Interview of Norman Langley

Okay Norm tell me a bit about yourself, when were you born and where were you born?

I was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts 1943. Mm, my parents were, [Pause] my mother was raised in Lowell Massachusetts until the age of probably twenty, twenty-one and then she came down to Boston to start working. My father was from right in Roxbury, worked at The Christian Science Museum, mm, Building, he was a window washer and maintenance man. My mother had a day care nursery for over forty-five years in the Boston area and was still going strong in Seventy-one, Seventy-two, and she was very happy, even though the kids, the children that she took care of now, you know, are not as big a group, she was probably down to two or three but she always liked to stay in touch with the children and you couldn’t go anywhere in Roxbury or anywhere in the surrounding Massachusetts area without somebody beeping a horn at Mrs. Langley because so many of the children and children’s children had gone to her nursery school.

Mm. So did she run the nursery school at, at your house, in your home?

Yes she did, on the bottom floor.

So there was kids around, as you were growing up there were kids around?

Absolutely, yes.

That’s fine. Okay, okay. And brothers and sisters?

Yes. My brother was a graduate of Boston Technical High School and he was an electronics engineer in the Navy. He got out of the Navy and worked for Raytheon and then his final, mm, job was with the telephone company. My sister, mm, was a graduate of I think The Jeremiah Burke High School and was in banking, she was a vice-president at First Boston Bank.

Are these older brothers and sister?

They’re older, I’m the baby.

Oh yes.

I’m the baby.

So what, what’s the age difference between you and, and them?

Eight years difference from my brother and six years from my sister.

That’s quite, that’s quite a bit?

It is.

It is isn’t it?

It is.

Yes, yes.

Absolutely.

Mm. So, mm, now you went to school in Roxbury?

Roxbury.

Yes. Okay and what year was that, when did you start junior, is this junior school?

I went to elementary school.

Yes.

And, mm, that was David, mm, Dewar Wall Hall and junior high was, mm, Lewis Junior High School and I graduated from Boston Technical High School.

What year was that, do you remember?

1962.

1962. So you were always interested in the science side of things, technical side of things rather than the arts and humanities and..?.

Not at all I was, I was in a printing course.

Ah.

That was my major in high school and I ran Linotech machines and did all kinds of silk screen and things of that nature. Mm, but I didn’t discover photography until I was following my brother. My brother was in the Navy, electronics engineer, and I went into the Navy not knowing what to do.

Yes.

And I discovered photography after I’d gone on a Mediterranean cruise and come back.

Right, I remember you talking about this. Now so your brother, your older brother whose name is what?

Eddie.

Eddie.

Yes.

So Eddie went into the Navy well ahead of you then presumably?

Oh yes.

What year did he go into the Navy?

He was in the Navy, he was in the Navy 1959.

Okay.

Nineteen… no, probably 1957. Yes, about 1957 my brother was in the Navy.

Okay. So he would come home and he would tell you what a great time he was having and you formed the view that you’d like to go into the Navy as well?

I did, I did.

Yes.

Because he had gone to school for Electronics and had done very well.

Yes, yes.

And, mm, when he got out I went to, I joined the, joined the Navy as a reservist.

Ah. What year was that, do you remember?

Nineteen… that was 1960.

Right.

And I used to go with him to the reserve meetings for two years, we were weekend warriors.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And then when I graduated from high school in Sixty-two I joined the Navy and went from there.

Okay. And you, you followed your brother into exactly the same area or not?

I did not. I was, mm, I wasn’t, my brother was very, very smart. My sister was very smart and I was kind of a goof ball but, mm, I realized when I was in the Navy that I had to up the ante a little to get what I wanted so when it came time to, mm, get in photography and my battery scores weren’t high enough for me but I was able to get an, mm, exemption and get a couple of extra points that I needed to get into photographic school from the Navy for being a, mm, a good worker, a good sailor and things like that. And, mm, that’s, that’s how I got into photography.

Yes. So photography in the Navy?

In the Navy.

Right. So you joined the Navy to do what specifically? What was your rank and what was your...?

I started out working on the flight deck as an aviation boatswain's mate.

Okay.

And once I did a Med cruise I realized that I had, had no future as a, launching aircraft is what I did on the flight deck and everything else...

Yes, yes.

And there was no career for that for me because I didn’t enjoy that but it was a job that they put me in.

Yes, yes.

I didn’t select it. So I, I was talking to different people aboard ship and the photographers were guys that I always were in contact with and I started talking to them about how they got started and where, you know, what was their background, and then all of a sudden that’s what I did, I just applied for photographic school, base school in the Navy. And I, mm, procedural fact that I didn’t have enough points to get there so what I had to do was go through my command to get the additional points.

Yes, yes.

To be able to be accepted in photographic school.

Okay. And photographic school would have meant you leaving the aircraft carrier, going off elsewhere?

Yes.

And spending how much time?

I was down in, I went to, when I went to the, mm, Photo A School It was in Pensacola Florida and it was a twenty week course.

And not run by the Navy?

Yes, run by the Navy.

Oh.

Oh yes.

Okay, yes.

Navy School. And, mm, I had a lot of trouble because I didn’t have good study habits. I didn’t have, mm, good note taking. There were a lot of things I just had not, not really worked on when I was in school, I could always get by but I never put the extra effort. But now they were giving me information and things that I needed to know and I needed to be able to retain longer than just for a test or anything of that nature. So they after the first month I was called in to a review board and they told me that I had two options. I could, mm, go out, go back to the ship or I could repeat the whole first month of school, so that’s what I did. And they told me if I failed any of the tests I would have to go back to the fleet. So I went back and started the course all over again and then I just had to work diligently and extra hard, my weekends and everything else. And the twenty week, twenty week course took me twenty-four weeks but I’d finished and, mm, that was probably the best thing that happened to me, mm, and from that point on I never had any problem with tests.

Yes.

After that.

Okay. So, mm, in, in photography school you developed new sets of, not just photographic skills you were developing new sets of, of study skills, of, you know, ways of absorbing information and recording information, that, that kind of thing?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Did you feel that your school, when you’d been in high school had not, that not given you the necessary skills or had you, had your mind been elsewhere?

