Mae West: Karl Struss

MAE WEST said her favorite cinematographer was Karl Struss because he made her look more beautiful onscreen than anyone else. Like her, he was of German descent.
• • The son of a wire manufacturer, cinematographer Karl Struss was born in New York City on 30 November 1886 and studied photography at Columbia University. Hal Mohr — — a fellow film cameraman — — called Struss one of the greatest still photographers who ever lived.
• • In 1914, he took over the portrait studio of Clarence White [1871 — 1925] at 5 West 31st Street, which was then the heart of the photography district. Struss maintained a flourishing business there until 1918, when (at the outset of the war) he voiced a pro-German sentiment. The damning information given to the authorities came from other members of the PPA [Pictorialist Photographers of America]. In 1918 he was asked to resign from the PPA and was struck from their membership. Though he vigorously defended his patriotism and even spent time at Fort Leavenworth as a guard, his studio closed, clients vanished, and his reputation was damaged. Disillusioned with New York, Struss realized that it would be difficult to re-establish himself as a photographer. Therefore, he decided to go straight to Los Angeles in 1919 as soon as he was discharged from the Army.
• • In 1919, Karl Struss was first hired as a still photographer by Cecil B. DeMille. Climbing to the top in relatively short order, Struss worked most often in collaboration with Charles Rosher; he and Rosher shared the first-ever Best Photography Academy Award for their eye-popping work on F.W. Murnau's Sunrise [1927].
• • Many of Struss' own innovations were often mistakenly credited by film historians to directors. For instance, it was Struss and not director Rouben Mamoulian who came up with the idea of using infrared filters for the transformation scenes in 1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. During his many years at Paramount Pictures, Struss helped train some of the best cameramen of the 1950s.
• • When film historians cite his best work, Goin' to Town starring Mae West is, alas, not one of the motion pictures referenced.
• • In the month of December — — on 15 December 1981 — — 95-year-old Karl Struss died in Los Angeles.
• • Goin' to Town — — Paramount production and release. Stars Mae West. Directed by Alexander Hall. Produced by William LeBaron. Original by Marion Morgan and George B. Dowell; screenplay and dialog. Miss West. Songs, Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal; camera, Karl Struss. At the Paramount N.Y. — — week of 10 May 1935. Running time, 75 mins.
• • Cast:
• • Cleo Borden . . . Mae West
• • Edward Barrington . . . Paul Cavanagh
• • Ivan Veladov . . . Ivan Lebedeff
• • Taho . . . Tito Coral
• • Mrs. Crane Brittony . . . Marjorie Gateson
• • Buck Gonzales . . . Fred Kohler, Sr.
• • Fletcher Colton . . . Monroe Owsley
• • Winslow . . . Gilbert Emery
• • Young Fellow . . . Grant Withers
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West's cameraman • • Karl Struss in 1937 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: Hays Fever

NPR's "All Things Considered" did an episode on the Hitler of Hollywood, celluloid censor Will Hays, whose Hays Code crippled the motion picture career of MAE WEST.
• • Here is an excerpt from Bob Mondello's broadcast — — Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On.
• • Bob Mondello begins: · When people talk about the "more innocent" Hollywood of years gone by, they're referring to an era when the movie industry policed itself. But that early Hollywood wasn't always so innocent.
• • For decades, it's true, the major film studios were governed by a production code requiring that their pictures be "wholesome" and "moral" and encourage what the studios called "correct thinking."
• • But that code, which was officially abandoned 40 years ago this year, was the result of a nationwide backlash — — an outraged reaction to a Hollywood that by 1922 had come to seem like a moral quagmire, even by the bathtub-gin-and-speakeasy standards of the Roaring '20s.
• • Silent-film comic Fatty Arbuckle charged with manslaughter in the death of an actress; a bisexual director found murdered; movie stars dying of drug overdoses — — small wonder the nation's religious leaders were forming local censorship boards and chopping up movies every which way to suit the standards of their communities.
• • And at first, when Hollywood studios banded together under former Postmaster General Will Hays to come up with a list of 36 self-imposed "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," it's no wonder no one believed them. There were no penalties, no laws, no enforcement.
• • Moralists were so outraged, meanwhile — — by Mae West's casual slatternliness in I'm No Angel, by Barbara Stanwyck's promiscuousness in Baby Face, by Cecil B. DeMille's racy biblical epic Sign of the Cross — — that calls for official government censorship became overwhelming.
• • A Power Play, For Propriety's Sake • •
• • Of course, they were calls that Hays himself, working behind the scenes, had helped to make overwhelming — — and he used the pressure to force filmmakers to toe his line and obey the new Production Code he eventually promulgated.
• • "The code sets up high standards of performance for motion-picture producers," Hays proclaimed when the new code was unveiled. "It states the considerations which good taste and community value make necessary in this universal form of entertainment." . . .
— — Excerpt: — —
• • "Movies — — Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On"
• • Byline: Bob Mondello
• • Published by: NPR — — "All Things Considered" — — www.npr.org/
• • Published: 8 August 2008
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1933 • •
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Mae West: DeMille

Many men looked at MAE WEST — — but Oscar never glanced once in her direction. In filmland, Mae West secured no nominations for acting. And her financially successful movies for Paramount scored no Oscar wins.
• • However, just in time for the Academy Awards ceremony comes this mention of Mae West when film preservationist Cecilia DeMille Presley was honored by Chapman University on Friday, the 23rd of February, in Indian Wells.
• • The Desert Sun noted that the granddaughter of former Paramount Studios Chief Cecil B. DeMille, who splits her time between Los Angeles and the Palm Springs, California desert, was honored for her gift of extraordinarily rare film-related art to Chapman University's new $42 million Marion Knott Studios within the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.
• • The collection includes art for MAE WEST films, John Wayne films, and also pieces in media ranging from animation cells to rare stills, poster art, and storyboards.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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• • Photo: • • Mae West • • to come • •
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