Arthur Edeson

Arthur Edeson is an American cinematographer who was a pioneer of his craft. His career spanned four decades and encompassed many films now regarded as classics. Born in New York in 1891, Edeson first worked as a still photographer. In 1911 he entered the movie business at Eclair Studios, a production unit based in Fort Lee, NJ. There he was employed as an extra and still photographer. He became a cinematographer in 1914 and worked on films starring Clara Kimball Young, a very popular actress of that era whose films are, for the most part, lost. In 1917 Young left New Jersey for California, and so did Edeson. In 1919 he was one of the 15 cameramen who founded the American Society of Cinematographers. During the 1920s he was hired by actor-producer Douglas Fairbanks for The Three Musketeers (1921) ('Fred Niblo'). Robin Hood (1922) (Allan Dwan) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924) (Raoul Walsh). That last film launched a long relationship between Edeson and Walsh. In 1925 Edeson worked on The Lost World (1925)) (Harry O. Hoyt), the first full-length feature film using the stop-motion animation technique. In 1929 he was cinematographer on In Old Arizona (1928) (Irving Cummings), the first talking picture shot entirely outdoors. Edeson was also one of the first to experiment with the widescreen format on Walsh's The Big Trail (1930). During that period he also worked with Lewis Milestone on the anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Soon afterward he collaborated with James Whale on two technically groundbreaking films: Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). In 1936 Edeson was hired at Warner Bros. There he worked notably on the first film directed by John Huston, the classic noir The Maltese Falcon (1941), and re-teamed with Huston on the lesser known Across the Pacific (1942). He was also lenser on the perennial favorite Casablanca (1942) (Michael Curtiz) and later worked with Jean Negulesco, notably on The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and Three Strangers (1946). Edeson retired in 1949, putting an end to a distinguished career. He died in California in 1970.