Mm, my mind was elsewhere, plus I hadn’t found what I wanted to do yet. So I was, mm, always searching for something and I didn’t understand why I was taking certain courses or doing this or doing that. Mm, once I got into the photography and now I understood how everything started to come into play and, mm, my interest was piqued, I could talk about photography night and day and the guys I went to school with that’s just what we did.

Yes, yes.

We were always talking about different processes and things we’d learned and why the picture looked this way and, and we, what results we got by shooting it, you know, under exposed, over exposed, and I mean it just was a mind opening experience for me. Because probably for the next, from 1964 when I’d finished ‘A’ School, Naval ‘A’ School, until I got into the motion picture business. I had done nothing but shoot still pictures and work over that well, six, seven year span in photography. And when I was discharged from the Navy I worked for a photographic lab in Washington DC.

Let’s, let’s, let’s stick with the Navy for the time, for the time being.

Okay.

And then we’ll go on to, we’ll go on to what happened when you, when you left the Navy.

Okay.

But, mm, what was the kind of photo assignments that you were doing when you were in the, in the Navy?

Ah after I graduated from ‘A’ School I was assigned to a mobile photo unit in Patuxent River, Maryland. And there they exposed me to portraiture photography, I did aerial photography, I did some motion picture photography, I did color photography and I also did, you know, damage reports and things of that nature, but it was a well rounded two years. And also I had to extend two years in order to get to go to photographic school.

Ah. To get the training you had to agree to stay on two more years?

I did a total four year hitch.

Yes.

Instead of two year, two year, two year.

Ah, okay I see. And so, mm, in, in that period you were photographing all kinds of still, still photo?

Mm, mm.

You were photoing all kinds of, you might be doing portraits?

Portraits.

Ah, interesting.

Mm, also, you know, doing...

And then going out into the field and doing damage?

Damage reports.

Yes.

And things of that nature.

Yes.

Also we would go down to Florida a couple of times a year and carrier corps aircraft from our base and, mm, that’s when I started shooting a little motion picture.

Ah.

Because you would show their landings and take offs.

Yes, yes.

And everything else. And we also worked on...

Had you had any training in, in, in, mm, that kind of, that kind of photography, of, of motion picture photography?

Just what I learned at the lab.

Okay. So you just...?

Mm, where I went to.

And you pick it up sort of more on the job?

They had, had courses, you know, for the guys to come in and they let us take cameras and do all kinds of things, they encouraged us.

Yes.

And we were able to take cameras on the weekends. We were exposed, we had all the film we wanted to use and shoot.

Yes, yes.

And then come back because they found that it made us more proficient.

Yes, yes.

In what we were doing and they wanted us to shoot all the time.

What kind of cameras were you using?

We were using Nikons, Hasselblads, still speed graphics.

Yes, yes.

We were using big format cameras, eleven by fourteen.

Yes, yes.

And things of that nature. Eight by tens, you know, for our portrait work.

Okay.

Mm, the Bell & Howell cameras. We were also using Aeroflexes back in the Navy also in the motion picture area.

Oh. So you got a terrific range of experience probably more than you would have got if you’d been in a commercial?

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes because it was a, it was a big, big lab.

Yes.

It was a huge lab.

Yes.

And guys were always in competition with each other. And it was really good because we would come back after a weekend and start printing our work no matter what it was, you know, every daylight photos or weddings that we were doing or maybe if we were shooting exteriors. I know I, I spent the week at the New York World’s Fair and, mm, boy I shot pictures left and right for that because I mean I was printing probably for two or three weeks after.

Mm, mm. So who sent you to do that, that wasn’t the Navy was it?

No. I did that on, on my, I took leave.

Yes.

To go and see the World’s Fair.

Yes, yes.

It was a big attraction.

Ah.

And I was, I was in DC so I took off myself and I spent the time there. It was great.

Ah. Now, mm, tell me how you enjoyed life in the Navy. Not, I, I understand you got an excellent training, you had a variety of experiences that you would of never had if you’d been in the commercial world but, but tell me how you as an African American experienced the Navy in the mid Nineteen… in the mid 1960s? What, now you came from a particular kind of background, you, how was the Navy to you?

Well, well, I always, I can, I can go back and I always look at the overall, mm, because it was difficult for an African American because first of all there weren’t that many African Americans in the flight crews, you know, on, as aviation boatswain’s mate. And, mm, a lot of times you run into the [Pause] superior petty officers that would, mm, give you different jobs that weren’t quite really fair, but, you know, as long as you did what you did everything, everything was fine. And you can’t, you don’t really rebel or anything like that anyway because you’re at one grade and they’re at another grade. And I found, I, I think, mm, with my upbringing and my parents and everything else I was able to, able to overcome a lot at a young age and I was always able to, mm, keep my mouth shut and watch and just learn and realize the things I should be doing and shouldn’t be doing. And, mm, I had one [Laughter] petty officer from the south who really started out to be a friend and then it turned out he just wanted to use me for his own purposes. And we had a little problem, mm, because he wouldn’t sign my papers when I wanted to get off the ship to go to photo school so I had to go above him to another petty officer of a higher rank.

Yes, yes. To get it okayed. But, mm, the message is, is always clear as it still is today as far as blacks and whites it’s no different and, mm, the more I was exposed to it once I left Roxbury, my home, the more you realize, you know, what happens, how the system works in this country. And, mm, sometimes to navigate that is very difficult because the things can be very right in your face or they can be very overt and it all ends up the same way, a lot of people don’t want you as an African American to be doing this work or these jobs or in these positions or anything of that nature.

Mm, but you had, you had a very, in some ways, mm, a positive experience of the Navy isn’t it? Oh yes.

I mean you had excellent training. Mm, you, mm, mm, laid the foundations for what became a career for you. Absolutely.

But you’re saying also at the same time there were tensions. Now remember this is the mid 1960s so, you know, the world is, you know, is a different place, you know a different place then. Can you think of specific instances? You mention the petty officer?

Oh.

But that could have been personal, that you could, you, you...

