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A Conversation With Richard H. Kline, ASC
QUESTION: What are some of your early memories of growing up in a household where your father, Benjamin Kline, ASC, was a Hollywood cinematographer? KLINE: I’m really a product of the motion picture industry. My mother worked at Universal Studios as paymaster. That’s where she met my father. Two of my uncles were also cinematographers. Phil Rosen was one of the founders and the first president of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Sol Halprin, my mother’s brother, was a two-time president of ASC. I’m the fourth member of the family to belong to the ASC. I think cinematography is definitely in my genes. QUESTION: Tell us about your father. KLINE: The major studios all had teams of people under contract—actors, writers, directors and cinematographers. My father was first at Universal Studios, and later mainly at Columbia Pictures. He shot his first movie in 1920 (The Red Lane). My father did film noir before it was in fashion. He shot Detour, now a cult classic, in six days (in 1945). It was directed by Edgar Ulmer with something like a $35,000 budget. When television came along he shot Wagon Train, The Virginian, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Dragnet and other series for 14 or 15 years until he was well into his 70s. QUESTION: What was it like around your house when you were growing up? Did you get to meet other cinematographers and filmmakers? KLINE: The industry then worked six days a week, so I didn’t see a lot of my father and his friends around our house. He was a good father, and I was very close to him, but he would come home late after dinner, and he was usually tired. We’d see him on Sunday, resting, because he generally filmed late on Saturday night, maybe until midnight. I wasn’t on the set much, but I remember the studios had intriguing back lots that covered 40, 60 or even 80 acres with believable sets that substituted for locations. QUESTION: Did you grow up knowing you wanted to be a cinematographer? KLINE: No. I graduated from high school in 1943. The war was still going on, and I knew that I would be drafted into the military service within a year. Many of the industry’s personnel were away and my father urged me to fill an available opening as an assistant cameraman at Columbia Pictures, so that I could possibly qualify for a camera unit when I entered the service. I went to work at Columbia in August 1943. My first picture was Cover Girl. I was a slate boy. The cinematographer was Rudy Maté (ASC) and Burnie Guffey (ASC) was the operator. I learned immediately how interesting, amusing and unique film crews were, and how intriguing filmmaking could be. I was on Cover Girl for about four months. We filmed on stages 8 and 9 at Columbia, which were next to the camera department, I would go there in-between takes and learn about cameras. We only had three types of cameras in those days—the Eyemo, standard Mitchell and Mitchell BNC. After that film, I became a first assistant with cinematographer George Meehan on other films until I went into the Navy in October 1944. George had lost his only son in the war, and treated and tutored me like a son, for which I am forever grateful. QUESTION: What did you do in the Navy? KLINE: My first six months after boot camp I was stationed at the Photo Science Laboratory in Anacostia, D.C. Then, I shipped out to the Asia Pacific area between Shanghai and Hong Kong. I was there until I was discharged in August 1946. QUESTION: What did you do when you got back to Los Angeles? KLINE: I was all set to start college at UCLA when I got a call from Columbia Pictures. You were supposed to have your old job guaranteed for a year after you got out of the service. They asked me to come back to the studio as an assistant cameraman. They had a picture in Acapulco where they needed somebody right away. I remember the exact date, because it was my sister’s birthday, September 30, 1946. I left for Acapulco to work on The Lady From Shanghai. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth were in the film and he was also directing. We used Errol Flynn’s yacht. He wasn’t working at the time, so he was the skipper. The cinematographer was Bud Lawton, Jr. We spent about three months in Acapulco. Then we went to San Francisco for a month. We finished shooting the film on stages in Hollywood for another six weeks. Because of everyone involved, it was probably the most interesting assignment of my career. QUESTION: What were you going to study at UCLA? KLINE: I was planning to pursue law, but I kept working as an assistant in 1947 and ’48. During the late 1940s, the union cracked down and wouldn’t let me work. It wasn’t anything against me personally. You were in either an A or B category depending on the number of years you were a member. The A category got first preference. I was in B, so I was out of a job. I was then very lucky to work as assistant cameraman on some of the early filmed television