Linwood G. Dunn, ASC

Linwood G. Dunn, ASC, a master cinematographer in the realm of special visual effects, died on May 20 1999 at the age of 94 at the Providence-St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. It would be difficult to overstate Dunn’s influence on the art and technology of motion pictures during an active career which spanned 74 years.

Born in Brooklyn on December 27, 1904, and raised in Flatbush, Dunn worked as a largely self-trained dance-band musician during his high school years. In 1923 he also became a projectionist for the American Motion Picture Corp. in New York. His uncle was Spencer Gordon Bennet, who began as a serial stunt man for Pathé serials in New York and soon became a leading serial director. In 1925 Bennet hired Dunn as assistant cameraman on the celebrated film The Green Archer. The following year, when Pathé moved its serial unit to the Fine Arts Studio in Hollywood, Dunn came along. He was assistant cameraman on four more serials before becoming second cameraman on Hawk of the Hills in 1927. Working alongside the first cameraman, he photographed the negatives used for printing foreign versions. He also did aerial photography, split-screen shots, composites and lap-dissolves. Dunn was designated a first cameraman (director of photography) in 1929 on his 14th serial, Queen of the Northwoods.

After the serial wrapped, Pathé went into receivership, a corporate victim of the Great Depression. Demoting himself to operator, Dunn worked as a jazz musician between sporadic movie assignments. One day he received a call for a two-day job in the photographic effects department headed by Lloyd Knechtel, ASC at the new RKO Radio Studio. He stayed on, filming miniature shots and some of the earliest projection process scenes. He built a pioneering zoom lens which, to everyone’s amazement, worked perfectly. Using a home-made optical printer, consisting of a Mitchell camera and a projector in a lathe bed, he made his first matte shots for Ringside (1929). Optical effects soon became his major interest, and he began working on ways to improve the art. He soon headed his own optical effects department and eventually became head of the photographic effects department.

His "temporary job" lasted until RKO ceased operations 28 years later. In the meantime he created effects for most of the company’s pictures, including many classics: Flying Down to Rio and most of the subsequent Astaire and Rogers musicals, King Kong, The Lost Squadron, Ace of Aces, The Son of Kong, She, The Last Days of Pompeii, Bringing Up Baby, Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Citizen Kane, Cat People and The Thing.

In 1942, the Eastman Kodak Company approached Dunn about a need in the U.S. Armed Forces Photographic Units for special effects optical printers. Printers at the studios were homemade rigs, but they had never been manufactured as a commercial product. The government commissioned Dunn to produce such a printer. With his longtime associate Cecil Love, Dunn designed the device, which was manufactured by the Acme Tool and Manufacturing Co. of Burbank. After the war, the equipment was made available to studios and independent effects labs.

In 1944, Dunn and Love received an Academy Technical Achievement Award for "the design and construction of the Acme-Dunn Optical Printer." Thirty-seven years later, the Academy upgraded the award to an Oscar for "basic achievements which have a definite influence upon the advancement of the industry." The Academy honored Dunn with a Special Academy Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication in 1979, and the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for Highest Technical Achievement in 1985. His activities with the Academy included a stints as a member of Board of Governors (1976-82), as chairman of the Cinematography Executive Committee and of the Special Effects Award Committee (1977-79) and as a member of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee and Grants Committee.

When RKO ceased production in 1957, Dunn leased the special effects facilities, merging the operation with Film Effects of Hollywood, a facility he had founded in 1946. The company made increasingly sophisticated visual effects for such pictures as West Side Story; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; A Place to Stand, My Fair Lady, The Great Race, Hawaii, The Bible, Darling Lili, Airport and The Shape of Things to Come. The company worked extensively in 70mm formats such as Todd-AO, Imax, Omnimax and Ultra-Panavision. In the television field, Film Effects’ credits include Star Trek, Project UFO, Wonder Woman and the acclaimed ABC Special Ray Bradbury’s Infinite Horizons.
 

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