Well, there’s any, any number of, of things like that that happened while I was in the Navy. Mm, even when I was going through ‘A’ School, even though I had positive results there also were negative things that were happening, just, just normal things that happens, happened to African Americans in this society. So I mean these are things that you just plug your way through. I mean not any specific things but, you know, different language that’s used to you or how you’re treated or the things that are said to you and the way it’s done. And, you know, sometimes those, those are things that can hurt you and tear you down if you hear it constantly, which African Americans do. But you, you have to overcome that because there’s, there’s more to life than what that is about, and that’s their problem it’s not, it’s not the person they’re, you know African American that they’re trying to take down. And I found that any of the, mm, like when I went, when I was in ‘A’ School there were probably five of us out of 300 guys in all these different classes and, mm, we could all sit down at the end of a week or end of a day or whatever and we all had basically the same story to tell about what was happening and what was going on, so I mean that’s something that I don’t think is ever going to change the way society is set up. The Navy was very positive. Even high school in, in, in Boston was very positive and a lot of times I was one of two blacks in a class of all whites or Italians or whatever, Irish, and you always made do, you can get along or you move on, you know, to what’s going on in life. And I found over the years that any other nationality put in contact with any, with African Americans or whatever and you have some common ground. Even if you don’t have common ground the things you talk about are the things that happened while you’re in school or in the Navy or in any of these atmospheres, seems to be able to work itself out. It’s once you leave that that things start to change.

Yes, yes.

And, mm, it’s like, you know, when I first went to boot camp. I mean it was strange, you know, going on an airplane and people looking at you, you know, like ‘what are you doing here?’ you know, or this, that or the other.

What, there weren’t many African Americans on planes at this stage?

Mm, coming from Boston there weren’t that many but, and of course, when I got to boot camp there were a number of African Americans in my troop.

Yes, yes.

But, mm, it’s, it’s, it’s been a constant through my life. And this is, I’m sixty, I’ll be sixty-seven tomorrow and I still have hope.

Mm, there was no segregation at all in the Navy?

Oh yes. Well no segregation to say.

Yes.

But there were certain things they didn’t want you to do.

Right, okay. What was the things they didn’t want you to do or...?

Well, just the bare fact that this Petty Officer Jones wanted to keep me from photography, said ‘you know you don’t want to go in photography’, you know, ‘you’re going to be on the flight deck with me. I’ll train you and you have an aptitude for this and this is what’s going to be the best for you’. I said ‘I don’t, I don’t think so’. I said ‘I think I’m going to get into photography and try and do my best at that because I have no interest’. And once I said all these things to him in a nice way, I wasn’t, you know, argumentative or demanding I just told him what I wanted to do.

Yes, yes.

That’s when everything changed for me.

Yes.

In that Navy. So, so for the last seven months of my cruise I did every crummy job there was, you know, from chipping decks and painting...

Yes, yes.

To standing watches. To go from a secure job where I ran the, the water brakes to going back up on the flight deck and, you know, dealing with the danger of that. So it was a complete turnaround.

Yes.

So it’s a...

Now you said you thought that his attitude was formed in some way because he was a southerner?

Absolutely.

And, and, and, and, and so you felt that he was trying to put a cap on your aspirations that perhaps another person, petty officer or superior officer would, may not have done. You were also and just talking there moving up and down the, that eastern seaboard and you were in the, you spent time in the south as well?

Oh yes.

Was there any differences that you could perceive when you were on northern bases compared with when you headed south to Florida for example?

Of course. I went, from boot camp I went to [Pause], Virginia where I, the ship was being retro fitted and everything in the shipyards. And when I would leave to go into town there were signs that would say, you know, ‘no colored’ or words that are a little more descriptive.

Yes, yes.

You know, ‘in this area’.

Yes.

And they had the water fountains and they have, you know, restaurants and everything else. It was divided, the whites were on this side and the blacks were on this side. And, mm, the divide was so great and the difference was so great because coming from Roxbury...

Yes.

It was, it was not, it was a shock in a certain extent but I knew that existed, but it’s just once you see it it’s a whole different story. Because as I would go down to...

Do you think there was any, mm, as you came through the gates and went back on to the Navy base did things change? Things were different when you went into town, that was one thing, when you were on the Navy base it was something different, the two were, the two were different?

They were different.

Yes.

But, mm, the segregation also, mm, even though they say it wasn’t in the Navy it was, it was still going on. There were, there were jobs, mm, in the Navy that I think we were picked out to do and we were relegated to certain things and, mm, you just did it and you moved on, mm, and that’s, that’s always been a constant. So the funny thing about is you look back on all of it and it was one of those things that probably was something that if you didn’t go through it would probably have been a much better experience but it was still a good experience, the Navy, high school, wherever, because Boston is very segregated area too with the Irish and everything else.

It, it is, yes, absolutely, yes.

So I mean, I mean I can remember playing basketball and you win a game, you know, between high schools or junior high but then you would have to fight your way out of Charlestown or one of these areas.

Yes.

You know that type of thing. Which is crazy.

Yes, yes.

But as a kid that’s what you do and it was fine.

Mm, mm. Where does photography though fit into this? You’re talking about the Navy had stereotypes, expectations for African Americans but photography it doesn’t fit that stereo, doesn’t seem to fit that stereotype does it? Well, it does because when I was in the lab the chief would assign you to different areas. You know, like some weeks you would just be in the darkroom printing pictures and things of that nature and then other times you would be up in the Portrait Department shooting portraits or whatever. And sometimes the chief would kind of leave you in some of these areas a little longer than other guys and then you’d go to him and I’d say ‘chief isn’t it about time for me to, you know, move on, you know, I’ve done enough lab work, I’ve done enough of this’? And he would say ‘oh yes, we’ll give you a little something a little later’. You know, you always had to ask for something that other guys were already being rotated on a regular basis. So you could see all this.

Yes. And, mm, if you were, if you were content you could stay doing that.

Yes. But you wouldn’t learn very much of any other things. So I mean we always were a little more insistent about doing some other things. And the appetite that I developed for photography was growing and I didn’t want to be stuck in one area very long because there were so many things I wanted to learn and start doing and getting my hands on, and I realized, you know, that, I didn’t realize then but as you start thinking about coming out of the Navy and starting your career you need to be, you need to have as much information as possible about what my last work was going to be.

Yes, yes. Now in the, mm, photography school where you, when you were there, how many African Americans were there like, like you when you were going through? In the lab?

Yes. Well...

In Patuxent River?

Yes.

There were probably, there were probably four of us out of [Pause] thirty-five guys. Yes, four of us.

So you felt that there was, there, this was not a place that was, or this was not an occupation that was being excluded, you, you were welcome, you were welcomed?

Oh yes, yes.

