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by David E. Williams
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“Cinematographer,” “innovator” and “teacher” are all titles that can be used to describe Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC, who throughout his career has not only excelled at his craft but also chosen to share what he has learned with his peers. It is therefore fitting that Hirschfeld recently received the ASC Presidents Award, an honor reserved for individuals who have made exceptional contributions to advancing the art and craft of filmmaking. “Jerry is the consummate professional,” says Owen Roizman, ASC, whose father, Sol, worked as Hirschfeld’s operator, and who later gained his first experience with them as a camera assistant. “Jerry was a perfectionist and relentless on the set. I learned a lot from him.”When Roizman, a member of the ASC Awards Committee, informed Hirschfeld of the Society honor, “I couldn’t believe I’d heard correctly,” recalls Hirschfeld. “I deeply appreciate the honor, and I also appreciate everything the ASC has done for me through the years.” And it has been many years — Hirschfeld is today the ASC’s most senior member, having joined in 1951.During his long career, Hirschfeld compiled more than 40 feature-film credits, including Fail-Safe (1964); The Incident (1967); Goodbye, Columbus (1969); Diary of a Mad Housewife (1969); Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970); Young Frankenstein (1974); Two-Minute Warning (1976); Neighbors (1981); My Favorite Year (1982), and To Be or Not To Be (1983). Also important is his pioneering work in commercials, an art form that was in part perfected by his partnership in MPO Videotronics, which was the world’s largest commercials-production house in the 1950s and ’60s. An incubator for new talents, the company nurtured many cinematographers, including future ASC members Roizman, Gordon Willis and Victor J. Kemper.Hirschfeld also spent time as a filmmaker in residence at the International Film & Television Workshops in Maine, and authored the popular textbook Image Control: Motion Picture and Video Camera Filters and Lab Techniques. His other writings include numerous articles for American Cinematographer detailing what he had learned on his latest productions and highlighting new equipment and techniques.Born and raised in New York City, Hirschfeld was an avid moviegoer as a boy and developed an early interest in photography. “My sister gave me a home developing kit, so I started making my own pictures,” he says. With her help, he later began working as an assistant to a still photographer in the fashion industry, all the while continuing to teach himself everything he could about his profession. “There were no film schools in those days, so I was always looking for new books, new information. I was pretty much self-taught. By going to the movies, I gradually learned the photographic styles of all the top Hollywood cameramen, and I could walk into a picture that was halfway over and immediately know who’d shot it. At the time, cinematographers each had very distinctive styles that rarely changed from picture to picture.”In early 1942, at the age of 19, Hirschfeld enlisted in the Army. The technically minded recruit was originally selected to serve in a radar-surveillance unit, but was later transferred to the Signal Corps Photographic Center in Long Island City, New York. There he learned the craft of cinematography while working on training films and short entertainment movies for the troops, serving alongside ASC members Leo Tover and Stanley Cortez. “I’d never seen a motion-picture camera before, but I knew processing, composition, exposure and lighting,” he says. “I entered the service as a still photographer and came out a cinematographer.”Tover became Hirschfeld’s mentor. “I started out carrying batteries and keeping the camera reports as a second assistant,” he says. “Then, after working for Leo on a few pictures, I became a camera operator. I think he appreciated the fact that I really cared — I practiced operating every moment I could.“On one picture, we were shooting a day exterior with a big white church that had tall green trees in the background. It was very contrasty, so I suggested we reduce that contrast to balance the scene. Leo smiled and said, ‘How would you do that?’ I explained that we could use ND filters and open up the lens. He’d never heard of that, but we tried it and it worked. Leo was impressed. Working in New York, we had limited equipment and resources and had to improvise a lot of stuff. We couldn’t repaint a building to balance a shot like they might in Hollywood; we had to figure out how to do it in the camera.”During the war, Hirschfeld went on assignment to Hollywood and Okinawa. After his discharge, he continued to do work for the Signal Corps while shooting freelance commercials. “It was funny, but after I got out of the Army I actually had to get a draft lottery number,” he remembers. “I’d never had one!”Hirschfeld earned his first feature credit with the low-budget crime film C-Man (1949), directed by Joseph Lerner and shot in just 11 days. He and Lerner re-teamed for the equally hard-boiled Guilty Bystander (1950). “And I never looked back,” says Hirschfeld, whose credits soon included the influential documentary With These Hands (1950) and the children’s TV series Johnny Jupiter (1953).In 1955, it seemed Hirschfeld’s career was about to change dramatically, as he was offered the opportunity to shoot 12 Angry Men for Sidney Lumet. “It was the week before the Academy Awards, but then Boris Kaufman [ASC] won the Oscar for On the Waterfront, and the powers-that-be on 12 Angry Men asked, ‘Why are we hiring Gerald Hirschfeld when we can hire the Academy Award winner?’ It so upset me that I said, ‘To hell with features.’”Disappointed, Hirschfeld concentrated on commercials. “I started working at MPO Videotronics as a freelancer, and they liked my work. It was a great training ground because we encountered so many varied situations. We had limited equipment and were often working in available light. I was soon the busiest freelance cameraman in New York City. After a while, I was written into the contract that the ad agencies turned over to producers. They said, ‘If you win the bid on this, we want you to use Jerry Hirschfeld.’”Part of Hirschfeld’s success was due to his desire to fully master his craft. “In those days, you had to understand how film images translated to TV. I was an avid reader of the SMPTE Journal and technical books. I learned that because of the exposure system being used, the lightest-toned object recorded on a frame of film would become the white reference on television; if the actor’s face was the lightest object in the frame, it would end up looking like chalk. Knowing that, I always put something lighter in the scene to serve as the white reference. I also knew TV images didn’t dig into the shadows like film did, so I lit accordingly.” MPO soon made Hirschfeld a vice president. “We built six soundstages in the middle of Manhattan in the middle of the ad agencies,” he recalls. “We had probably a dozen full-time camera crews and the best film facility in which to explore new techniques.” Hirschfeld’s crew often included operator Sol Roizman, who soon got son Owen some freelance assistant work at MPO. However, after observing the younger Roizman on the job, Hirschfeld wasn’t convinced he had the stuff. “Jerry kicked me out of the company and forbade me to work there until I got more experience,” recalls Roizman. “So I did, and I credit Jerry with inspiring me to work harder and do better.”In 1963, Lumet hired Hirschfeld to shoot Fail-Safe, which details the chilling scenario of a wayward B-52 bomber accidentally ordered to bomb Moscow, and the attempts of the U.S. president (Henry Fonda) to prevent a nuclear Armageddon. Hirschfeld wrote about the experience in the August 1963 issue of AC: “The story demanded a stark photographic approach. After much thought, I decided all the feature characters should be filmed in extreme low-key light but the sets should be photographed normally. An example is a scene in which the president is in his bomb shelter; the room is lighted relatively bright but he and his translator appear in semi-silhouette.” He noted that he believed Fail-Safe marked the “first time a feature film was photographed without the use of a single fill light on a face.”
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