The Crack of Dawn

Volume #244

2/11/23

Newsletter #244

The Crack of Dawn

For those of you who read movie credits, or at least the main credits, you may have noticed that after the cinematographer’s name there are often the letters, ASC, which stand for the American Society of Cinematographers.  You might also see variations of it, like, BSC, for the British Society of Cinematographers, or this confusing one, ACS, which is the Australian Cinematographer’s Society.

The American Society of Cinematographers – which I just walked past a half dozen times while I was in Hollywood – is not a union, and came into existence fifteen years before Hollywood unionized (which started with my union, the Director’s Guild of America, in 1935).  The ASC was formed in Hollywood in 1919 as a fraternal order of technicians and artists for the purpose of exchanging ideas.  Theoretically, the ASC is like the Fraternal Order of Masons or Mooses.  You can’t just join: you have to be sponsored by at least three members, and you have to be acknowledged by your peers as a competent, working professional.

But the ASC didn’t just appear out of nowhere.  In 1913, when the world’s filmmaking capital was Fort Lee, New Jersey, the first group of serious movie geeks formed a club in NYC called the Cinema Camera Club, and one of its founding members was Arthur Miller.  Miller would, in the course of time, win three Oscars for cinematography: How Green Was My Valley (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Anna and the King of Siam (1946).  Arthur Miller was an excellent cinematographer.

Back in 1913, the Cinema Camera Club’s greatest concern was working out the technical issues with the early, cranked, 35mm movie cameras.  And the most serious problem at that time was static electricity.  As the highly-charged silver nitrate film stock was physically cranked through the camera it created static electricity that popped and flashed, exposing the film.  That’s why all of the really early movies have so many pops and flashes and streaks of white.  So, the intrepid Cinema Camera Club connected up with a bunch of electrical engineering geeks who had formed their own club (I love this name), the Static Club of America.  The two clubs merged, forming the ASC, then moved to Hollywood in 1919.

The first film to display the ASC initials was the 1920 western, Sand, starring the grim-visaged cowboy star, William S. Hart.  It was shot by Joseph August, ASC, who was a founding member of the group.  Joe August never won an Oscar, although he was nominated several times.  He shot many, many movies, the biggest being, Gunga Din (1939) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). For whatever reason, 1939 really was a hell of a good year in Hollywood.

One of the earliest members, and the president of the ASC from 1930-31, was Hal Mohr.  Mohr was an astoundingly talented DP, and achieved an utterly unique honor in the history of the Oscars.  Hal Mohr won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 1935 for A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and he wasn’t nominated.  His photography is so spectacular – it shimmers and glitters and glistens – that he won on a write-in vote.  Mohr was also the first DP to win both a black and white cinematography Oscar and a color cinematography Oscar, for The Phantom of the Opera (1943).  Hal Mohr was also an innovator, and was the first DP to experiment with long-focus in the early 1930s, a technique that was finally put to great use and noticed in 1941 when DP, Gregg Toland, made breathtaking use of it in both Citizen Kane and The Little Foxes.  Wanting to try everything, Hal Mohr, one of the oldest and most renowned DPs in Hollywood, shot a couple of lower-budget movies that I love: The Member of the Wedding (1952) and The Wild One (1954) — Girl: “What are you rebelling against?” Brando: “What’dya got?”

Although nothing was happening, at least five times in the last week I have stood outside the gates of the ASC peering in.  What was that place like in 1919?

As the days grow longer, me and the actual crack of dawn are inexorably moving back together.

Today is the first day of the rest of the history of the entire universe.  Think of it.