Harry Waxman

Harry Waxman (April 3, 1912 - December 24, 1984)

His imdb page.

Allan Brown's book has many references to him. Instead of copying them, and risking copyright violations, I have tried to summarize them and left the pages that they came from in the Apple e-book.

Excerpts From: Allan Brown. “Inside the Wicker Man.” Apple Books.

p 201 “Apart from certain frictions involving Britt Ekland, which we will come to later, the only real example of fisticuffs, verbal if not physical, was between Robin Hardy and Harry Waxman, the director of photography,”

p 202 - 204 Edward Woodward: He lost his temper alot. (Brown: Had worked on two other Anthony Shaffer scripts before this.)

Robin: Was on the picture only for the green screen shot needed at the end. "I can't say I enjoyed working with him." "I tried to fie him twice." He did light Willow's dance beautifully."

p 258 “Film Finance insisted on Harry Waxman’s involvement in the film.”

"p 267 "Seamus Flannery: We were standing around discussing this when suddenly the clouds parted. One of the camera operators just grabbed his camera, sprinted down there, got the shot set up and got it, this amazing sequence which everybody remembers. Robin Hardy had nothing to do with it.”

reviews

p 357 “David McGillivray in the British Film Institute’s Monthly Film Bulletin ”
“it is dressed up to the nines by cameraman Harry Waxman."

p 689 “Variety, 15 MAY 1974”
“Technical credits are particularly notable, especially Harry Waxman’s colour photography and art direction by Seamus Flannery. ”

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Burnt Offering
Robin had worked with him before. Harry almost left 2 or 3 times. (Lots more in this clip. This link is cued up to where they talk about him.)

Cinefantastique
The film's tiny island of Summerisle is actually a series of 25 different locations, most of them on the Scottish mainland, spanning a distance, north to south, of nearly 190 miles. The difference in terrain, and of course, weather conditions made the task of cinematographer Harry Waxman to match shots quite arduous.

Mark Kermode asked about Waxman:
Robin: Waxman didn't like the script (“wasn’t really particularly in sympathy with the script.”). Hardy had put in all these little clues. Waxman didn’t think people wouldn’t understand that.
…
Edward Woodward: Waxman was a curmudgeon. He was always angry.
Christopher Lee: I only saw him laugh once.
EW: His attitude was what do you know, Robin?
RH: Great lighting of willow''s dance

Production notes (from Abraxas 1979 press folder, DNS)
The difference in terrain and weather conditions made the job of Cinematographer Harry Waxman an arduous one. Matching shots was difficult, but master-of-his-craft Waxman was up to it.

A blog by Paul Rowlands, Money Into Light

Harry was an Orthodox Jew and thought some aspects of the film might be blashemous and might offend Christians. (That turned out to not the case in the South of the US...)

more imdb trivia
“Cinematographer Harry Waxman was not director Robin Hardy's choice and was forced upon the production by British Lion.The reason was that the executive producers were concerned they would not be able to get the important final shot of the Wicker Man collapsing down in front of the setting sun and that it would have to be shot using the green screen projection process in the studio. At that time, Waxman was the most experienced cameraman in the UK with this format (having used it on: Quatermass and The Pit and The Day the Earth Caught Fire), and was brought in as insurance. Robin Hardy was very unhappy about not being able to choose his own DoP (and didn't like Waxman personally) and as a result the two men did not get on and clashed frequently during shooting.”

A bulletin board where he is mentioned:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/the-wicker-man-1973-t3046.html
Bill Warren wrote:,
Mark Kermode goes deeper than anyone has ever gone before into the myths of The Wicker Man, Film4.com)

Kermode speaking as far as I can tell: Hardy was alarmed by cinematographer Harry Waxman's problems with the script ("He kept asking 'what are we shooting this for?'")