TCM is officially celebrating the work of the studio era’s great directors throughout this month, so I thought I might swim upstream a bit. As revered director John Ford once pointed out, “People are incorrect to compare a director to an author. If he’s a creator, he’s more like an architect.”

The more I keep learning about the shadowy figures in the background of great movies who actually wrote the story, chose the sets, edited the film and designed the look of a movie, the truth of Ford‘s comment becomes more concrete for me. The director as an architect whose vision unfolded thanks to many hands, not just his will, is particularly intriguing when you realize that, unconsciously, you “know” someone’s work, even when his or her name is unfamiliar.One of those background figures, whose work illuminated the films of Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Julien Duvivier and more, much more than has been acknowledged, was cinematographer Joseph Walker (1892-1985).

The shadows and light in the cinematic worlds that Walker lit and photographed have a beauty vibrant with meaning, reflecting the rich, often contradictory emotions of the human beings who were the subjects of the films. Do we have anything like it today, with all the technical advances we’ve made?  Perhaps, but, I’m not sure that we have “the happy accidents” that so often occurred in the sometimes unfair studio system, when creative collaborations between artists and craftspeople could result in such a range of films over time.

Most classic film fans know–or should know–the names of the stellar group of cinematographers Gregg Toland, James Wong Howe, and John Alton whose work, largely in black and white movies, is a hallmark of the best and most influential in their profession to this day. Walker, who was very well known within his profession, may not be as familiar to us, but he created some of the most rapturous moving images ever captured on film, mostly exploring  permutations and subtleties etched in black and white on celluloid shot in 35mm for projection on a movie palace screen. When collaborating with Frank Capra in twenty films, he blended the lit-from-within beauty of silent films with an ability to photograph dramatic action sequences that mirrored social and personal turmoil in a memorably vivid and innovative way. Without Joe Walker, the directors and their films he graced with his talent might be far less memorable.

Harry Cohn was a down-to-earth observer of the passing parade in Hollywood, and, at a distance, a rather likable if often crass movie mogul who ran Columbia Pictures for decades. Cohn‘s movies were not generally vulgar, but had a hand-crafted look of movies made with care. Nevertheless, he once turned to Walker and made the observation that “Y’know, there’s one thing that’s always made me curious about you. Practically every money-making picture we’ve had at Columbia, you’ve worked on it. How do you account for that? And don’t tell me it’s the photography! Photography doesn’t sell pictures!”

Walker may have endured because he learned to take obtuse remarks such as that in stride in Hollywood, but he also thrived when the sometimes crushing grind of the studio system’s production demands resulted in “the happy accident” which brought him together with associates who allowed him to experiment with new ways of achieving photographic effects, and whose own storytelling style were given shape by this cinematographer.  He also appears to have been a man who understood his own worth, and didn’t need recognition, though he had quite a bit. There were four Academy Award nominations for You Can’t Take it With You (1938); Only Angels Have Wings (1939); Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941); & The Jolson Story (1946), but there would be no wins.

In 1981 AMPAS honored him with the first Gordon E. Sawyer Award recognizing his technological contributions to the movies, among which were the creation of lightweight camera blimps that helped to make the camera mobile again after the introduction of sound, follow-focus devices, fade in/out attachments and other photographic control devices involving optical diffusion techniques. The man held well a dozen patents and had developed the Walker Electra-Zoom lens, which he manufactured after retiring. This lens, for better or worse, depending on whose hands were guiding it, became a standard piece of equipment in the 1960s for cameramen. Even in his nineties, he was developing a pictorial enhancement device a short time before his death.

Born to a wealthy mining engineer and his wife in Denver, Colorado in 1892, Joe Walker did not need to be a cameraman. He’d already shown considerable technical and scientific brilliance when he began working with one of the fathers of radio, Dr. Lee De Forest while still in his teens. He was managing a radio station for him in California when a chance meeting with D. W. Griffith‘s cameraman Billy Bitzer on a Venice, CA location when he was 19 caused Walker to change career paths after 1911. By the mid-teens, Joe was working for Griffith’s Reliance-Majestic as Bitzer‘s assistant, and he would eventually shoot newsreels and photographing his first feature, the highly entertaining Back to God’s Country in 1919 under difficult conditions in the Far North of Canada with the unjustly forgotten movie pioneer, Nell Shipman. You can see Nell with young Joe Walker at left on location.

