good article on Gregg Toland - from the New Yorker

[Nate H]

some good bits about working with Welles in there too. I don't want to get this site in trouble so I will just post the first paragraph. if anyone is interested in reading the rest I can send you a link.


THE CAMERAMAN

Gregg Toland's cinematographic revolution

Flashback: 1936, Hollywoodland. An ambitious young director named William Wyler has made his way from Alsace to Southern California, where he plans to contribute a few new frames to the collective American dream--the movies. Already, "forty-take Willie," as more than one disgruntled star has called him, has put John Barrymore through his paces for the 1933 Elmer Rice-scripted weepie "Counsellor at Law." Now he has joined forces with the independent producer Samuel Goldwyn to begin the next phase of his career. For his first Goldwyn feature, "These Three"--penned by Lillian Hellman--Wyler has been paired with a cinematographer he's never worked with before, the thirty-two-year-old Gregg Toland. Like many other directors of the era, Wyler regards cinematographers as little more than glorified mechanics. In the past, he has often directed the camerawork himself. "I was in the habit of saying, 'Put the camera here with a forty-millimeter lens, move it this way, pan over here, do this,'" Wyler remarked, in Jan Herman's 1996 biography, "A Talent for Trouble." This approach doesn't work with Toland: after several days, he asks Goldwyn to transfer him off Wyler's set. When Wyler, braised, demands an explanation, he learns that, with Toland, "you didn't tell him what lens to use, but what you wanted. And he would help you by suggesting the best way to photograph it." The two men reconcile, and go on to make six films together, including "Wuthering Heights" (1939) and "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). "We discussed every move," Wyler said. "He was an artist."

[PT Caffey]

This article doesn't seem to register at the "New Yorker" website. Which issue was it in? Thanks.

[Clive Dale]

The issue is from June 19th.

it's worth looking up in a library, both because of the extensiveness of the Toland info., and another article in the same issue.

the toland article quotes "The World's eading Authority on Toland", joy Pratte, an Illinios based scholar. it also mentions Andre Bazin's discussion of Toland's work with Welles and Wyler in his 1967 study" What is Cinema?"

The other article in the June 19th new Yorker is to my mind more significant to Wellesians, that is " The Injustice Collector" about pending litigation trying to break the strangle hold on Joyce scholarship by Joyce's grandson. The case has been taken up by Stanford Law Professor,Lawrence Lessig. Could any of our members in the Bay Area contact Prof. Lessig and tell him about another major 20th Century Artist, whose estate is crushing attempts at scholarship?