shows, including I Love Lucy. Karl “Pappy” Freund (ASC) was the cinematographer. He was a colorful character and found a comfortable home with Lucy after so many years doing respected features. I worked on a dozen or so episodes. Then, I worked on The George Burns and Gracie Allen show. It was the same company, Las Palmas Productions. Al Simon was the producer. Some of his other shows included I Married Joan with Joan Davis and Our Miss Brooks with Richard Crenna and Eve Arden. QUESTION: What did you do after that? KLINE: I decided to take advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights and go to college. I went to the Veterans Administration to register and learn what I was entitled to. They told me I could go anywhere in the world for three to four years, even Paris. They would pay school and living expenses, and also tutoring to learn French. I decided instantly to take advantage of that opportunity, left for France within a few days and spent the next three years studying fine arts and art appreciation at the Sorbonne in France QUESTION: What did you do after returning to Hollywood? KLINE: I returned to Hollywood in 1951, because I had gotten married. Congress had passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which opened the door for me to go back to work. The union did away with the A and B categories, and replaced it with groups one, two and three. I was put in the first group. That gave me top priority for jobs. I worked as an assistant cameraman for about a year at Columbia and then became an operator. QUESTION: How did you advance to camera operator? KLINE: The head of the camera department at Columbia Pictures was named Emil Oster. Emil said he couldn’t promote me to operator because I was too valuable as an assistant cameraman. I didn’t want to spend my whole life as an assistant, so I went to the head of production. I got an appointment and walked into the office. He asked what I wanted in a loud voice. I said, ‘Mr. Fier, I’m here to ask you about becoming a camera operator.’ He then calmly told me that he would check into it and to get out. For the next couple of months whenever he saw me on a set, he’d walk right by and say, I’m taking care of it. As gruff and intimidating as Fier appeared, he was actually a very good-hearted man and shortly after saw to it that I became an operator. I worked with a variety of the staff cameramen, especially Guffey, and Henry Freulich, ASC. QUESTION: In retrospect, was that an important part of your education? KLINE: Every day in the industry is an education, but I was never tutored by any of the cinematographers. We never spoke about why they did things or how. It was their secret, but I would watch and figure out how to emulate their work. They all did good work, and each had a different approach. The one constant was that there was always pressure to work faster. Consequently, I especially learned not to waste time. QUESTION: Who were some of the cameramen you worked with? KLINE: I worked with Guffey, Lawton, Ray June (ASC) and did quite a few films with ‘Jimmy’ Wong Howe (ASC), and all the other cinematographers who were under contract at Columbia Pictures. I also worked with Joe Walker. I wasn’t his first assistant or camera operator, but I was on the set with him a lot. He was truly gifted. I learned a lot just by watching him. Charlie Lang (ASC) was another one of my favorites. His work was always sensational. I also worked with Harry Stradling, Sr. (ASC), (Lionel) ‘Curley’ Lindon (ASC) and Phil Lathrop (ASC). They were an amazing bunch of people, and every one of them approached cinematography differently. I’m the luckiest person in the world to have been around those wonderful and talented people. QUESTION: Tell us about the transition from the Mitchell to Panavision and ARRIFLEX reflex viewing cameras. How did that affect your job as a camera operator? KLINE: I was an operator for 10 years and I never had a reflex camera, except the hand-held ARRIFLEX. That was okay, because you learned how to use the parallax viewing system, so it was never a problem. In some ways it made you a better operator. You had to plot your framing in your mind and really study the movements of the actors, because you saw different framing in the viewfinder than through the lens, and had to compensate accordingly. But, the reflex camera was a marvelous gift to cinematographers. I remember when Ed DiGiulio brought one of the first Mitchell 2C cameras with a reflex viewing system to the set of a film in Chicago. He was working for Mitchell Camera at that time. Later he founded Cinema Products, and enabled Garrett Brown to bring the Steadicam to the industry. We’ll always be grateful for that. QUESTION: How did you transition into shooting films? KLINE: My last picture as an operator was with Lathrop on The Pink Panther. We shot it in Rome. I had done a film with John Frankenheimer as an operator. It was a prison picture with Burt Lancaster (Birdman of Alcatraz). I got a telegram from John while we were in the last two to three weeks of shooting The Pink Panther. I remember it exactly. In fact, I still have that telegram. It said, ‘I want you to be my cameraman, repeat cameraman, call me immediately.’ The telegram had the phone number of a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. I told (director) Blake Edwards and Phil, and they told me to go to the office and make that call right away. John offered me the job as cameraman on Seven Days In May. I told him that we had about three weeks to go on The Pink Panther, but they’ll let me go right away, if necessary. He said, no, three weeks is fine. After we finished, I flew home. That’s when John told me that he couldn’t swing the promotion because of production resistance. He said it was nothing personal. I kind of pouted for about a week until I got a call from the head of the MGM camera department. He said there was a producer who wanted to meet me. I met Bill Froug, who told me that he had done a TV pilot that he wanted me to look at and tell him what I thought. It was for a show called Mr. Novak about a high school teacher. QUESTION: We take it that he offered you the job. KLINE: Yes. I worked on that show for two years until it was cancelled (in 1966). I concentrated on shooting a number of pilots that year, so I would be free to return to feature films. I shot a TV pilot that didn’t sell, but the studio liked it so much that they had me shoot additional scenes for another two weeks, and made it into a feature. It was called Chamber of Horrors. Josh Logan was preparing to do Camelot at Warner Bros. He happened to see some of the film I was shooting in a projection room at the studio while they were screening it. He liked what he saw and came down to the set where we were shooting. I saw a guy standing there, but I didn’t know it was Josh Logan. He introduced himself and asked if we could talk. I told him that it wasn’t a good time, because we had a schedule to make. He asked if I would come in tomorrow, Saturday, and talk with him. That’s how I got to shoot Camelot. QUESTION: Where was Camelot produced? KLINE: We did some shooting in Spain, but the majority was filmed on sets that they built at Warner Bros. QUESTION: What memories can you share about working on Camelot? KLINE: I was surrounded by many gifted artists. They specifically included two talented production designers, Eddie Carrere and John Truscott. John also was costume designer for which he won the Academy Award. Josh Logan and the cast were very astute and sensitive talents and marvelous to work with. Jack Warner took me under his wing and was very supportive of me. We started shooting the picture in Spain and the lab was in Los Angeles. I always wrote on the top of the slate the intended visual effect, mainly for the lab, but also to help anyone seeing dailies understand the intended mood of the scene they were viewing. I received a telegram from Jack Warner almost every day. He was looking at dailies in Hollywood and loving everything he saw. Frank Stanley was my camera operator. We were pre-exposing the raw stock on a white card to mute the colors. When we returned to Hollywood from Spain, Jack Warner came charging onto the set one day and demanded to know what I was doing to his film. I asked him, ‘What do you mean? What about the telegrams from you saying that you loved the look?’ He told me that he heard I was doing something dangerous to the negative. What happened, I guess, is that some of the executives thought I was ruining the film, because the colors weren’t Technicolor vivid. I explained that we were creating a different look with muted colors and described how we were doing it. He smiled and told me to keep it up. QUESTION: Where did the idea of pre-exposing or pre-flashing the film come from? KLINE: I heard about some experimenting done by an English cameraman, but I think this was the first time it was done on an entire picture. There were some risks involved, but I was willing to go for it. My assistant cameraman Frank Stanley had to be very careful, because it was quite an exacting process right down to lining up the one specific frame after pre-exposing the film, with its perforations precisely placed in the aperture. QUESTION: You were certainly versatile going from shooting, Camelot to Hang ‘em High and on to The Boston Strangler. KLINE: We shot most of The Boston Strangler in Boston in the cold of winter. It was a frightening story that was based on reality. We did some interesting things with ‘panels’ each containing action within the main film frame. As an example, in one panel we would have Tony Curtis (playing Robert DeSalvo, the Boston Stranger) on the lower left side of the main frame with a lady ironing in her apartment in a panel on the upper right hand side. She was his next prospective victim. You see Tony parking his car in front of her building. He gets out of the car, walks to the mail box area and begins ringing doorbells in another panel while she’s ironing in her panel, and so forth. You see her let him in. We had as many