Elgin Lessley

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Elgin Lessley (1915)

Elgin Lessley (also: Lesly, Lessly, and Leslie) (born June 10, 1883 in Higby , Missouri , † February 8, 1944 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American cameraman of the silent film era, who was particularly popular through his collaboration with Buster Keaton and his development of innovative special effects became important.

Life

Elgin Lessley was born in 1883 to Shelton and Orpha Lessley, née Brooks, in a small village in the US state of Missouri. He had three sisters and two brothers from a previous marriage of his father. The father was a veteran of the Confederate Army and ran a farm and general store. When he died in 1911, the family moved from Colorado Springs to Los Angeles. Elgin worked as a window dresser in his parents' business, but then followed his passion - photography - and was charged with 28 years of photography on the film company "American Wild West" by Gaston Méliès, the brother of the French film pioneer Georges Méliès , which mainly short film - Western produced . In 1912 Lessley also made a trip through Asia and the South Seas to record the “American Wild West”.

In 1913 he joined the Keystone Studios by Mack Sennett . Here he photographed films with Roscoe Arbuckle , Al St. John and Mabel Normand and developed into a comedy specialist. In 1917 he also appeared in The Dangers of a Bride with Gloria Swanson and A Clever Dummy with Ben Turpin and Chester Conklin . After Roscoe Arbuckle opened his own studio “Comique” with Joseph Schenck in 1917 , Lessley also joined them a year later. Here he also met Buster Keaton , who took over the company in 1920 and called it "Buster Keaton Studios". Lessley now became his cameraman. He photographed all 19 of Keaton's short films and six of his feature films. He was also in front of the camera in several of Harry Langdon’s films . In the 1920s, Lessley was considered by many to be the best comedy cameraman in Hollywood.

At that time, when the cameras were still driven by hand cranks, all special effects had to be created in the camera when turning. Although Lessley had previously worked with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Harry Langdon, he is best known for the fundamental effects he had achieved with Buster Keaton. He called it “the human metronome” because he knew how to crank the camera so evenly at any desired speed.

He brought his most noticeable effects in the films The Playhouse (1921) and Sherlock, Jr. (1924). In The Playhouse he had Keaton appear in nine different characters who also came into contact with each other, for which he used a lens with a special aperture and kept turning the film back in the camera and re-exposing it. In Sherlock, Jr. By carefully positioning the camera and actor, he created the impression that a man was trapped in the film, while at the same time his situation, to which he was trying to adapt, was constantly changing.

At one point he can also be seen as an actor with Buster Keaton, admittedly without being named in the credits: In the film Der General (1926) plays a general of the Union who gives the order to drive over the bridge.

After filming Buster Keaton's Buster Keaton, the film reporter (1928) Lessley withdrew from the film business and retired. His wife Blanche Olmstead, whom he married in 1918, was now sick with Wernicke's syndrome and had to be cared for by Lessley until her death in 1931. Elgin Lessley himself died of heart problems in 1944 at the age of 60; he is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale), Los Angeles County, California, USA.

The author Theodore Roszak , professor of history at California State University, mentions him in his novel “Schattenlichter” from 1989. In the German translation by Friedrich Mager it says: “Lessley, he knew something about his craft. Without him, Keaton would have been lost. The trouble was, with lights, Elgin was a zero. With comedies you can't do anything with lighting. You have to see all the details, you see. Everything is nice and simple and bright. "

Filmography

Web links

Illustrations

  • Photo by Elgin Lessley
  • Photo of Elgin Lessley at work at Fort Lee in 1915 (contribution by Christina Dunigan, August 11, 2009)
  • Photo with Lessley (right at the camera) with Arbuckle and Normand during the shooting of “He Did and He Didn't”.

literature

  • Lisle Foote: Buster Keaton's Crew: The Team Behind His Silent Films . Revised edition. McFarland Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4766-1806-7 , pp. 38-39, 51, 103 and 118.
  • Frank Roy Fraprie: Popular Photography. Volume 1, American Photographic Publishing Company, 1913, pp. 58-59.
  • Andrew Horton: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (= Cambridge Film Handbooks). Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-48566-5 , pp. 161-168.
  • Robert Knopf: The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton . Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00442-0 , pp. 33, 102, 165, 181, 184-186, 215.
  • Leonard Maltin: The Art of the Cinematographer. Courier Corporation, 2012, ISBN 978-0-486-15474-9 .
  • James L. Neibaur: The Silent Films of Harry Langdon (1923–1928). Scarecrow Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-8531-8 , pp. 165-66, 169-70, 183, 190, 196 and the like. 231.
  • Gabriella Oldham: Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter . UPCC book collections on Project MUSE. revised edition. Verlag SIU Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8093-8594-2 , pp. 126, 130-31, 391.
  • Theodore Roszak: Shadow Lights : Novel. Translated by Friedrich Mader. Heyne Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-641-02345-4 .
  • William Schelly: Harry Langdon: His Life and Films. Issue 2. McFarland Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7864-3691-0 , pp. 58, 98, 189.
  • Marylin Slayter: Who Was Elgin Lessley? ( webs.com )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography at LookingforMabel
  2. ↑ cf. Schelly p. 58: “Langdon scored a major coup by signing veteran cameraman Elgin Lessley. Lessley was reckoned to be the best comedy cameraman in the business and was noted for his knack of getting tricky shots with a minimum of fuss. He had worked for Buster Keaton for years ... "
  3. ↑ cit. at Maltin, The Art of the Cinematographer
  4. ↑ In a dream sequence at the beginning of the film, in multiple exposures, Keaton pulls the curtain, is a spectator in the box and an artist on the stage, yes, the whole theater orchestra, including the conductor, is made up of him.
  5. ↑ cf. IMDb
  6. ↑ Biography at LookingforMabel
  7. ^ Grave place: Eventide, Lot 1247, grave no. 3, cf. Christina Dunigan at findagrave.com
personal data
SURNAME Lessley, Elgin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cameraman of the silent movie era
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Higby , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1944
Place of death los Angeles