Lucien Ballard(1904-1988)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Lucien Ballard, the cinematographer best known for his collaboration
with director Sam Peckinpah on such films as The Wild Bunch (1969), was born in Miami, Oklahoma. Ballard became a wanderer after dropping out
of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the University of
Oklahoma, journeying to China in search of opportunity. When he
returned to the United States after not finding any, Ballard gained
employment in the lumber business, working in a mill sawing trees and
surveying land.
Near the end of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties, Ballard
visited a woman friend who worked as a script clerk at Paramount, and
that was the connection that brought him into show business. He was
hired by Paramount as a manual laborer loading trucks and worked his
way onto a camera crew, starting as a camera assistant. He eventually
served a five year apprenticeship, during which he moved his way up the
hierarchy to camera operator, the member of the camera crew
second-in-seniority to the cinematographer (or lighting cameraman, also
known as the director of photography) that actually operates the
camera, working with directors Victor Milner, Charles Rosher, and others. He also
became experienced as as a film editor at Paramount. Ballard eventually
was assigned to the cinematography unit assigned to director Josef von Sternberg,
who used him as a camera operator and later as a lighting cameraman.
(It was on the set of Von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) that Ballard first worked
with Henry Hathaway, then an assistant director but who later, as a director,
used Ballard extensively.)
Von Sternberg, who oversaw and constructed the visuals on his early
films, was credited as cinematographer for The Devil Is a Woman (1935). Though Ballard did
not receive credit as a lighting cameraman on the film, this is usually
credited (despite the non-credit) as his first film as a director of
photographer (a more honored title for a lighting cameraman; just as
"Written By" is a privilege for screenwriters to be credited with, so
is "Director of Photography" for the cinematographer). Indeed, Ballard
and Von Sternberg jointly were cited by the 1935 Venice Film Festival
award for "Best Cinematography" for The Devil Is a Woman (1935), though officially, Ballard
received his first credit for cinematography on B.P. Schulberg's production of
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1935), which also was directed by Von Sternberg.
Ballard and Von Sternbereg collaborated once more on the musical
The King Steps Out (1936), but parted ways after falling out, likely over control of the
visuals. Ballard moved over to Columbia in 1935, where he worked as a
director of photography for five years, primely for the B-movie unit on
their less-prestigious low-budgeted "B-pictures" and on two-reel
shorts. After quitting Columbia in 1940, he went to work for Howard Hughes on
the eccentric multi-millionaire's attempted-smut fest, The Outlaw (1943). Hughes
wanted to show off the twin assets of Jane Russell, which -- for his taste
-- required innovative camera angles of her cleavage, one of the
then-wonders of the then (natural) world. Ballard shot test scenes for
the flick and worked as an assistant on the first-unit crew of the
great cinematographer Gregg Toland and as the lighting cameraman on the
second unit. Though the film was shot in 1940 and 1941, due to Hughes'
perfectionism and censorship troubles, the film, though completed and
screened in 1943, was be distributed until after World War II, in 1946.
After Hughes, Ballard shot two pictures for R.K.O., and then moved on
to 20th Century Fox for the war period (1941-45). It was at Fox,
working on A-pictures, that Ballard first established his reputation,
as a master of motion pictures shot on studio sets. On the set of the
1944 movie The Lodger (1944), Ballard met actress Merle Oberon, whom he married in
1945. After Oberon sustained facial scarring after a near-fatal
automobile accident, Ballard invented a key light to be mounted by the
side of the camera. The light, nicknamed the "Obie" after his wife,
directed light onto the subject's face to wash out blemishes and
wrinkles so they would not be caught on film. Ballard and Oberon
divorced in 1949.
After the war, Ballard spent two years at Universal and another two
years at R.K.O. (working again for Hughes, who now owned the studio),
before returning to 20th Century Fox for a six-year stint. Fox chief
Darryl F. Zanuck had committed the studio to turning out pictures shot in the
widescreen CinemaScope process and in Technicolor. The widescreen
anamorphic process based on the the "hypergonar" lens called
"Anamorphoscope" that 20th Century-Fox bought and redubbed
"CinemaScope" had actually been invented by the Frenchman 'Henri
Chrétien' in the late 1920s.
