James Wong Howe, (Aug. 28, 1899 – July 12, 1976), one of the greatest cinematographers of the American film industry, was born in Guangzhou, China, and brought by his parents to the United States at the age of five. In his legendary Hallywood career as cinematographer, Mr. Howe worked on over 130 films, and was nominated for Oscar Award in Cinematography for ten time, winning two of them in 1956 and 1963.
Howe(right) working on the set of 1924 film The Alaskan (from wikipedia.com).
Howe started work in 1917 as assistant cameraman to Cecil B. deMille and in 1922 became chief cameraman for Famous Players. He later worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and RKO, then freelanced after 1948. He was a master at the use of shadow and was one of the first to use deep-focus cinematography, in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus.
Howe he lived in the states of Washington and Oregon until 1916, when he went to southern California. Howe worked on many silent films, exploring all the developments in film, stock, camera mobility, and lighting techniques; then, with the invention of sound, he developed ways to circumvent the restrictions that it imposed on camera movement. He much preferred black and white film, which brought out his dramatic use of light and shade, although his colour work was as exemplary as his black and white; he was at home in a studio or on location, and he was a master of all moods. The pictures below are from Howe’s films.
In 1928, Howe was in China shooting backgrounds for a movie he hoped to direct. The project he was working on was never completed (although some of the footage was used in Shanghai Express), and when he returned to Hollywood, he discovered that the “talkies” had largely supplanted silent productions. With no experience in that medium, Howe could not find work. To reestablish himself, Howe first co-financed a Japanese-language feature shot in Southern California entitled Chijiku wo mawasuru chikara (The Force that Turns the Earth around its Axis), which he also photographed and co-directed. When that film failed to find an audience in California’s nisei communities or Japan, Howe shot the low-budget feature Today for no salary. Finally, director/producer Howard Hawks, who he had met on The Little American, hired him for The Criminal Code and then director William K. Howard selected him to be the cinematographer on Transatlantic.
In Transatlantic (1931) Howe pioneered in using a wide-angle lens, deep focus, and ceilinged sets to replicate shipboard claustrophobia. He was one of the first cameramen to use a hand-held camera. He shot the boxing scenes in Body and Soul (1947) while being pushed on roller skates and increased his mobility for He Ran All the Way (1951) by shooting from a wheelchair. Howe won Oscars from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work on The Rose Tattoo 1955) and Hud (1963).
Howe’s best known work was almost entirely in black and white. His two Academy Awards both came during the period when Best Cinematography Oscars were awarded separately for color and black-and-white films. However, he successfully made the transition to color films and earned his first Academy Award nomination for a color film in 1958 for The Old Man and the Sea. He won his second Academy Award for 1963’s Hud. His cinematography remained inventive during his later career. For instance, his use of fish-eye and wide-angle lenses in Seconds (1966) helped give an eerie tension to director John Frankenheimer’s science fiction movie. After working on The Molly Maguires (1970), Howe’s health began to fail and he entered semi-retirement. In 1974, he was well enough to be selected as a replacement cinematographer for Funny Lady. He collapsed during the filming; American Society of Cinematographers president Ernest Laszlo filled in for Howe while he was recovering in the hospital.
Funny Lady earned Howe his tenth and final Oscar nomination. Three documentaries were made about Howe during the last two decades of his life.