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)
 
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