Right.

I mean maybe not by everybody but it, it was something that I was going to do as to once I got into photography this was opened up, the light came on for me.

Yes.

Because all of a sudden I could see a future.

Yes, yes.

And, mm, and then I knew I just, that’s what I would pursue until I got to what I wanted to do or maybe I would have to change if it didn’t work out.

Yes.

But I could see it then, you know, and I was like twenty-one.

Okay. You did four years, four years total?

Mm, total.

Total in, in the Navy. No thoughts of staying on, making it a, you know, staying on for a whole career at any stage? You always felt that you were going to only stay in the Navy for a certain number of years and then move on, you always knew that?

Yes.

Is that what your brother did as, he did didn’t he? Your brother...

My brother stayed an extra year.

Yes.

I think my brother stayed a little longer because he wanted to go back and do, he did a Mediterranean cruise and then he wanted to do a Northern Atlantic cruise and he was eligible to do that but he, no he wanted to get out also.

So your brother had already left the Navy?

Mm, mm.

And he was telling you, what, what kind of advice was he giving you or what were you listening to?

Well, what he was saying to me is that, you know, that first of all how he had been able to continue his education in the Navy and also he loved the travel and, mm, it was fulfilling, you know, to do, and that was exactly what I had in mind when I was, went with him to these reserve meetings to see what it really was all about. And, mm, I had no, no specific skills at the time I was just trying to get through high school. And as soon as I was out of high school within a month I was in the Navy, you know, I’d gone through boot camp and I was on my way. And I didn’t know what I would be doing until I finally decided to apply for school, but all those things my brother had kind of given me a little information on, things I should be doing, things I should watch out for, you know, and just kind of keep straight ahead.

So what was he doing when he left the Navy? He, he had a particular career in and what was he doing?

He went to work for Raytheon.

Yes.

And he was in his electronics field.

Okay, but you didn’t...?

No. I was...

Because you were already committed to photography by this...?

I had discovered photography, yes, yes.

Okay, okay. So what year did you leave the Navy, was this, was this 1964?

I was in the Navy from 1962 to 1966.

Sixty-six?

Mm, mm.

Okay.

Sixty-four I went to ‘A’ School.

Right. So in 1966 you, you left the Navy. What did you decide to do at that point?

Well, my aunt worked for The Central Intelligence Agency and I, when I got out of the Navy I stayed in Washington DC. So in talking to her she said ‘why don’t you try to get into photography in The Central Intelligence Agency’? So I applied for that. So I filled out an application and, mm, I was accepted and I just had to wait to get my clearance verified and I stayed in the interim programmed for about a month. I already had a secret clearance in the Navy so they just had to go and verify all that again and make sure it was alright, and then from there I was going to start working for The Central, you know, Intelligence Agency. But before I could finish somehow some way I got a call from the FBI, or I had checked out something about the FBI and I applied to them because they had a GS rating higher for photographers than The Central Intelligence Agency.

A GS rating?

Yes. It’s...

Can you tell me what that is?

GS rating is your job classification, the more proficient you are they keep giving you a higher GS rating. So I think with The Central Intelligence Agency I was going to be starting as a three or a four but with the FBI I could start with a five, but I think that’s the way it worked. So I switched over to them and now I‘m back in another interim program, I was waiting for my clearance to be approved and everything else again, I’m still getting paid. And now the Navy calls me and they say ‘what we’re doing with the Naval Photographic Unit in, in DC is we’re turning it over to all, part of it to civilians’, and they know my background from being, you know, a naval photographer, ‘and would I be interested in coming aboard there’? And, mm, they told me I would get a higher GS rating, you know, than I was with the FBI. So I went with them. [Laughter]

Yes.

So in a matter of like two and a half, three months I had already went from maybe a GS3 to a GS6 or whatever it was and I hadn’t done one day in work but I was still getting paid. But the opportunity with the Navy because they do everything so slow was short-lived because I wasn’t shooting any more I was just in a lab processing film.

Okay. So you, you worked for the Navy in a lab processing the film for how, for how long?

As a civilian one year.

Yes.

It lasted a year.

Okay, and that was in Washington DC?

That was in DC, yes.

Okay. Okay, and you lasted one year?

A little less than a year because I didn’t, I, I didn’t see things moving fast because of what they wanted to do was set up lab, shooting area, a motion picture unit and the whole thing, but the Navy takes longer to do it and I didn’t see a future, plus I didn’t, I didn’t like the confinement of the government work.

And the, and you really were doing only a fraction of the kind of things that you were doing when you were in the Navy?

Yes, yes.

You weren’t doing any photography, you were processing the film that others had shot?

Right.

And that wouldn’t, didn’t look like it was going to change?

Not for a while.

Yes.

Until they could set up the, you know, the shooting end of it and then the portrait studios and all the other, other start of it.

Yes.

So, and they wanted to do motion pictures, you know, for the Navy and things of that nature but it was a long wait and I, you know, I was young. I was kind of impatient and...

Yes. But, but you were getting quite well paid was this?

I was, I was, it was a well paid job.

So that’s an encouragement to stay was it or not?

It was on one hand but on the other hand I figured why didn’t I just go back to college and really study photography more, just continue my education and that’s what I decided to do. I would talk with guys not only in the Navy but now at this lab I was working at, and everybody talked about Brooks Institute of Photography in California as a good photographic school and they also talked about a school in New York and why I want to go to one of those schools. So my plan was, seeing as I’d always been on the east coast, I decided to go to college on the west coast.

Okay. Had you been to the west coast before?

Never had, never had.

Okay. Mm, but you knew about this Brooks Institute and it was a choice of going to New York or going to the west coast?

California, right.

And you decided to?

Come to California.

And had you got family at all?

Nobody, nobody.

Okay.

So I just started saving for the remainder...

Of the year?

Of months I had.

Ah right. In DC?

And, yes, and once I applied for the school out here they sent back an acceptance letter and I sent them back, you know, I would start that date. And the good thing about Brooks was that I didn’t have to have any, only a high school education and I would just be going strictly photography in an accelerated twenty-eight month course and then I could get my additional academic subjects afterwards to get a degree. So I liked that because I liked the hands on, I wasn’t a student to say, and that’s what I liked basically because it was all hands on, you just started right basic photography and worked your way all the way up through their course.