While the images created by this man on screen may be anonymous for most of us, they are hardly forgettable, despite the fact that most of us, including me have ever seen any of his movies in their originally intended form in a theater. Walker, who worked for Cohn from 1927 until his retirement in 1952, may have been bemused by his boss’ obtuse refusal to acknowledge that images matter. When he arrived at the poverty row studio, the cinematographer developed a diffuse, shimmering and smoky, soft-focus photographic style that hid the cheapness of the worn sets he was photographing. As a craftsman whose grasp of the technical equaled his understanding of composition and lighting, Joe Walker had an enviable collection of lenses. As Mr. Walker once explained it, “Years ago, I decided that the real foundation of photography was the lens that made the picture. And as photography was my bread-and-butter, I decided that I better know something about lenses. And I’ve been learning about them ever since.”

Joe Walker is less well known by name than those more readily identifiable cinematographers named earlier,  but you have seen his work. His images are, quite simply, glorious. You know that you are seeing something extraordinary when you see his films, no matter which director he was working for, though the most fruitful association of the cinematographer’s career was undoubtedly with Frank Capra. This professional bond began with an assignment in 1928 on That Certain Thing (1928), a choice that Walker later described as one of those “funny…little accidents [that] decide your life.” Using many of the techniques he’d learned for aerial photography while making newsreels and clever ideas to make lousy special effects better, such as the pair’s decision to use a miniature diver and submarine in an aquarium look more realistic by photographing them in a diffused way through layers of glass, the two men developed their skills further in a marvelously entertaining series of robustly photographed boy’s life type adventure tales such as Submarine (1928), Flight (1929), and Dirigible (1931), (many of which featured Jack Holt and Ralph Graves). The team came into artistic and commercial flower in the 1930s, when, working in a series of popular, and enduring hits, especially in those films made with Barbara Stanwyck in the early ’30s and later, with Robert Riskin as writer,  their work helped to create a romantic American mythos blending idealism, Depression-era populism, grit, and a lingering acknowledgment for the undercurrent of anxiety and loneliness within the heart of each of us.

As recent scholars have pointed out, the public may have come to think of Frank Capra as the sole author of his films, (a concept enforced by the auteur theory and the director’s controversial autobiography, The Name Above the Title), but beginning fully in American Madness, “Capra and [his screenwriter] Riskin forged a world view that was given shape by Joe Walker.” Exploring issues that would become  the bedrock of The New Deal’s spirit before Roosevelt was elected, the perceptive script was written by one of Capra’s other skilled collaborators, Robert Riskin, (and was not a notion conceived by Capra, as previously asserted by the director, who was assigned to the movie only after another director had been dismissed by Cohn). As historian Ian Scott has recently illustrated in his biography of Riskin, In Capra’s Shadow, the writer’s contribution to the director’s career has long been overlooked. This remarkable film held the seeds of many of the elements that we now associate with the director, in terms of an ambivalence toward businessmen, the psychology of crowd behavior, the attention to detail and the small touches so deftly created by the memorable character actors,who enriched so many later Capra movies, but I was particularly struck by the seamless way that Joseph Walker used the cinematography to enhance the story in a psychological way.

The seeds of what became known as “Capraesque” can be seen in American Madness (1932).  This striking movie makes the viewer a witness to a waking nightmare for banker Walter Huston in a story of a bank run with a keen, droll eye on the shifting social, financial and sexual politics at the beginning of the Great Depression prior to the New Deal’s implementation. Within the pristine clarity of the gleaming bank made of chrome and marble, Walker photographed a brilliantly realistic looking bank set, (with uncredited set design by Stephen Goosson) in which he lit and caught action on several levels at once, especially when showing the mercurial actions of a crowd transmuting into a mob during a bank run, when he films some incredibly animated tracking shots with a detailed depth of field. When photographing the bank’s looming vault, the angle and distance between the viewer and the vault’s massive, gleaming door changes over time, seemingly never allowing us to see the tremendous object fully, like a leviathan to large for us to comprehend, and consequently makes the viewer more fascinated and unsettled by the setting. This makes the impressively mechanistic quality and the overwhelming size of the structure more impressive as Walker and Capra increase the  chiaroscuro throughout these scenes, with each of them darkening the mood of the film becomes more grave. Interestingly, when the crisis is resolved, and the optimistic Huston‘s life and seemingly the life of the world have been returned to order by the end of the film, the movie appeared to brighten considerably, with only a shade of the former darkness in this movie remaining in the background–though it was still there.

