American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 114

when he dated

a

script girl from Paramount

Studios who took him to

one

of Clara Bow's

three-day parties, he decided the movies
were his cup of tea. He found a job as a film
an assistant cameraman. In 1930
he seconded Lee Garmes, ASC, on Morocco,

Charles Vidor, an unusual gangster yarn
which proved highly influential several years
later when psychological thrillers came be¬

with

latedly into fashion.

Paramount, which led in turn to his

Gary Cooper, Adolph Menjou and the
recently arrived German actress, Marlene
Dietrich. The director

was

Josef

von

Stern¬

berg, himself a talented cinematographer,
who liked Ballard's style. Five years later,

Sternberg hired Ballard-who was still an
operative cameraman-to photograph the
artistic but controversial The Devil Is

Woman, with the director himself
nal director of

as

a

nomi¬

photography.

The picture caused an interna¬
tional incident with Spain, which demanded
that Paramount destroy the negative and
cease distribution. As a result, von Stern¬

berg

soon was looking for another studio.
The eccentric director then joined Columbia
to direct Crime and Punishment
VlcCrea

on

location

or Ride the High
Country in 1962.

Lucien Ballard, ASC, who was director
of photography of more than 100 films over a

period of four decades, died October 1 of
injuries received in a traffic accident near his
home in Indian Wells, California. Ballard
achieved fame through an artistic versatility
that encompassed the European-styled ro¬
mances directed by Josef von Sternberg,
the shadowy psychological dramas of John

Brahm, the violent beauty of the Sam

Peckinpah-Budd Boetticher-Henry Hatha¬
way Westerns, and even the roughhouse
antics of the Three Stooges.
Ballard had been riding his bicy¬
cle when he collided with

a tractor

and died

days later at Eisenhower Medical Cen¬
ter in nearby Rancho Mirage. A widower, he
was 84 and is survived by two sons, Tony
and Chris, two brothers and a grandchild.
two

Born in Welch, Oklahoma, on

May 6,1904, Ballard, part Cherokee Indian,
had well-sculptured features that prompted
several directors to suggest that
an

actor. After

he become
moving to California he

planned a career in the lumber business, but

112

American

Cinematographer

teaming with Brahm was the bigger
budget Let Us Live! (1939), with Henry Fonda
and Maureen O'Sullivan. Another good Co¬
lumbia was Blind Alley (1939), directed by

becoming

cutter at

lallard and Joel

second

(1935), for

which Ballard

was named director of pho¬
tography. The picture, featuring Peter Lorre
and Edward Arnold, was visually magnifi¬
cent, but a financial catastrophe. Von Stern¬
berg and Ballard teamed again for The King
Steps Out and Ballard photographed two
other high budget pictures, Craigs Wife
(1936) and The Devils Playground (1937).
Then, for several years, he was relegated to
the low-budget unit headed by Irving Briskin.
There he photographed 14 features. As a
contractee, he was assigned between fea¬
tures to the two-reel comedy unit, photo¬
graphing the semi-improvised antics of
Charlie Chase, the Three Stooges and other
comedy stars. On The Shadow [1937), with
the young Rita Hayworth, he was teamed

with director C. C. Coleman Jr„ with whom
he worked on four subsequent films.
There were some bright spots
during this stint. Penitentiary (1938), one of
the studio's better B products, was directed

by the German emigre, John Brahm, whose
somewhat expressionistic visual ideas
found

an

ideal

December 1988

interpreter in Ballard. A

In 1941, Brahm and Ballard

moved to 20th Century-Fox, where they
made Wild Geese Calling, an artistic frontier
drama with Henry Fonda and Joan Bennett,
followed by The Undying Monster (1942),
whose superb images are reminiscent of
the best German art films of the 1920s. He
later worked with Brahm on Tonight We
Paid Calais (1943) and the celebrated The

Lodger (1944) one of the truly distinctive
director-cinematographer collaborations in
black and white. In 1945 he married Merle

Oberon, star of The Lodger, whom he also
photographed in This Love of Ours (1945),

Temptation (1946), Night Song (1947), and
the first American feature shot in post-war
Germany, Berlin Express (1948). They were
divorced in 1949.

Highlights of his career at Fox
included The House on Telegraph Hill (1951),
Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Inferno
(1953) - his first Technicolor and only 3-D
film,Prince Valiant (1954) - his first Cinema-

Scope production, and The Magnificent
Matador (1955).
In 1956 he

began free-lancing,
working on both major studio and indepen¬
dent productions, including The Killing
(1956), Buchanan Bides Alone (1958), At
Capone (1959), and the exceptional Bide the
High Country (1962), truly a Western for the
connoisseur. The acclaim for the latter led to
such famous frontier epics as The Sons of

Katie Elder [1965), Nevada Smith (1966), Hour
of the Gun (1967), Will Penny (1968), The
Wild Bunch (in Panavision 70) and True Grit

(both 1969), The Battle of Cable Hogue
(1970), and Junior Bonner (1972).
A
American Cinematographer - December 1988

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