Andrew Laszlo A.S.C. Hungarian:
László András was a
Hungarian-American cinematographer best known for his work on the cult film classic
The Warriors . He earned
Emmy nominations for
The Man Without a Country in 1973 and the 1980 TV miniseries
Shōgun in 1980.
(January 12, 1926 – October 7, 2011)
Early Life (1926-1941)
-
- "I never believed I was anybody special. I still don't think so, nor
did I ever believe that anyone would give a hoot hearing about who I
was, where I came from, what I did at various stages of my life, and
why. I am convinced the world would function equally well, or equally
badly, with or without me. - Andrew Laszlo, Footnote to History, 2002"
So begins a section of Andrew Laszlo's recount of his early years and
speaks modestly of the man who survived unimaginable atrocities during
that time and accomplished much in his later life.
He was born
László András in 1926 in the vicinity of
Pápa,
Hungary
the town where his family finally settled about the time that Andrew
was three years old. Until World War II began to affect life in Hungary,
his life was relatively carefree and was spent in relative comfort
although the family had to move several times into smaller or bigger
quarters depending on the financial circumstances of his father. He was
close to his older brother, Alex, with whom he often dreamed up exciting
adventures sometimes leading to catastrophy.
Of his many early experiences, one that served as a prelude to later tragedies, was seeing the
Graf Zeppelin fly over Papa. Inquiring about the symbol painted on the tail of the airship, Andrew's father said that it was a
swastika. That is all he wanted to tell his young son at the time.
Andrew was an avid swimmer and skater during his early school years
and became accomplished at fencing in High School. It was also during
this time that his interest in photography began and led later to a
small business printing photos for his fellow classmates.
In the late 1930s, Andrew's father, Leslie (Hungarian: Laci), was
called up to serve in the Hungarian Army. This effectively ruined his
business, forcing Andrew to learn the fine art of lampshade manufacture
to help support the family. This was a successful undertaking even
though Andrew was still a full time High School student. Then, as for
everyone else, World War II turned everything up-side-down.
The War Years (1941-1947)
In June 1941, the Hungarian city of Kassa (today
Košice in
Slovakia) was
bombed
by air. Although several theories are still debated about the real
perpetrators, the Hungarian government used the incident as the reason
for declaring war on Russia. From then on, Hungary was irreversibly tied
to the Axis powers and Germany/Hitler in particular. Anti-semitism that
had been simmering for years now came to the fore in Hungary. In 1944, a
part of Papa was turned into a Ghetto and all Jews were forced to move
there, including the Laszlo family. In early June, Andrew was forced to
join a Labor Camp and was taken there in a railroad cattle car. On June
29, his family (excepting his brother, Alex) was taken from Papa and
sent to
Auschwitz. Andrew was then taken to another labor camp in what is now
Romania
and put to work laying railroad track. After one more move to another
camp, Andrew received a final postcard from his brother, Alex.
Following an air raid on the labor camp, Andrew deserted and found
his way to Budapest. After a short stay in City Park (Hungarian:
Varosliget) he and hundreds of others were herded onto boxcars and sent
to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. This was the winter of 1944.
Here, he survived for months in an atmosphere of cold, starvation,
beatings, outright murder, lice infestation and constant reminders of
death. Near his 19th birthday, he spotted his Aunt Alice in the camp.
She perished there not much later.
In March 1945, with the pressure on the Germans in Norway increasing, Andrew was shipped to the concentration camp at
Theresienstadt. Here, like thousands of others, he came down with
typhoid fever.
It was here that he was reunited with his father, someone he thought of
as long dead. Finally, on May 8, 1945, Theresienstadt was liberated by
the Russians. As part of returning to humanity, Andrew found a piano at
the camp and asked his fellow Hungarian pianist,
George Feyer to play for the liberators and the liberated.
On his return to Papa, he found the town to be a much different
place, including it being run by the Russian Army. Being
entrepreneurial, he restarted his photography business with the Russian
soldiers being great customers. After taking the final exam, Andrew got
his High School diploma and then moved to Budapest where a job at the
Hungarian Film Bureau was waiting for him. Unfortunately, this job was
not very exciting and paid little. Andrew realized that it would take
years for the Hungarian movie business to return to its former self and
did not want to wait that long. So, he went back to Papa and began to
plan for his immigration to the United States at the urging of his
uncle, George Laszlo, who was already living in New York and was willing
to sponsor him. He found his way to New York by way of
Ulm,
Germany, where he survived by selling American cigarettes (sent to him
by Uncle George) to the locals. After a brief but obligatory stop in
Frankfurt, Andrew was given the right to enter the United States. He did
so on January 17, 1947 by walking down the gangplank of the SS
Ernie Pyle after it had docked on the west side of Manhattan. He had turned 21 just five days earlier.