So you started almost, mm, from scratch with, as you’d done in the Navy course which, and you just began again at the beg, at the beginning?

That’s so.

What, what did you feel about that? I mean did you feel that, well, you’d done this before?

No, it was different.

Yes.

It was completely different from the Navy.

Yes.

One program was accelerated with the Navy because it was only a twenty week course, this was going to be like twenty-eight months.

Yes, yes, yes.

And also that I had the GL bill that was going to pay for it, plus it was a school that was worth, very well recognized.

Okay. So you came out from the Brooks Institute with a degree?

Yes.

And that was, what degree was that?

Bachelor of Professional Arts.

Bachelor of Professional Arts. Okay, and what year did you graduate?

I graduated in 1970.

Okay. What were the kind of courses? You were saying that you started off with basic courses right at the beginning.

Yes.

But what...?

Just how to take a good picture.

Yes, yes.

The composition, you know, things that you should be looking for. And then they also talked to us about, mm, making up development because we processed our own film, we had to make up our own formulas. They also taught, taught, taught us how to get the perfect neg through time and temperature. And everybody’s different, you know, how you process film and everything else. They also talked to us there, because it’s a very technical school about knowing how to read a negative, what you’d have, you know, the grays and the whites and the balance between, everything in between. And, mm, they just push you all the time because you have the different assignments, you know, of under exposure, over exposure and normal exposure so you can see the difference and know when the sun is in a certain position why you’re shooting this way and when the sun is in another position why you’re shooting that way. And they’d give us all these assignments. Mm, night photography, you know, day photography and, you know, back lit photography. They’d show us all about, you know, the paramount lighting, the forty-five degree lighting, all the things that, you know, you needed to know.

Yes, yes.

And so we went through courses like industrial photography and we went through portrait photography and really homed in on what it takes to get a good portrait and why you use some lighting on others and this light on another. If you want to hide certain things why you would have the light a little higher so it would shadow, you know, a double chin.

Yes, yes.

Or why you would go to eliminate maybe a little scar or blemishes on this side of the face or why you used back light or why you do anything. But they pounded this in to us and it was very good. You know they had color courses, they had dye transfer courses, mm, they had everything you absolutely needed to be a photographer.

Mm, and you were developing an interest in what kind of areas? What did you think you were going to, when you graduated the kind of things you were going to do?

My intent was to be a fashion photographer and I was going come up to the coast, west coast, and go to Brooks and then graduate and go back to New York because that’s where the fashion industry is.

So what happened there then?

Now as it turned out I had to take a motion picture course.

Oh you had to?

Yes, it was just one of the courses that you had to take and that until you picked your major. And I took this motion picture course and as soon as I got about a month into it I realized that’s what I wanted to do. So I switched my whole major, so instead of just having that two month of motion pictures I expanded it to a ten month course.

Okay. Tell me a bit about the other students who were on the course with you, what kind of backgrounds were, were they from? Did they think that you were different because you’d come all the way from the east coast with the Navy background or were they similar?

Well, the funny thing about it is there, there were, there were some military photographers in the class.

On this course. Ah I see, yes.

Mm, that...

Through the GI Bill?

Through the GI Bill.

Yes.

As a matter of fact one of the guys from my lab in Patuxent River, Maryland was in my class.

Ah, oh. Just coincidentally?

It was just a coincidence.

You hadn’t, you hadn’t...?

He had not talked about it.

Ah.

And I had talked one of my buddies in to coming out also so there were three Navy photographers in this class of, say, twenty-five, thirty. And, mm, the rest of the guys were either some of them were high school grads, some of whom had just decided this is what they wanted to do, they were artists or graphic artists or whatever.

Whereabouts do you think, can you remember whereabouts had they come from? Had they travelled the same distance as you?

Oh sure.

They...

Oh there were guys, you know, from Pennsylvania, there were guys from England.

Yes, yes.

A Reardon, I wish I could think of his first name, that guy I can’t think of his first name but Reardon from England came. And, mm, his, I don’t know what his, I don’t remember what his background was but we all shared the common interest and we were all in this together because it was a very difficult school because they told us in the beginning of this they said ‘you probably by the time you finish this class will be much smaller than it is’, and they just laid it on you what’s going to happen and what you have to do and it was just you get bombarded with information and what you have to do. Go out and shoot assignments, come back and process, print and get ready for it. The exam every week and those were the boards that you shot. The instructor would take them and tell them what you did wrong, what you did right and everything in between.

Yes, yes.

And, mm, they just kept you on edge and everything else all the time, but it was something that was probably the best experience because we all would sit back and talk about it daily and, you know, of course, at the end of the week you put all your pictures up on a board and he breaks them all down. Now you have, say, start with thirty guys in a class and you go through, say, thirty critiques of each individual’s pictures then you go through another thirty if you had three assignments to do or four assignments. And you would listen and all of a sudden it’s sinking in what a good picture is, what good composition is, why you should have shot it this way, why you should have done this, why you should have done that. Ad all day long you’re hearing this so you’re, you’re getting bombarded with information and you’re just absorbing what photography is really about. It’s not just going and clicking a picture.

Yes.

It’s about thinking about the lighting, it’s about thinking about the composition, you know.

Did you with your classmates, would you have discussions outside of the class? Would you, not only inside the class would you be talking about photography, outside the classroom you’d also be exchanging all kinds of experiences?

All the time.

Yes.

All the time. That’s because that’s what it was about. From the time I started ‘A’ School until the time I finished Brooks, and then once you get into the motion picture industry that’s all you talk about then.

Yes, yes. Did you find that, mm, there was a difference between the people who had gone through the Navy who were that bit older presumably?

That’s right.

And those who were eighteen or nineteen or whatever it was. Did you find that you could mix easily or did you tend to form little cliques?

No. Mm, you do, you always form little cliques, that always happens and I think no matter what.

Who, who was in your clique?

Well, of course, my buddy.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

That I talked into coming out to Brooks.

Yes, yes.

And then there was another guy, but primarily it’s my, my buddy from Philadelphia, another Navy guy and myself.

Mm. Was he African American?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, yes. Mm, and then after that all the guys we stayed in this one apartment building together because they had darkrooms and they had facilities that we could use once the school closed down in the evening so that was a big plus for us. But I mean it was, we were all going through the same thing. Some of us were in the advanced classes, some of us were behind, you know, in basic classes and we all just helped each other. I don’t, I don’t think during that time there was, I was aware of as much, mm, black and white or anything like that going on, mm, because the instructors at school were all pretty fair.