Rain, shadows, and a river of people  flow across the screen in Walker‘s movies. The night itself becomes an almost palpable character, captured in an exquisite, changing pattern. Shadows, silhouettes, night and rain were expressionistic elements of the physical world that Joe Walker would use repeatedly to illustrate the underlying mood of the movies he photographed. In almost all of the Capra films, and such beautifully photographed movies as Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and Leo McCarey’s Penny Serenade (1941), the cinematographer seemed to use night and moments of physical darkness to illustrate moments when characters’ emotions could bloom and sometimes overwhelm them, sometimes in an almost supernatural way, while the daylight might trigger heedless action and comedic sequences.

For example, you might be drawn to the sight of a man and woman (Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert) trying to resist one another as the glistening night enfolds them near a sparkling stream shimmering with moon light in It Happened One Night (1934), as you can see in the accompanying illustration from that film.

As a craftsman whose grasp of the technical equaled his understanding of composition and lighting, Walker had an enviable collection of lenses. As Mr. Walker once explained it, “Years ago, I decided that the real foundation of photography was the lens that made the picture. And as photography was my bread-and-butter, I decided that I better know something about lenses. And I’ve been learning about them ever since.”

As he further experimented with new techniques using his large collection of lenses for the camera, he found himself able to capture a couple lit only by the light of a fireplace in The Miracle Woman(1931), or glimpsing a legend in the making through the scrim of liquid light from a fountain at night, (Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde (1931), who is seen below in a backlit sequence. 

Eventually he would become known as one of Hollywood’s “woman’s cinematographers”, able to enhance an actress’ allure and her performance. This was partly thanks to his introduction of the 4-inch lens for capturing close-ups, each of which he designed and ground himself for each individual actress. He photographed now legendary actresses at their best.

When the scene called for it, Joe would reflect the steely skepticism each actress could portray so well, bringing their features into sharp focus when presenting their “game face” to the cold world at large, as he did with Rosalind Russell in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1939).

Other times, capturing moments when their characters let their guards down, Walker used the 4-inch lens to catch a subtle range of emotions as his melting light played across their softening features, often with the background falling away, out of focus, as the expressive faces of Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and Jean Arthur became human and touching, as well as beautiful.

As the screen cap below of Barbara Stanwyck from the extraordinary The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) illustrates, this technique found the vulnerability beneath the surface. The tenderness, desire and fear about her own emotions that plays across Stanwyck‘s face came at a time in her life when she may have been more open emotionally as an actress and as a woman, (thanks to her closeness to Capra).

The film may seem offensive to many today due to the use of yellow face with the casting of the Scandinavian actor Nils Asther (seen below in silhouette, Asther was brilliant in the difficult part of the fatalistic, seductive, cruel and doomed war lord in China) and the stereotypical attitudes about Asian culture.

The casting of Stanwyck in the role of a Christian missionary to war-torn China may seem odd too, since we now look back on her career,  with our perception of her formed by a blur of tough gal roles that she later played with great relish. The tensile steel that underlay her slight form is there in these early Capra films, though their is a surprising softness as well. However you may react to the casting, it is, nonetheless, one of the most beautiful and sensual films ever produced in America, in no small part due to Walker‘s achievements behind the camera.  A commercial failure when it first opened at Radio City Music Hall in the depths of the Depression, it revealed an artistry that never quite found expression again at such an enthralling scale for any of the participants, but especially for Capra and Stanwyck and Asther.

As MorlockJeff pointed out in his appreciation of “Pre-Code Stanwyck” last Summer, Stanwyck‘s unique presence in movies of the early thirties developed into something extraordinary when working with Frank Capra (who seems to have been in love with the then unhappily married actress), but also with with Joseph Walker. This erotic tension, streetwise humor and tenderness in the actress would never be captured in quite the same way again as it was in these early collaborations, beginning with Ladies of Leisure (1930), The Miracle Woman (1931), Forbidden (1932) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933).  There are many instances in these four Stanwyck movies over that three year period that stand out for me, some entrancing, like the dream sequence in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, but perhaps my favorite moments in this teaming are in Forbidden (1932), (a movie that is not available on DVD and a film that Capra later dismissed in his autobiography).