It was at Fox that Ballard gained his renowned experience in shooting
both widescreen and color, particularly with his Westerns, establishing
his reputation as a first-rate D.P. anew in these "new" media. His
mastery of the wide-screen was fully evident when he shot +The Wild
Bunch), a film in which he completely used the widescreen frame. (By
the mid-1970s, due to the insistence of television, most widescreen
films were shot by bunching the main action in a center frame
approximating the Academy aperture of 4:3, thus obviating the expense
of creating "pan and scan" movies for TV-broadcast. This eventually led
to faux widescreen, when the industry jettisoned the entire use of the
frame, which was squeezed onto the negative, and merely masked a
camera, producing a simulation of widescreen without the need for
squeezing that did not use the full frame. Thus, a film could be shown
theatrically by masking a screen at the theater, and the unmasked film
could be shown on TV in the 4:3 aspect. However, men like Ballard and
Freddie Young were masters of the "true" widescreen.)
His old friend Henry Hathaway, now a major director, used Ballard extensively
in the early 1950s. They collaborated on Diplomatic Courier (1952), O. Henry's Full House (1952), and Prince Valiant (1954)
in that decade, though by 1956, Ballard was sufficiently established to
go freelance. This meant their next collaborations did not come until
the 1960s: The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Nevada Smith (1966), and True Grit (1969). Ballard was also able to
establish a long-time collaboration -- and friendship -- with director
Budd Boetticher, shooting the director's The Magnificent Matador (1955), The Killer Is Loose (1956) (1956), the pilot
episode for the television show Maverick (1957), and the Randolph Scott Buchanan Rides Alone (1958). In
1959, he shot The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), Boetticher's last film before the quixotic
director pursued his monumental cinema biography of the Mexican matador
Carlos Arruza, a decade-long labor of love. Boetticher later told of how when
the "Legs Diamond" producer saw the flat look Ballard had created for
the film, after discussions with Boetticher, to recreate an authentic
look and feel of the 1920s by mimicking the cinematography of that era,
the producer criticized Ballard's footage. Not understanding what they
were after, he complained to Boetticher, "I thought you said Ballard
was a good cameraman!"
In addition to much of the bull-fighting footage contained in the
docudrama Arruza (1972), Ballard shot Boetticher's last feature film,
A Time for Dying (1969). As a favor to his friend, Ballard also shot Boetticher's
documentary about his horse farm, My Kingdom for... (1995), after having retired seven
years before.
One collaboration that didn't stick was with Stanley Kubrick, who was 20 years
Ballard's junior, though their joint effort produced a memorable look
and atmosphere for Kubricks's breakthrough work, the seminal crime
drama The Killing (1956). (This film was the true inspiration for the time-shifts
favored by '90s cinema wunderkind 'Quentin Tarrantino' .) The
experienced and respected Ballard returned to his Black + Whites roots
as the cinematographer on The Killing (1956), but Kubrick always experienced
friction with his directors of photography as he, a very talented
photographer, essentially considered himself his own D.P.
The relationship that Ballard is most famous for was with Sam Peckinpah. They
first worked together on the 'Brian Keith' TV series _The Westerner
(1960)_ , which had been created by Peckinpah but only lasted
half-a-season, and then on the classic 'Randolph Scott' -Joel McCrea
Western Ride the High Country (1962). However, it was their next collaboration, The Wild Bunch (1969),
that elevated Peckinpah into the pantheon of great directors and made
Ballard well-known outside the small circle of professional
cinematographers and cult cineastes. Ballard also shot The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970),
The Getaway (1972), and Junior Bonner (1972) for Peckinpah, becoming a principle collaborator
with the emotionally troubled and producer-plagued director during the
period of his greatness.
Surprisingly, though he worked as director of photography on almost 130
films during his career as a lighting cameraman from 1935 to 1978,
Lucien Ballard was nominated just once for an Academy Award for Best
Cinematography, in 1964 for for his Black + White work on The Caretakers (1963). The
oversight is inexplicable, particularly as there were two awards for
cinematography (B+W and color) during the bulk of his career. In 1970,
he was honored by the National Society of Film Critics with its "Best
Cinematography" for his great widescreen work on Peckinpah's epic
masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969), which somehow failed to generate an Oscar
nomination. (The American Society of Cinematographers was a tightly
controlled clan that provided the bulk of the voters for the Oscar
nominations. The Oscar voters also inexplicably blackballed the great
Gordon Willis during his career.)