as five of those shots in a montage without the convenience of today’s digital effects. We had to do it all in the camera by using mattes in different shapes. QUESTION: That was an absolutely amazing mastery of the available technology. KLINE: Perhaps in its day, but a cinch to pull off now with today’s computer access. However, it taught me a lesson. To use a tennis metaphor, you do not just keep your eye on the ball, but you keep it on a specific part of the ball by imagining it has a face with two ears, a mouth and a nose. To hit a flat ball, you hit the face on the nose. If you want to undercut the ball, hit the face on the mouth. If you want to slice, hit either of the ears to change the direction. It’s sort of the same thing with each frame of film. I learned how to make the audience look at the panel that was most important at the time, and shift their eye as critical action occurred from panel to panel. It taught me that you have to guide the audience’s eye to what you want them to specifically see in each frame. It can be done with color and light density, with a certain lens, or with camera angles or movement. There is no one right way to do it, but one way or another, you have to make the audience subconsciously look at a specific place within the frame, and not just at the frame in general. Critics tend to praise cinematographers for beautiful pictures, but our real job is helping to tell the story, and it has to be done seamlessly without drawing attention to the photography. QUESTION: That brings up another question. What about The Andromeda Strain? You shot that memorable film very early in your career with amazing visual effects. KLINE: That was a kind of avant-garde, sci-fi film. It was directed by Bob Wise. I think he’s one of the most complete and talented directors in film history. I loved working with him. It was fun to shoot, because it was different than anything else I had done. We were working in a very small town in Texas named Silverton, and living an hour’s drive away. The town we lived in was so small that they had to send our laundry to another town two hours away. During the silver rush in Texas some 35,000 people lived in that town. I think 35 people lived there while we were shooting. It was a legitimate ghost town that was the perfect location. We also had a brilliant art director named Boris Levin, who had worked on Giant at that same location. It was also the first time I worked with Doug Trumbull who created the visual effects. He’s another very gifted filmmaker. QUESTION: A year later, you shot Hammersmith Is Out, another totally different type of film based on a Faust legend about a mental patient being treated by a dubious doctor. KLINE: That was another film I enjoyed. The stars were Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and Beau Bridges. Peter Ustinov was the director, and he also had an important role. We shot it in Mexico. We had limited time with the actors so Peter and I would block intricate and lengthily fluid shots in the morning without them. Liz and Richard were marvelous. They knew what was right and what was wrong, and they always did it right. I held the fill light in my hand, and the gaffer handheld the key light off to the side, and grips floated scrims when necessary. Wherever the Burtons went, we could follow them with our lights and the camera. They loved working that way. QUESTION: Do stars typically have ideas about how you should light and shoot them? KLINE: I’ve heard other cinematographers say they have had that experience, but it never happened to me. Actors are the most important part of any film, and they’ve got to look right for their roles. I had one Greek actress, Irena Pappas on a film (A Dream of Kings) that I did with Anthony Quinn. She was supposed to look haggard and 45 years old. I told her we could do something with her makeup, but it was her acting that was going to make it work. We spoke about that for a little while, she said okay, I’ll try it. Her makeup and wardrobe were intentionally unflattering and made her look older than her age, but mainly it came out of her sensational performance. Melina Mercouri also asked me to make her look the age of the character she was playing in Gaily, Gaily (1969), but still remain interesting. I used a handheld fill light and I’d feather densities as needed with my hand throughout her scenes. She felt very comfortable knowing that she was being lit precisely. QUESTION: Relationships between actors and cinematographers are interesting. Have you run into situations where directors didn’t want you to talk with the actors? KLINE: I would never do or discuss anything with an actor without conferring with the director first. The director is responsible for the overall scene and performances. I appreciate the performances, but my main concern is the visuals that help tell the story. If I spot something where an actress could strike a better position, I’ll tell the director. You can’t just off on your own. It’s a collaborative effort. QUESTION: