Robert De Grasse

Coming from a show-business family (his brother Joseph De Grasse was a director and his uncle Sam De Grasse was an actor), De Grasse entered the business as an assistant cameraman while still a high school student, and showed such promise that he was made a full-time cinematographer by age 21. He shot many silent pictures, mostly low-budget action films. When sound films arrived De Grasse went back to being a camera operator - apparently his own idea - but by the mid-'30s he was again a cinematographer, and photographed many of RKO's more prominent films.