Lucien Ballard died near his Rancho Mirage, California, home in a car
accident on October 1, 1988. He was 80 years old.
with director Sam Peckinpah on such films as The Wild Bunch (1969), was born in Miami, Oklahoma. Ballard became a wanderer after dropping out
of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the University of
Oklahoma, journeying to China in search of opportunity. When he
returned to the United States after not finding any, Ballard gained
employment in the lumber business, working in a mill sawing trees and
surveying land.
Near the end of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties, Ballard
visited a woman friend who worked as a script clerk at Paramount, and
that was the connection that brought him into show business. He was
hired by Paramount as a manual laborer loading trucks and worked his
way onto a camera crew, starting as a camera assistant. He eventually
served a five year apprenticeship, during which he moved his way up the
hierarchy to camera operator, the member of the camera crew
second-in-seniority to the cinematographer (or lighting cameraman, also
known as the director of photography) that actually operates the
camera, working with directors Victor Milner, Charles Rosher, and others. He also
became experienced as as a film editor at Paramount. Ballard eventually
was assigned to the cinematography unit assigned to director Josef von Sternberg,
who used him as a camera operator and later as a lighting cameraman.
(It was on the set of Von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) that Ballard first worked
with Henry Hathaway, then an assistant director but who later, as a director,
used Ballard extensively.)
Von Sternberg, who oversaw and constructed the visuals on his early
films, was credited as cinematographer for The Devil Is a Woman (1935). Though Ballard did
not receive credit as a lighting cameraman on the film, this is usually
credited (despite the non-credit) as his first film as a director of
photographer (a more honored title for a lighting cameraman; just as
"Written By" is a privilege for screenwriters to be credited with, so
is "Director of Photography" for the cinematographer). Indeed, Ballard
and Von Sternberg jointly were cited by the 1935 Venice Film Festival
award for "Best Cinematography" for The Devil Is a Woman (1935), though officially, Ballard
received his first credit for cinematography on B.P. Schulberg's production of
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1935), which also was directed by Von Sternberg.
Ballard and Von Sternbereg collaborated once more on the musical
The King Steps Out (1936), but parted ways after falling out, likely over control of the
visuals. Ballard moved over to Columbia in 1935, where he worked as a
director of photography for five years, primely for the B-movie unit on
their less-prestigious low-budgeted "B-pictures" and on two-reel
shorts. After quitting Columbia in 1940, he went to work for Howard Hughes on
the eccentric multi-millionaire's attempted-smut fest, The Outlaw (1943). Hughes
wanted to show off the twin assets of Jane Russell, which -- for his taste
-- required innovative camera angles of her cleavage, one of the
then-wonders of the then (natural) world. Ballard shot test scenes for
the flick and worked as an assistant on the first-unit crew of the
great cinematographer Gregg Toland and as the lighting cameraman on the
second unit. Though the film was shot in 1940 and 1941, due to Hughes'
perfectionism and censorship troubles, the film, though completed and
screened in 1943, was be distributed until after World War II, in 1946.
After Hughes, Ballard shot two pictures for R.K.O., and then moved on
to 20th Century Fox for the war period (1941-45). It was at Fox,
working on A-pictures, that Ballard first established his reputation,
as a master of motion pictures shot on studio sets. On the set of the
1944 movie The Lodger (1944), Ballard met actress Merle Oberon, whom he married in
1945. After Oberon sustained facial scarring after a near-fatal
automobile accident, Ballard invented a key light to be mounted by the
side of the camera. The light, nicknamed the "Obie" after his wife,
directed light onto the subject's face to wash out blemishes and
wrinkles so they would not be caught on film. Ballard and Oberon
divorced in 1949.
After the war, Ballard spent two years at Universal and another two
years at R.K.O. (working again for Hughes, who now owned the studio),
before returning to 20th Century Fox for a six-year stint. Fox chief
Darryl F. Zanuck had committed the studio to turning out pictures shot in the
widescreen CinemaScope process and in Technicolor. The widescreen
anamorphic process based on the the "hypergonar" lens called
"Anamorphoscope" that 20th Century-Fox bought and redubbed
"CinemaScope" had actually been invented by the Frenchman 'Henri
Chrétien' in the late 1920s.
