said, “I want to see you.” I walked in and I must have looked perturbed or something, because he said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Eddie, I’m not so sure I’m the man for this picture.” He said, “Why?” I said, “It’s in color!” I had
never photographed a film in color in my life. I said, “I don’t know anything about color . . . I’m not the man.” He said, “Oh, forget about it—you’re the man. Mr. Selznick wants you to do it, and we want you to do it.” So I’d spoken my piece, I certainly wasn’t going to argue with my boss. So I went back the next day, photographed it, and won the Academy Award that year for color, on the first piece of color film I’d ever photographed.
LM: Perhaps it was precisely because you had never worked with it before . . .
ROSSON: I don’t know that it was because . . .
LM: . . . I meant that being inexperienced, perhaps you brought a fresh approach to the use of color.
ROSSON: Well, that could be; I know it was a lot of guesswork on my part.
LM: Did you have a Technicolor consultant on the film?
ROSSON: Oh yes. A man by the name of Duke Green. He was there to make sure we didn’t get color that clashed, and to help all he could, and I assure you there was lots of room for his help. But that was an interesting picture. Looking back, not having had any experience with color, I do believe that my thoughts were to try to control color.
Rosson shoots a scene with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor for RED DUST (1932): Victor Fleming is in the director’s chair.
Rosson is nonchalant about set-ups like this! Munchkinland in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).
The good Lord, when he goes to paint the exterior, has the most lavish palette of color in the world. So my thinking was an attempt to control color, to eliminate color unless it could be used dramatically. I didn’t want the color to control me. I recall one of the earliest scenes in the picture, there was a luncheon table spread, a table covered with a white cloth, and on that cloth was a bowl of fruit. The bowl of fruit consisted of every kind of fruit one could think of, a complete conglomeration of color. As I recall, it dazzled me when I looked at it. So first I emptied the bowl and put back fruit until it almost looked as if there was no color there, then I mounted a red apple in a very important position there where you could not help but see it. So as I recall, this
bowl of fruit consisted of a red apple—it was almost the only color there—and it was startling on the screen. That was my idea of the control of color, and I’m very proud of the results.
The Art of the Cinematographer Page 18