Cinematographers also have to deal with directors, the cast, your crew, production and costume designers. The list seems endless. Is that difficult? KLINE: I really love being a cinematographer and dealing with people is a big part of the job. You’ve got to be aware of everything that is happening and anticipate what might happen. I’m very demanding of myself. I make it a point to watch whatever was going on. I never sit down unless I’m sitting on the camera. I light through the camera. I love doing commercials where I direct, light and shoot and see everything happening. QUESTION: When did you start shooting commercials? KLINE: About 20 years ago. I was usually directing as well as shooting. QUESTION: Soylent Green is another extraordinary movie. KLINE: Richard Fleischer is another very gifted director and a very hard worker. He has never received the recognition that he deserves. Soylent Green was an avant-garde story set in the year 2022 about a dark time when human beings are harvested as food. Fleischer was perfect for that film, because he was not only a fine director, but also technically oriented. His father, Max Fleischer, was an animator who invented rotoscoping. Charlton Heston was perfect in his role, Edward G. Robinson was a delight, and Joseph Cotton was a very complete actor. Nobody had ever seen anything like that story before. We had to create a polluted world with a constantly smoggy, overcast look. QUESTION: How did you discover that look? Was it partially instinct? KLINE: I can’t answer that question other than to say that sometimes I’ll look at paintings that suggest a look for a film, but I couldn’t think of any art that would suggest what the future depicted in Soylent Green. I knew what smog was like in California. We did a lot of testing. I had a box built in front of the lens that contained a bilious, greenish haze and a little fan that would blow it around. That was part of it. A lot was also done optically. It was a tough film to shoot with a lot of night work. QUESTION: It sounds like you had a great relationship with the director. KLINE: We had worked together on The Boston Strangler and on mr. Majestyk after Soylent Green. He called me about another picture a few years later and sent me the script. The film was called Mandingo. The truth is that I hated that script. It just rubbed me wrong. I told him that I would do it if he let me do one thing. I said that I’ll let you have the final word, but give me the privilege of arguing with you. He agreed. QUESTION: What did you hate about the script? KLINE: It was set in a hateful time and place in the 1840s, where a slave owner was training a slave to make money for him as a bare-knuckle fighter. QUESTION: How about Battle for the Planet of the Apes, a 1973 classic film? KLINE: It was the second sequel to the original film about a conflict between humans and civilized apes. J. Lee Thompson was the marvelous English director. We had to be consistent with what had already been established in the two earlier films, including the characters and how they looked. We had a great cast and crew. We shot it mainly on the back lot at 20th Century Fox using sets constructed for the previous films. QUESTION: Wasn’t that back before there were video taps on cameras? KLINE: Yes, but I don’t consider that a disadvantage. Unless it’s a special effects film, I think it’s a mistake to try and judge a performance or scene on a small TV screen in the usually far off ‘video village.’ I think the director is better served by being at the camera with the actors. I worked with the same dependable camera operator, Al Bettcher (SOC), most of my career. He has a great eye and was as talented as anyone who ever operated a camera. That’s not just my opinion. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Operating Cameramen. QUESTION: You also shot The Harrad Experiment in 1973. What are your memories? KLINE: It was an avant-garde film that contained nudity and sexual daring, pretty much ahead of its time. It was about a coed college where sexual freedom was the policy. Ted Post was the director, and a young Don Johnson was one of the stars, along with James Whitmore and Tippi Hedren. QUESTION: What do you remember about a 1974 film called The Terminal Man? KLINE: Mike Hodges is another talented director and George Segal was in the leading role. It was the same writer (Michael Critchton) who wrote Andromeda Strain. It was a very interesting story. We shot it on color film with a monochrome look, never showing blue sky or colors in nature, and the wardrobe was black, gray and white. I periodically sneaked a very subtle color object in a scene necessary to remind the viewer’s eye that the film is in color, but minus the colors that color films generally display. However, the last sequence, which was a burial scene, intentionally exploded with garish colors. It was an interesting project. QUESTION: Was that look scripted or discovered when you began shooting? KLINE: I don’t recall if it was in the script, but Fred Harpman, the