Mm. Were they black, white or would...?

All, all white.

Yes.

All white. And everything seemed to be fine. Mm, I don’t remember any problems at all going through Brooks Institute that I can think of, I don’t remember any.

Let’s now, well, I want to start focusing on you’ve already had that experience of doing your motion picture course and you’ve decided to change from fashion photography to motion pictures, this is what you’re going to take an interest in?

Right.

We’ll start talking about that in, in a minute because it’s that transition from Brooks Institute to work which I think is going to be very interesting. But before we do can I just kind of quickly just look back over the 1960s? Now you’re a Navy man?

Mm.

And, mm, they probably don’t encourage an awareness of politics or of what’s going on in the big wide world. Even though you’re in the big wide world there’s certain things that, that the Navy probably doesn’t encourage, but, but there were momentous events of the, of the 1960s?

Yes, there were.

You know, mid 1960’s and so on and, you know, march in Washington?

March on Washington, yes.

Civil rights legislation. What was going on in terms of, mm, of protest movements in the, in the south particularly. Mm, and, and you were up and down that, you know, eastern seaboard during this time.

Absolutely.

What was, what was going on in your mind at this time?

Well, the interesting thing about that is, is like when you’re in the Navy [Pause] I was never, I was never involved in any protests or marches or anything like that. I knew they were going on and I knew why they were going on but in the Navy you can’t get involved with that so I, I had no involvement with that whatsoever. And the same thing happened by the time I’d come out here to go to Brooks where they were burning, you know, draft cards and the American flag and people were protesting and all that. I didn’t have, I couldn’t, I didn’t have time to go to those because I was, every bit of money I was getting from the GI Bill I was spending on the course at Brooks. I was also working at night so I had no time to get involved with that. And I looked at the whole situation and I knew, [Pause] how important it was but in order for me to be a part of anything I had to have something to give other than slogans or anything else. In other words I had to have, mm, a foothold or a profession in order for me to get through. Plus I couldn’t stop from Brooks, I didn’t have time to go to these demonstrations for four hours or one hour or whatever, I was constantly in school.

But there were demonstrations going on?

Oh yes.

Now this, Brooks is in Santa Barbara?

Santa Barbara, California.

Santa Barbara.

Yes.

Okay. And there were protests going on. You and the, and the student body in Brooks, was that...?

Not at Brooks, not at Brooks.

Yes, yes.

Because, mm, all the things were happening out at the university.

Yes.

The university, UCSB.

Yes, yes.

University of Santa, you know, Southern California, Santa Barbara. They had Alta Vista

Yes.

We had all the student demonstrations against The Bank of America and the universities for all the different things they weren’t doing. That was going on like ten or fifteen minutes away from Brooks Institute.

Okay.

Brooks Institute was basically a private school where you go, you pay your money and you do your accelerated course.

Yes, yes. So did you find yourself talking about any of these issues that, that were animating other students?

Oh of course, we, we did because there were guys I knew out at UCSB that were involved in demonstrations and of course, they want you to be involved and everything else.

Yes, yes.

And you talk to them about it and I, I tell them the same thing I says ‘you know my Mom and Dad are not paying for me to go here I’m on a GI Bill, I’m working nights, I’m working weekends to get additional money, I, I don’t fit in that’. You know, I just didn’t fit in that, I had to keep my nose geared to my education.

Yes, yes. So you thought of yourself as not, as not, mm, as sympathetic but not as a political, as not as a political person? That you had a particular goal in mind which was a career goal and that was your top...?

Yes.

At that moment that was your, that was your top priority. Okay let’s switch back. You’re at Brooks. You’ve decided the motion picture industry is for you and, hey, you’re in Los Angeles, you’re in the right, you’re in the right place for it?

Mm, mm.

At what stage in, in your, in your time at Brooks did you start discussing or thinking about entering the motion picture industry, talking with your instructors about your aspirations, when was that?

As soon as I discovered that, that motion picture course that I, I was taking and I switched, that’s when everything started gearing to coming to Los Angeles, Hollywood.

Yes, yes.

Mm, because that was the heart of it.

Yes.

Whereas fashion was in New York motion picture is out here and that’s when I started. So I mean I didn’t, I mean it was, it was like that was my dream to maybe get into the motion picture business.

Okay. And you spoke about your dream to your instructors?

Absolutely.

And, and, and what did they say? And what did they say to you?

They said yes, that’s, that’s exactly what it was. Bernie Brooks who was the son of the founder of the school talked about ‘maybe I can call somebody and see if we can’t get a job placement or do some of the things we have’. There was another instructor...

So what year would this be?

This was like probably like Sixty-nine.

Okay, Sixty-nine?

I started at the course in Sixty-eight and so this would be midway through the career. I was just starting, you know, to get into motion pictures because I graduated in Seventy.

But you must have known and your instructors must have known that in 1968 and 1969 and for a good many years the number of African Americans in the industry especially in, in cameras was...

Almost nil. [Laughter]

Well, I was, I think probably could be said to be nil. So this could be very strange conversations going on then.

But they never said that. They never not one time did they ever say you know that there is, mm...

Very little chance of you getting in?

Very little chance of getting in because of the nepotism.

Yes.

They never said that. Mm, one of my motion picture instructors Rex Fleming used to bring us down to Los Angeles and we would do the Sealy commercials for him. The students would shoot them and he would direct them and everything else and that was given, he would give us credit for that. But not one time did anybody ever say that because of what was happening in Hollywood you probably will not get in.

So the, so your instructors were always uniformly positive?

They always encouraged us, absolutely. They always encouraged us to do that. So that’s exactly what we did, when we graduated my buddy and I we came right down here and within a matter of like two and a half, three weeks we put applications for all the studios and everything else. He got picked to start as a second assistant at Universal Studios.

What was his name?

Bill Howard.

Bill Howard, okay. Are you still in contact with Bill?

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

Okay. So Bill almost straight away. Mm, now what program was this?

It was, there was no, there was for some odd reason evidently the, mm, federal government must have been starting the push.

Yes, yes.

At that time to have minorities come in.

Yes.

