American Cinematographer - August 1983 - 45

ioneer
work

on

with brushes unless you

hard¬
and get a job
slide company, because at

ened it. I later
with

a

Cinematographer

song

was

that time there

to

were

go

two

outfits that

slides, Scott Murratino and DeWitt C. Wheeler. They
were in New York
City, it was in the
year 1909 that I took my slides and
walked all over Manhattan. One day I
came to a little
sign that was hanging
out of a brownstone upstairs office and
it said: Champion Film Company. That
sounded good to me, so I went in and
making

were

song

laid the slides

on

the desk for Mark

Dintenfass, the

president of the com¬
He said: 'You mean to tell me that
you did this?' and I said: 'Yes, all by
myself.' And he said: 'Well, I think the
place where you belong is in the labo¬
ratory over in Coytesville.' I said:
'Where in the hell is Coytesville?' He
said with a laugh: 'You take the subway
and go to the Fort Lee Ferry in New
Jersey!'
"After I reached the New Jersey
pany.

shore, I walked about a mile after I got
off the street car, and found this old
ramshackle

building that was known
Champion Film Company labo¬
ratory and studio. They had a job open
in the laboratory, winding film on
frames for drying. The rolls were about
200 feet long and the job was hard. Mr.
Ferrini, who was an expert photogra¬
pher, did the developing and finishing
of the negative, and his experience was
as

the

Byron Haskin
Broening on location near Atlanta
for Allen Holubar's production, THE

(ABOVE) Cameramen

and

BISHOP OF COTTONTOWN in

1323.

Holubar died

during production and
the picture was never completed.
(BIGHT) Broening about 1325.

what I learned from while I worked

under him. He later gave me a job in
the perforating room. In those days the
film

unperforated and, believe it or
perforations didn't always
To show what a tough time we

was

not, the

match.

had, we'd have to take the stuff under
the red

light, and with a master per¬
foration copy, we would lay this film
out and match it up by looking through
at the light to see if the perforation was

working right. It only perforated two
holes at

one

time,

one on

each side

..

."

The

Champion Film Company was
one of the independent producers ha¬
rassed by the Patents Company trust, a
group headed by Edison, who claimed
all the patents on cameras and other
equipment, as well as on film stock,
The Champion Company got its cam¬
eras and
equipment from Europe and
other

sources.

it: "The

all

over.

AMERICAN

As

cameras

We

Lyman Broening puts

at that time came

never

knew what

from

we were

CINEMATOGRAPHER, AUGUST, 1983

use. One week we used one
from France, which was probably a
Gaumont camera, or then we'd use a

going to

that came from England, prob¬
Williamson
It wasn't until I
got a job with the Independent Motion
Picture Corp. (IMP) in New York, that I
began to work with my own camera. I
went over to the IMP Company to
work in the title department. I had an
office of my own, with a desk and all
the various materials they used for in¬
serts. In those days they made titles by
placing little bone letters upon black
background, similar to the ones they
camera

ably

use

a

...

in office directories. That's what

they were made for. My job was to set
the titles which I had to copy. I pho¬
tographed them with an old gold mine

up

camera.

That

was

what

was

known

as

feeder type, about the worst camera
that was invented, but it was all right
a

for titles, since if

they jumped around

a

little bit, who cared.

They had

a

paint¬

ing of a stage, with drapes and a
proscenium and they had a little screen
back of it, which had the IMP trade¬

mark

on

it, and

a

cord

ran

up over a

pulley. When I stopped grinding the
43
American Cinematographer - August 1983

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