Life and Career in the United States (1947-1996)
On arrival, Andrew was taken under the wings of his Uncle, George
Laszlo, who was a painter, inventor and lithographer already living in
New York City. Andrew quickly adjusted to life in Manhattan. As he
stated in his own words for the documentary
Cinematographer Style:
-
- "My main objective was to keep my head above water, work and have
enough money to live, learn the language, the faster the better, because
that was the most essential element in getting work. Most importantly, I
was trying to get work that was in some ways connected with
photography.
-
- For some time I worked in the laboratory of a company that printed
textiles and wallpaper with a photographic process. I worked in the
darkroom, as I put it, to keep my fingers in the developer. At one time,
I worked as a door-to-door baby photographer. I had a camera and a few
lights I could do the work with.
-
- Then the greatest break of my life came. I was the number one person
from New York City to be drafted by the army for the Korean War. I
wound up in the U.S. Army motion picture school, which was wonderful. We
not only had all the equipment, the school insisted we shoot 35mm
motion picture film, day-in and day-out, thousands of feet and, of
course, doing it is the greatest way to learn.
-
- When I came out of the army it was a little bit rough. I was a young
fellow, trying to enter the industry, which was very difficult because I
had no track record. I tried absolutely everything to get work. In
fact, I resorted to gags that nowadays I’m actually a bit self-conscious
to talk about. I was turned down by so many producers, even smalltime
ones; I couldn’t even get past secretaries. At one point, I sent out
hand-printed résumés on sandpaper just so they would remember it. I sent
out résumés on shirt cardboard so they couldn’t crumple it up and toss
it in the wastebasket. The breaks finally came. I took any job offered
to me, as long as I had a chance to be behind a camera, do some
lighting, experiment with lenses and so on. Then better jobs were
offered and that is how I got started. As I said earlier, the important
thing is to stick with it."
Shortly before his discharge from the
US Army Signal Corps,
Andrew married his New York-born sweethart, Ann Granger. Soon, the
family grew to three with the arrival of his first son, also named
Andrew. With perseverance, he landed a job as a camera operator on
The Phil Silvers Show. This was followed by a number of other TV shows, including
Naked City
where he served as the Director of Photography. With greater
opportunities came the necessity to work on locations around the world.
Resisting the temptation to move to Hollywood, Andrew settled with his
family in the suburbs of New York where three more children (Jim,
Jeffrey and Elizabeth) arrived in quick succession.
Andrew started to work with TV personality
Ed Sullivan
in 1953 and filmed programs in Portugal, Alaska and Ireland. In 1959,
Ed 'kidnapped' Andrew to Havana, Cuba under the pretense that they would
be filming a segment in the Dominican Republic. Ed's real goal was to
do an interview with
Fidel Castro who had just overthrown the
Batista
government. Ed, unfortunately, did not realize that the electrical
system in Cuba would not support the camera equipment and lighting
normally used in the United States. This created enormous technical
issues for the crew with the possibility that the equipment could cause a
blackout in the entire neighborhood. Somehow, the footage turned out OK
if only passably so.
In 1962, Andrew was offered his first feature film,
One Potato, Two Potato, a controversial film about the interracial marriage of a black man and white divorcee. In 1966, he filmed
Francis Ford Coppola's You're A Big Boy Now, with
Geraldine Page receiving an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. This was followed in 1968 by
The Night They Raided Minsky's, a big-budget musical marred by the mid-production death of
Bert Lahr.