Now they had a training program that they were setting up and they also did like they did with Bill, they saw that he had photographic background from his application and he was in the right place at the right time and as I tell him all the time I said if my name, you know, had have started with an ‘E’ instead of a ‘L’ they would have taken me first. [Laughter]

[Laughter]

But because he was Howard I’m Langley.

Yes.

They picked him.

Yes, yes.

And within a matter of, [Pause] we were here maybe two and a half, three weeks. He was within a month he was working in the motion picture industry.

Mm, and, and working for Universal Studios which...

As a second assistant.

Which has a particularly good record of hiring minorities. Did anyone think of that at the time, at the time?

I don’t, I don’t know if they had. I didn’t know they had a good record for hiring minorities. I know that at the time there was just a buzz of, a push to get more minorities in. So knowing Bill that was first hand information and there he was. He was, bang he took off and it was all on the job training for him.

[Pause] Okay, mm, he had a successful career in the industry, he...?

He stopped his career midway through. He worked probably for, I would say Bill worked a good fifteen, seventeen years. [Pause]

So why did he get out?

And then he stopped and decided to go back to Philadelphia.

Oh.

And it actually worked out very well because at that time his Mom was at, was sick and started to have problems and he was there and it all worked out good because he was able to take care of her, nurse her back to health, go on not in photography anymore and, mm, have a career that he enjoyed and plus he enjoyed being back there.

Yes.

We talk, of course, he misses this, mm, but for some odd reason the draw was back to Philadelphia.

Yes, yes.

And he’s, he’s fine with that. He’s fine with that.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So here we are in, mm, where are we 1970?

Mm.

We’re in 1970, Bill’s got a job, you, you haven’t right, right now?

That’s right.

Mm, you know, so what’s...?

What I did was now it was time for me to get my additional credits for my degree, so I just went back to school and finished off my last, you know, twenty, twenty-some odd credits to get my degree and at the same time now I applied for the Minority Training Program.

Yes, yes, yes.

I did it in Seventy but I was too late, they had already selected the five African Americans for that course. So I went back to school to get my credits and I still applied for the next one, which was in 1971.

And you got on to that?

I got on to that.

Okay. Who else was in that Minority Training Program the same year as you?

They had Rod Mitchum, they had Tony Washington [Pause] and I don’t remember the other guys.

How many, roughly how many were in…?.

There were five of us.

Oh, just a small group?

They took five each year.

Yes, yes.

The first year they took five but they just said ‘do you want to be in photography’? or they picked them up like off the street and put them in the course.

Yes.

And the guys didn’t last. So the next year they said ‘we want guys with motion picture degrees’, and I had just finished and got my degree so when I went through the interviewing process that was one of the things that was very helpful, having that degree, and plus my Navy background.

Yes, yes.

Mm, so that, that’s what that was about.

So there was the five of you and you all had, not all of you had gone to Brooks?

Different, they had different schools they had gone to and different forms of photography. Photographers

But they were all familiar with, with, with photography?

Yes, yes.

Okay.

And the five of us went through that, mm, course.

Okay. And the course lasted how long?

One year.

Okay, one year. Everyone survived that course?

Everybody survived.

That’s, was, was everyone surprised by that or was, were they anticipating?

I don’t think any of the guys were surprised. I, I think that we all were very aware how fortunate we, that we were that the government stepped in to initiate, initiate that because otherwise they would not have done it, that would not have happened. And it was supposed to be that they took ten per cent every year to get the ranks up.

Yes.

That never happened.

Yes.

Because the program only lasted a few more years. And then instead of just having five African Americans that they took every year the next year I think they took ten. They included women and other minority groups and then just one or two African Americans.

Okay. So they redefined minority and, and also started to include, started to include women as well?

That’s right, that’s so.

And the year after you, 1972, women, that was women for the first time?

Maybe.

Was it all men, all men your year?

All men. My year and the year before.

Yes, yes. So 1972, okay.

That’s when I, I got out of that and went out as a second assistant. Now the other stipulation for the program was the federal government said that these trainees had to come out as Group Ones. In other words that they had three groupings - Group Three, Group Two…

This is the roster, in the roster?

This is the roster.

Yes, yes.

So if you were Group Three coming out of the program all the Group Ones had to be working.

Yes.

Group Twos had to be working and then they’d hire Group Three’s. So they said ‘no, no, no’.

Sorry who did, who insisted on that that you had, had to be Group One?

This was The Producers Association.

Ah, yes, yes, yes.

And motion pictures and the federal government were involved in that. So we came out as Group Ones.

Yes.

So we went to work instantly and all of us went to work at different studios.

I see. So group, so you were Group One. So you, you, you graduated from the Minority Training Program in 1971, is that right?

Seventy-two. I started in Seventy-one and I finished a year later.

Seventy-one and you finished in Seventy… that’s right. You finished in, in Nineteen… in 1972 and you were Group One. And while you were on doing the Training Program I believe you moved around studios didn’t you, you, you picked…?

You know at every studio.

Okay.

Went to all the studios.

Tell me about that experience?

That was interesting because the first studio I went to was Paramount and they of course, put me into their Camera Department and I was, learnt how to load the magazines. I learnt how to set up, you know, their equipment. I learnt how to do all that paperwork and I also got a chance once I became more proficient to also start working with some of the production film that would come in, downloading magazines and things of that nature. Now the interesting thing at Paramount is the assistant head of the Camera Department was Dick Barlow who was a naval photographer. He was on the interviewing board and when he saw I was at the Patuxent River Motion Picture Unit he said, he asked me questions about people that I knew there because of, mm, both of us were Navy and he was a very strong ally for me. And then he also saw that I had worked for the civilian end of it in the motion picture labs so he asked me about those people which he knew. So we had a bond and from the time that happened until he retired he would always call me and hire me for different jobs just because of the Navy background and what we had, you know, in common.

Yes.

But they asked me after about a month at Paramount they said ‘we know you’re married, we know you are getting ready to have a child, we know that you’re only getting paid a hundred dollars a week what we want to propose to you is come off the Program, come into our department and just work for Paramount Pictures and you’ll be a loader for us for’, I think it was at that time you had to be a loader for three years.

Yes, yes.