It was at Fox that Ballard gained his renowned experience in shooting
both widescreen and color, particularly with his Westerns, establishing
his reputation as a first-rate D.P. anew in these "new" media. His
mastery of the wide-screen was fully evident when he shot +The Wild
Bunch), a film in which he completely used the widescreen frame. (By
the mid-1970s, due to the insistence of television, most widescreen
films were shot by bunching the main action in a center frame
approximating the Academy aperture of 4:3, thus obviating the expense
of creating "pan and scan" movies for TV-broadcast. This eventually led
to faux widescreen, when the industry jettisoned the entire use of the
frame, which was squeezed onto the negative, and merely masked a
camera, producing a simulation of widescreen without the need for
squeezing that did not use the full frame. Thus, a film could be shown
theatrically by masking a screen at the theater, and the unmasked film
could be shown on TV in the 4:3 aspect. However, men like Ballard and
Freddie Young were masters of the "true" widescreen.)
His old friend Henry Hathaway, now a major director, used Ballard extensively
in the early 1950s. They collaborated on Diplomatic Courier (1952), O. Henry's Full House (1952), and Prince Valiant (1954)
in that decade, though by 1956, Ballard was sufficiently established to
go freelance. This meant their next collaborations did not come until
the 1960s: The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Nevada Smith (1966), and True Grit (1969). Ballard was also able to
establish a long-time collaboration -- and friendship -- with director
Budd Boetticher, shooting the director's The Magnificent Matador (1955), The Killer Is Loose (1956) (1956), the pilot
episode for the television show Maverick (1957), and the Randolph Scott Buchanan Rides Alone (1958). In
1959, he shot The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), Boetticher's last film before the quixotic
director pursued his monumental cinema biography of the Mexican matador
Carlos Arruza, a decade-long labor of love. Boetticher later told of how when
the "Legs Diamond" producer saw the flat look Ballard had created for
the film, after discussions with Boetticher, to recreate an authentic
look and feel of the 1920s by mimicking the cinematography of that era,
the producer criticized Ballard's footage. Not understanding what they
were after, he complained to Boetticher, "I thought you said Ballard
was a good cameraman!"
In addition to much of the bull-fighting footage contained in the
docudrama Arruza (1972), Ballard shot Boetticher's last feature film,
A Time for Dying (1969). As a favor to his friend, Ballard also shot Boetticher's
documentary about his horse farm, My Kingdom for... (1995), after having retired seven
years before.
One collaboration that didn't stick was with Stanley Kubrick, who was 20 years
Ballard's junior, though their joint effort produced a memorable look
and atmosphere for Kubricks's breakthrough work, the seminal crime
drama The Killing (1956). (This film was the true inspiration for the time-shifts
favored by '90s cinema wunderkind 'Quentin Tarrantino' .) The
experienced and respected Ballard returned to his Black + Whites roots
as the cinematographer on The Killing (1956), but Kubrick always experienced
friction with his directors of photography as he, a very talented
photographer, essentially considered himself his own D.P.
The relationship that Ballard is most famous for was with Sam Peckinpah. They
first worked together on the 'Brian Keith' TV series _The Westerner
(1960)_ , which had been created by Peckinpah but only lasted
half-a-season, and then on the classic 'Randolph Scott' -Joel McCrea
Western Ride the High Country (1962). However, it was their next collaboration, The Wild Bunch (1969),
that elevated Peckinpah into the pantheon of great directors and made
Ballard well-known outside the small circle of professional
cinematographers and cult cineastes. Ballard also shot The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970),
The Getaway (1972), and Junior Bonner (1972) for Peckinpah, becoming a principle collaborator
with the emotionally troubled and producer-plagued director during the
period of his greatness.
Surprisingly, though he worked as director of photography on almost 130
films during his career as a lighting cameraman from 1935 to 1978,
Lucien Ballard was nominated just once for an Academy Award for Best
Cinematography, in 1964 for for his Black + White work on The Caretakers (1963). The
oversight is inexplicable, particularly as there were two awards for
cinematography (B+W and color) during the bulk of his career. In 1970,
he was honored by the National Society of Film Critics with its "Best
Cinematography" for his great widescreen work on Peckinpah's epic
masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969), which somehow failed to generate an Oscar
nomination. (The American Society of Cinematographers was a tightly
controlled clan that provided the bulk of the voters for the Oscar
nominations. The Oscar voters also inexplicably blackballed the great
Gordon Willis during his career.)
Lucien Ballard died near his Rancho Mirage, California, home in a car
accident on October 1, 1988. He was 80 years old.