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THERE IS A general familiarity with the wave of American cinematographers who came over to the United Kingdom in the Thirties. When Ray Rennahan, ASC, was shooting Europe's first three-strip Technicolor feature, Wings of the Morning; when Harry Stradling, ASC, was working with Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat on Knight without Armor; when Phil Tannura, ASC was working for Alexander Korda and Gaumont-British.
However there was an earlier invasion of Britain by American cinematographers which began, to all intents and purposes, in 1919, when Famous Players-Lasky decided to establish a British film studio on Poole Street in the London borough of Islington. The first two productions. The Call of Youth and The Great Day, were both shot in 1910 by Hal Young. Nine further features were filmed at Islington, virtually all with American cinematographers, before the studio was closed in 1914.
Roy Overbaugh, ASC, photographed two of those Famous Players-Lasky British features - Perpetua and The Spanish Jade, both released in 1912. - before being brought back to the states by the company. Overbaugh returned to England in the late Twenties to photograph Harry Lauder in Hunting Tower ( 1918) and Jack Buchanan in Confetti ( 1927). His most important work at this time, however, was with producer-director Herbert Wilcox, for whom he photographed Dorothy Gish in three 192.8 starring vehicles, Madame Pompadour, Nell Gwyn and Tip Toes (which also stars Will Rogers). The films were highly regarded in their day - indeed Nell Gwyn is still considered one of Dorothy Gish's best films - and received a wide American release (something unusual for British features in the Twenties). Much of the credit for their success belongs, as critic Iris Barry noted at the time, to the "able American cameraman."
Another American cinematographer working for Famous Players-Lasky at Islington was Arthur Miller, ASC, who photographed Three Live Ghosts and The Man from Home - both released in 1911- for director George Fitzmaurice. Miller utilized a concealed camera to film candid scenes for the former on London streets. Here, for the first time, Miller met Alfred Hitchcock, who worked as a prop boy at the Islington studios. Hitchcock did not make a very good impression on Miller, but it was script girl Alma Reville of...