A CAMERA MAN FROM CHINA

Southland Times, Issue 23335, 20 October 1937, Page 8

A CAMERA MAN FROM CHINA

PLANS FOR EASTERN FILMS James Wong Howe, the only Chinese camera man in the film _ industry in Hollywood, is nursing the idea of making a motion picture of his native country, and possibly thereby arousing a national consciousness that may weld China’s 500,000,000 people into a mighty, unified world power. The Nanking Government recently offered' to back him in such an undertaking, says Howe. The undertaking is one that Howe says he has always wanted to work on. He had expected to do the camera work on “The Good Earth.” When this assignment did not materialize for him, he made up his mind to be his own producer and director, and to record in film the lives of the millions of Chinese who dwell in sampans on the rivers of China, poling their fish-laden craft from village to village. He had hoped to be about this project at the close of work on “The Prisoner of Zenda,” but other commitments, both in Hollywood and in England, will keep him occupied for another year, after which he hopes to lead his own camera crew on location in China. TRAINING IN AMERICA

Howe was born in China as Wong Tung Jim, later to be revised by a teacher with a passion for Anglicization. He was brought to America as a child by his father and received the conventional American education, profiting by it to such an extent that he became a top-notch lightweight boxer. Jimmy Howe received his early camera training under De Mille, starting as a camera carrier and ending as a chief. Some of his more important pictures were “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” and “Laugh, Clown, Laugh,” in the silent era, and “The Thin Man” and “Fire Over England,” made for London Film in sound. .

Aside from his photographic accomplishments, Howe has contributed several technical advances in camera construction. His first, and possibly most important, was the counter, to determine accurately the number of feet of film exposed. He did this in the silent days, and it won him his promotion from assistant to chief cameraman. Howe’s second invention solved the problem of silencing the camera without turning it into a leviathan. He cased the motor alone and thus cut down a great deal of the hum; at the same time he changed the type of gears and sprockets with further quieting effect.