On August 15, 1965,
The Beatles were scheduled to give a concert at
Shea Stadium in New York City. Andrew took on this
Ed Sullivan
production with trepidation and excitement since it would be the first
extremely large rock concert to be filmed for television. Even with
careful preparation, the film crew was not prepared for the piercing
screams of an audience made up of 56,000 teenagers. The sound system was
completely overwhelmed, making it necessary to dub much of the song
tracks in postproduction. Nevertheless, and using 14 cameras scattered
through the place, the crew managed to film not just the Beatles but
much of the audience in the stands and the security detail that was
hoping that a major stampede would not break out. When all was said and
done, the crew had recorded over 200,000 feet of film of which only
10,800 made it into the finished documentary. As a long-lasting effect,
Andrew's hearing was never to be normal again.
In 1979, he filmed the
Walter Hill cult film
The Warriors.
This movie gave Andrew the opportunity to devise several cinematic
techniques, including the innovative lighting used for subway car
interior shots. Musing in his 2000 book "Every Frame a Rembrandt,"
[2] he says:
-
- "If made today, The Warriors would probably be an altogether
different movie. The availability of fast and more sensitive, more
forgiving negative and positive film stocks, faster lenses in all focal
ranges, smaller, more powerful lights, electronic postproduction - all
would add up to different photographic techniques, which would negate
the need for the same ingenuity in dealing with the difficulties of
cinematography in 1978."
Movie buffs may get the chance to see if Andrew was right, when the remake of The Warriors comes out sometime in 2012.
Returning to television, Andrew was the cinematographer on the 1980 five-part NBC miniseries
Shōgun starring
Richard Chamberlain.
Filmed entirely on location in Japan, the production had many
difficulties including the challenge of conversation with and direction
to actors and extras who spoke no English. An unfortunate but funny
anecdote often retold by Andrew was the premature kickoff of a fierce
action sequence in Osaka harbor including guns blazing, extras jumping
into the water, bombs exploding and boats sinking everywhere.
Unfortunately, the cameras were not rolling. The whole scene had to be
reshot at great cost of time and money. The details of this incident are
recalled in Adrew's book "It's a Wrap."
[3]
His last feature film
Newsies, filmed in 1991, was about a newspaper delivery-boy's strike that took place in 1899. The film starred
Christian Bale and
Robert Duvall. Although the movie was a box-office flop, it gained a cult following and was turned into a stage musical at the
Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. It will move to Broadway for a limited run from March to June, 2012.
With Newsies in the can, Andrew decide that it was time to change his
focus from TV and film production to teaching, fly-fishing, and
woodworking.
The Later Years (1996-2011)
With the movie business behind him, Andrew spent his time giving
lectures to film students throughout the United States. This gave him
the opportunity to write two books about the art and science of
cinematography.
[2][3] With a knack for storytelling and a great imagination, Andrew wrote and published several works of fiction. The Rat Catcher
[4] was published in 2004. A Fight of No Consequence
[5]
appeared in 2006 and concerns an ex-fighter trying for a comeback. His
experiences in Japan while filming Shogun, let to the writing of the
fictional book Banjin"
[6]
When not lecturing or writing, Andrew used his time on various wood-
and metal-working projects. When visiting his ranch in Montana, he often
took advantage of the first-class fly-fishing streams and rivers in the
area. Above all else, he enjoyed spending time with his wife, children
and grandchildren. After a sudden illness diagnosed mid-year, he died at
his home on October 7, 2011 in
Montana, age 85.
Feature Motion Pictures
Note: In some cases the Year represents the date of creation, not release.
Television Programs
Note: In some cases the Year represents the date of production, not airing.
Miniseries
Series
- Coronet Blue
- The Doctors and Nurses
- The Nurses
- Naked City
- Brenner (CBS)
- Mama (CBS)
- Joe and Mabel (CBS)
- The Phil Silvers Show (CBS)
Documentaries
- The Twentiety Century (CBS)
- High Adventure with Lowell Thomas (NBC)
Specials
- The Beatles at Shea Stadium (ABC)
- Ed Sullivan, Vietnam Veterans Easter Special (CBS)
- Ed Sullivan in Cuba (CBS)
- Ed Sullivan in Ireland (CBS)
- Ed Sullivan in Alaska (CBS)
- Ed Sullivan in Porugal (CBS)
Features and Pilots
- Thin Ice (1980)
- Spanner's Key (1978)
- The Unwanted (1974)
- The Man Without a Country (1972)
- Blue Water Gold (1969)
- Teacher, Teacher (1967)
- Daphne (1966)
- The Cliffdwellers (1965)
- The Happeners (1965)
To see more of who died in 2011
click here