Credited scriptwriters Capra and Jo Swerling, borrowing a page from Fannie Hurst’s “Back Street” style story, tell the tale of young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) who, seeking romance, finds herself spending her life as the mistress of a married politician (Adoplphe Menjou, who was exceptionally likable in a difficult role here), and a co-worker as a reporter on to another who loves her (Ralph Bellamy). The compromises and pain that she endures throughout the picture might have been just another “woman’s weepie”, but for the artistry in depicting her choices. One standout moment in the film comes when Menjou has tracked her and their child down in an apartment. Closing the door on him, Stanwyck changes her mind, and the camera moves with a swiftness matched by the actress down the stairs to reconcile with him, despite her attempts to break away. As we see the couple embrace, Menjou and Stanwyck sit down on a step, with Adolphe’s back to the camera. Walker photographs just a portion of the actress’ face through the balustrades of the stair’s bannister as the words of explanation tumble out to him, and her pent-up love radiates through her eyes as she pores over his unseen face.   Perhaps it was the choice of the actress and the director to shoot this sequence in this fragmentary way, but, as Capra and Walker both acknowledged in their autobiographies, their creative association worked in part because the director and the cinematographer had such an affinity with one another, and Capra allowed Walker to experiment on the set, which may have been part of the mutual respect that grew out of their day to day work and their mutual interest in technical and scientific sides of film.

In a scene near the film’s end, the Stanwyck character, who has married her lover’s political enemy to prevent a revelation of scandal, shows a range of conflicting emotions from fear to determination. Though the actress would perhaps become best remembered for her later work as hard cases in Double Indemnity and other films, her strength and vulnerability seem more naked here, in these early films working with Capra and photographed so well by Walker, as you can see in this brief tribute clip compiled from Forbidden below:

The last film that Joe Walker worked on, Affair in Trinidad (1952) was a “comeback vehicle” for Rita Hayworth after one of her disastrous marriages had ended and, if you’ve seen the somewhat listless film, you know that one thing works well in it–the beautiful images Walker took of Rita photographed, especially when she’s allowed to let down her mask of a beauty, her eyes lit up and she became the vibrant dancer she was at heart. Working with director Vincent Sherman at Columbia, Sherman reported that Walker, who sometimes humbly asked the journeyman for advice on camera angles, “was a first-rate artist but also modest, and he made my work a pleasure.” Joe Walker‘s lifetime of work remains a pleasure for many of us.

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Last year, Roger Ebert succinctly summed up a chronic dilemma for those of us who find ourselves friendly, and even related to those who have little or no interest in black and white films. In his Movie Answer Man column for The Chicago Sun Times, the following question appeared:

Q. I was delighted to see TCM playing several classic horror films like “Cat People,” “Freaks” and “The Thing from Another World,” which I DVR’d with the intention of having a night-long classic horror fest on Halloween. But on the big night, all my guests booed the idea of a black & white playlist and left shortly after. Is there something I can do to get people excited about seeing these movies or do I just need to seek out new friends for movie night?

A. These people are not your friends. Even how you word your question indicates you will never be happy with them. No one who dislikes b&w should be allowed to view a motion picture.

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After reading this reply, I let out an emphatic “YES!” when I came across this item in researching this blog.  There’s something about black and white film that draws me in, especially when Joseph Walker is behind the camera. The inky blacks, creamy whites, shades of gray, shadow and light that are captured on film seem to tell me more than most color films ever can about the characters and the world they live in as a story plays out in a movie. As I’ve tried to indicate several times in these blog posts, I often think that the collaborative teams that were formed under the studio system were often responsible for many of the effects that classic film lovers cherish. We are often unaware of the names and the skills of the screenwriters, art directors, costume designers and composers who gave us the treasured films of the twenties through the sixties. Most often, I wonder if many of us might be like me, glorying in the plays of light and shadow in black and white cinematography, but with little knowledge about the people who created this world on film.

Sometimes I think that we spend far too much time looking at movies with an appreciative eye for the actors and directors, to the detriment of others whose craftsmanship and artistry created what we now term “the golden age of the studio era.” This seems especially true when it comes to cinematographers. To compensate for that and to keep learning more about this aspect of movies, I’ll be occasionally devoting a blog to cinematographers. Why?

It’s simple: I think that black and white movies document the soul of a story in a way that color rarely does.

If you watch TCM over the summer, you will have twenty opportunities to see and savor Mr. Walker‘s technical artistry behind the camera, with a list of the films found here.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1934), has been broadcast on TCM before and is only commercially available on VHS or, I believe, only on Region 2 DVDs currently. You can also see the film via YouTube below, in its entirety:

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Sources:
Capra, Frank, Basinger, Jeanine, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography, Da Capo Press, 1997.
McBride, Joseph, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.
Scott, Ian, In Capra’s Shadow: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Robert Riskin, University Press of Kentucky, 2006.
Walker, Joseph, Juanita Walker, The Light On Her Face, ASC Press, 1984.