page_title: Edward Cronjager
section_title: The silent film years
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Cronjager / Career / The silent film years
caption_attribution_description: English: Publicity photo of Edward Cronjager operating a hand-grind camera of the 1920s Other information http://mediahistoryproject.org/faq/#copyright for an explanation of the copyright http://mediahistoryproject.org/about-2/ for information regarding public domain
context_page_description: Edward Cronjager was an American cinematographer, whose career spanned from the silent era through the 1950s. He came from a family of cinematographers, with his father, uncle, and brother all working in the film industry behind the camera. His work covered over 100 films, and included projects on the small screen towards the end of his career. He filmed in both black and white and color mediums, and his work received nominations for seven Academy Awards over the span of three decades, although he never won the statue.
  He was the preferred director of photography of early film star Richard Dix, and served on several Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences committees, as well as being selected by the American Society of Cinematographers to test new types of film stock. Cronjager pioneered several new techniques and types of cinematography, developing new camera angles in the 1920s, working on one of the earliest film noirs in the 1940s, and using CinemaScope in underwater photography in the 1950s.
context_section_description: One of Cronjager's first efforts behind the lens was at the age of 19, filming the heavyweight championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Luis Ángel Firpo in 1923. He began his career in the film industry in 1925 with the Famous Players-Lasky film corporation (later Paramount Pictures), where he remained until 1930.  His first project was the silent film, Womanhandled, starring Richard Dix, which would be shot at Lasky's Long Island, New York studio, where Cronjager worked until being transferred to Lasky's west coast operation in 1927.  The Film Daily called his work on the picture "very good". During the next four years he photographed fifteen silent films, of which twelve starred Dix, and he shot almost every one of the twenty-nine pictures Dix made between 1927 and 1933. In addition, in 1927 Cronjager joined the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
  By the end of 1928 he was credited with developing several new camera angles. Cronjager was lauded by industry magazines such as Variety for his inventive camera work in 1928's Warming Up, which added realism to the efforts of Dix as a baseball pitcher. In September 1928 Cronjager became involved in a minor controversy. The film industry was becoming unionized, and Cronjager was resistant to joining. When Dix insisted Cronjager photograph his next film, Moran of the Marines, the union threatened to strike if the cinematographer was hired without becoming a union member. Cronjager joined the union at the request of the studio, averting the threatened union action. Throughout his career, Dix attempted to have Cronjager as the cinematographer on his films.
caption: Cronjager operating a hand-grind camera of the 1920s
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