![]() ![]() After these films, Toland became the highest-paid cinematographer in Hollywood he also had supervision over sets, costumes, etc. Selznick's “Intermezzo.” Describes Toland's work on Wyler's “The Little Foxes,” with Bette Davis. Ralph Hoge described how he coaxed a performance out of Ingrid Berman for David O. Toland's technique, which changed filmmaking forever, became known as “deep focus.” For all his bravado, Toland had a soft touch on movie sets. He wrote in American Cinematographer that he and Welles felt that the film should be “brought to the screen in such a way that the audience would feel it was looking at reality…” They also wanted the camera to reproduce the way we perceive space-with both foreground and background objects in focus. In 1939, he earned his first Oscar for his work on Wyler's “Wuthering Heights.” His next project was Orson Welles's “Citizen Kane.” Toland's aesthetic contribution to the film was critical. Toland's first solo credit was for the 1931 musical comedy “Palmy Days.” In the mid-1930s, Toland, who had already been married and divorced, married Helene Barclay, an actress. Goldwyn first became aware of Toland when a dialogue coach named Laura Hope Crews observed him at work in 1929. This was among the first of Toland's many technical innovations. In 1929, Toland devised a tool that silenced a movie camera's grind-a big problem for talking pictures. Mentions cinematographer Stanley Cortez and film scholar Roger Dale Wallace. Not long after Toland became his assistant, Barnes was hired by Goldwyn. In 1926, he went to work for the pioneering cinematographer George Barnes. He moved on to become an assistant cameraman. By the time he was 15, Toland was working as an office boy at William Fox Studios. In 1910, his parents divorced, and he and his mother went to live in L.A. A wispy, laconic man of five feet one, Toland was born in Charleston, Illinois. ![]() And he insisted that photography should serve the narrative. ![]() He also developed the first lighting cues that could accurately imitate candlelight. By the mid-1930s, when Toland began producing his most resonant work, he was shooting actors with an impressionistic flair-filming them from below or positioning them in front of mirrors. Before Toland, most Hollywood fare had actors shot straight on, sitting or moving through naturalistic sets. Cinematographer Harris Savides said of “Intermezzo” (1939), which Toland filmed, “It's one of the most beautiful movies ever shot.” Many of the techniques that Toland helped pioneer have since become standard practice. “He thought like a cutter,” the director Steven Soderbergh said. Toland, by the time of his death, in 1948, at the age of 44, had filmed 67 features, ranging from “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) to “Song of the South” (1946), and he remains essential to the grammar of filmmaking. Like many other directors of the era, Wyler regarded cinematographers as little more than glorified mechanics. For his first Goldwyn picture, “These Three,” Wyler was paired with a cinematographer he'd never worked with before, the 32-year-old Gregg Toland. ![]() In 1936, an ambitious young director, William Wyler, joined forces with producer Samuel Goldwyn. ANNALS OF HOLLYWOOD about pioneer cinematographer Gregg Toland. ![]()
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