production designer, deserves the credit and gave us the right sets and locations. It was a very offbeat story and film look. QUESTION: Can we talk some more about Mandingo? KLINE: James Mason, a great English actor, played the slave owner. An English actress (Susan George) played the slave owner’s daughter. We decided not to show cruelty and oppression blatantly, but to make the audience sense it more than visually dwell on it. That was the reason why I was able to work on it comfortably. We shot it in New Orleans. Boris Leven was the art director. I remember that he painted the streets so they looked like cobblestones, authenticating the look of the period. QUESTION: A few years after Mandingo you shot King Kong and got an Oscar nomination for your work on that film, which was a remake of a classic movie. KLINE: When Dino De Laurentiis asked if I was interested in King Kong (1976), the first thought that went through my mind was that it was going to be a huge challenge from the standpoint of technique. There were miniatures along with animatronics and many other visual approaches. We shot it in anamorphic format. I remember a scene on a ship in the Long Beach harbor, where we were one of the first to use the gyrostabilizer invented by Nelson Tyler. Most of the picture was shot on sound stages where we had total control of lighting. We experimented with using a large front projection screen, but decided to stick with classic bluescreen shots with optical compositing done by Frank Van der Veer, who did amazing work. With the advent of CGI, optical compositing is now a dying art. King Kong was supposed to be 60-feet tall. They built a mechanical 60-foot model that never worked right. Rick Baker in an ape suit was mostly to portray King Kong. He did a remarkable job, and suffered a lot, because he had to wear these huge, oversized contact lenses to look like a gorilla, and the furry suit was extremely uncomfortable and hot to wear. Carlo Rambaldi, who was one of the Italian specialists working on the film, was a genius in animatronics. It was a complicated picture that I worked on for a little over a year. If you walked around the MGM studio, there was a piece of King Kong every place. QUESTION: You have certainly witnessed many innovations in technology. KLINE: I recall when the Steadicam first came out. But, new technology isn’t always the best solution. I remember planning a Steadicam shot on Body Heat (1981). It was a very erotic and emotional scene with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. The director was Larry Kasdan. I was planning to shoot through windows, traveling from window to window, but the Steadicam didn’t feel right, it was too slick. We finally did it as a handheld shot and the camera’s unsteadiness added the necessary tension. QUESTION: What other memories can you share with us about Body Heat? KLINE: We were supposed to shoot it in New Jersey. We had all the locations selected, but the actors went on strike, and the weather had turned bad by the time it was over. They moved the production to Miami. It turned out that Miami had the coldest winter in memory. Everyone was freezing. The poor actors were supposed to be hot and sweaty, because the story was set in the heat of a Southern summer. They suffered just wearing t-shirt and other lightweight costumes. QUESTION: I guess every field of endeavor has some disappointments, but you sound like you have enjoyed almost every minute of your career. KLINE: Where else do you meet people like those in this industry? We spoke earlier about The Lady From Shanghai with the great, unbridled actor/director Orson Welles. It was 1946 and I had just come out of the Navy and back into the industry. We spent two months in Acapulco, one month in San Francisco, and another two months on a Columbia stage. In Acapulco, we used Errol Flynn’s fabulous yacht. What a dynamic pair he and Orson made. They were both off-the-wall, high livers, big-time, and needless to say, there was never a dull moment. What also kept things lively was the constant bickering between Orson and Columbia’s production manager, Jack Fier. They had an ongoing one-upmanship, and it appeared that Orson had the last word when on the final day of filming he personally painted a huge banner outside the stage that read: There’s Nothing To Fear But Fier Himself. But Jack Fier topped him with his own banner that read: All’s Well That Ends Welles. A film should be made about the making of this film, but I doubt a suitable cast could be found; the mold has been broken. QUESTION: Do you think film plays a role in society that goes beyond entertainment? KLINE: I recently saw A Raisin in the Sun on television. I was the camera operator on that film and hadn’t seen it for years. It had a wonderful cast and the dialog was rich. Films like that can educate as well as entertain people. I think motion pictures can be considered today’s literature, like books.
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© 2005 American Society of Cinematographers. |