James Wong Howe

James Wong Howe, actually Wong Tung Jim (Chinese黄宗 沾/黄宗 沾, Pinyin Huang Zōngzhān, born August 28, 1899 in Guangzhou, China, † July 12, 1976 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California ) was an American cinematographer. Add movie titles his name is sometimes listed as " James Howe ".

Life and Films

James Wong Howe was born in southern China, the son of Wong How. His father, who in America had some success as a store owner could make up for his son because of the legal situation (Chinese Exclusion Act ) until 1904.

Howe came after several attempts, finally, as a boxer as a photographer and made ​​the acquaintance of a cameraman who helped him to get a clean-up activity in the editing room of the Famous Players - Lasky Corporation. From there he worked his way up to the boy slate of director Cecil B. DeMille. After 1914 the Famous Players Paramount Pictures gradually emerged, Howe rose within four years from Camera Wizard on the operating cameraman. Followed in 1923 his first independent camera work as director of photography: on the recommendation of the actress Mary Miles Minter, he was involved in two of their productions that made the star look very beneficial.

Among the best known films at Paramount was working on the Clara Bow Comedy Mantrap. In 1927 his reputation was so well established as a cameraman, who with light imaginative and sophisticated bypassed than most of his colleagues that he started his own business. In 1928 he turned the films Laugh, Clown, Laugh with Lon Chaney and Loretta Young, and Four Walls with Joan Crawford and John Gilbert for MGM. From 1931 he worked part-time for the old Fox Studios. Indirectly, Howe was also involved in the film Shanghai Express: during a trip to China, he had made the film shots that he originally wanted to use for their own directing work to the material ultimately sell to Paramount. Josef von Sternberg then used the archive material in said film.

Highlights of his work include the adventure film The Prisoner of Zenda ( The Prisoner of Zenda ), where he stood in 1937 before the problem is that both characters Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll wanted to keep her left side of the face at the camera and Algiers from the following year. The romantic melodrama, also directed by John Cromwell, was the American debut of Hedy Lamarr, and Howe took the actress to so skillfully that it was up to its reputation as the most beautiful woman in the world.

Howe was a specialist in the use of shadows and muted brightness, earning him the nickname low-key Hoe earned and one of the first cinematographers in Hollywood, who worked with extreme depth of field, are equally sharp in the foreground and background. He often used this means to characterize in the foreground persons kept by the background - Keeps track, for example, in the Western, in which the background of a barren desert landscape explains the state of mind of a front are in the image tortured man.

However, his ideas were not always so well received by the producer. During the filming of the movie whipsaw with Myrna Loy Howe had chosen a strong chiaroscuro lighting to Myrna Loy, who had just sat according to the script awake all night with a sick woman, to make you look exhausted. Studio boss Louis B. Mayer, who was the daily rushes, the daily recordings show in major films, Howe then called to him and asked him if he might be unwell, after all, he had let Myrna Loy look like an old woman. Howe explained his concept and was cast with one of the infamous Mayer- tantrums from the office. The scene was re-recorded for the purposes of the studio and Loy looked perfect makeup in the mirror and sighed. " I look terrible"

James Wong Howe was one of the first Asian artist who managed a significant career in film. He maintained a long-standing partnership with the author Sanora Babb, a white woman, he could not until 1949, after the lifting of the ban on mixed marriages in California to marry. Howe was a cousin of actress Anna May Wong.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

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