‘And you’ll make more money’ and so forth and so on ‘and then we’ll get you out as a second assistant’. And I went home and spoke with my wife about it and for some odd reason I didn’t want to do that I wanted to stick with the Program I was on, and it was very, very beneficial as it turned out because not only did I go to Paramount Studios. I went to Universal Studios and learned their Camera Department and all their paperwork. I went to Disney, I went to Warner Brothers, I went to MGM. In other words I went to all of those studios and I got to meet the Camera Department heads of all those studios plus I got to work with the crews, they would have a trainee go out and help out on the set banging the slate, doing marks and learning what you do. Well, I got to work with all those guys instead of just being at one studio so that was the most beneficial thing in my whole career not taking more money.

Yes, yes.

But meeting the network of people that I was going to be working with for the next thirty-nine years.

Yes, yes, a long term gain?

Yes.

Ah, getting married. No mention, no mention of this up until now. How did that fit in with developing a career, mm, taking courses at Brooks? This, you know, there’s, you have a life outside, mm, mm, studying and, and working. How did, being a student and being married is, is tough?

Yes. But it was, for some odd reason it was tough but it was like once I’d finished Brooks Institute it was like my horizons seemed endless. It maybe because I was so naive about going into the job market, I just knew that with my training and background from the Navy and Brooks that I was going to be hired and once I accomplished that I had told my girlfriend at the time I said you know…

By the way is she a local girl, was she from Los…?

She was from my home town.

Oh from, from back home in Roxbury?

In Roxbury, absolutely.

Ah.

Absolutely.

So this is a childhood sweetheart?

Childhood sweetheart.

Ah.

So we, we went through a lot together.

Yes.

And, mm…

She came out with you to the west, west coast?

No. I, when we just talked about getting married long distance and when she came out we got married. So after I graduated from Brooks in April by August we’d got married.

So that was 1970, yes?

That was 1970.

So you graduated and got married?

That’s right, and then I went on to do that year of college to get my additional credits.

Yes.

And I also applied for the Motion Picture Training Program.

So you, you were, you decided not to take the Paramount offer of a better, a well paid job?

Right.

But and instead pursue and complete the Minority Training Program, and you’re glad you did this because of the networking opportunities?

Right.

That was going to stand you in good stead for the rest of your, for the rest of your career?

And it did.

Yes.

It did. It was the best choice I ever made. Mm, and it had to have been God guiding me because making more money, especially when we had a son on the way, was very tempting. Because by the time they took out taxes and everything else I think I had seventy-five dollars a week.

Yes.

But I was going to school so I still was getting my GI Bill, so between the two, and my wife was working, we were actually doing fine.

Yes, right.

So it wasn’t that big of an incentive when we thought about it.

Okay. So you finished the Training Program and then who did you work for at that point when you finished training?

I went to work for [Pause] Bill Wade at Universal Studios.

Okay.

After I’d finished working the two and a half months on the Training Program Bill Wade came to me and said ‘when you’ve finished the Program you come back and talk to me, I want, I’ll hire you as a second assistant’.

As a second assistant?

Mm.

I see. So you, mm, mm, you moved very rapidly through loader and all those ranks to second assistant?

That was what the Program was for.

Oh. Was it you automatically…?

Got all that information and you came out as a second.

Second assistant?

Yes.

Right. You didn’t have to start at the bottom?

No.

Oh right.

No. Mm, because he said ‘you know our system’, he says ‘I want you to call me when you’ve finished the Program’. So I went to all the other studios and I could also call Paramount because they wanted me to come back.

Yes.

And I for some odd reason I chose Universal. My buddy Bill was working there.

Yes.

And I chose that. And I called him when I was getting close to the end and he said ‘I’ll have something for you in July’. I said ‘you know Mr. Wade I’m going to finish this Program in June’. He said ‘yes, I know and keep calling’.

Yes, yes.

I kept calling and calling and finally he said ‘I have a show for you it’s going to start on such and such a date in July’, and that was my entry at Universal.

Okay. And how long did you stay at Universal?

I stayed at Universal on and off for the next eight years.

Mm. But you did spend time elsewhere, briefly or, or what?

I did. I went away and I worked at, mm, Disney, which I went there for three weeks on a job and I ended up staying for a year and a half. I worked at Para, I went, I went back to work at Warner Brothers for a short span of time on a show but I would always come back to Universal. As soon as I would start getting near the end of a job I would call Mr., mm, Mr. Wade or Jen, his secretary, and tell her you could put me on the available list as of such and such a date. Excuse me, and they’d say ‘fine’. And I’d do the same at Paramount, I’d do the same at Warner, I’d do the same at all the other studios so as soon as I’d finished I would hope to have another job. And that was always my goal, I just wanted to work, work, work, work and stay in and learn, learn, learn, learn, learning. For those eight years I never took a vacation, I never did anything.

Truly?

I just powered my way through. And the guys knew me because they would say ‘mm, Norm would you work for me on Saturday’? I’d say ‘absolutely’. They’d say ‘Norm would you go on this job for me’? I’d say ‘absolutely’. And they knew I would work, it didn’t matter to me and that’s what I did for that solid eight years, I took very little time off.

By this stage though you had one child or more than one child?

I had, I had another son, yes.

Okay.

I had two boys.

Two. So you needed the money. Mm, you, and you were young and…

I wanted to pay off my school loans and I, I wanted to do everything, plus I wanted to get going.

Yes, yes, yes.

You know. And it was a good, it was a good living. I told my wife after I got my first pay check I, I looked at it I was shocked. I mean to me what I had made in Washington for a month I made in one week at Universal and I had only left Washington like six years earlier so in six years I’d quadrupled my money. I was just, I was amazed and I went home and we talked about that.

Now [Pause] this, this is the early 1970s and at that stage you’re, you’re developing a career as camera operator. There was no African American who had at that stage become a camera operator at that, at that stage?

In the Seventies.

In the early Seventies?

Mm, yes. I think Joe Wilcox was first.

Joe Wilcox was first, yes, and if that’s…

Then Jack Mills, yes.

And that’s 1972, okay.

Now Joe Wilcox somewhere in there was an operator.

Yes.

I don’t know when he became an operator.

Yes.

Because I think not too long after that Joe Wilcox was a cameraman because I, when I met Joe Wilcox somewhere in the early Seventies he was a cameraman.

Yes.

And, mm, he was doing things. Mm, not for the studio but he had his own company.

Oh did he?

But he was still in the union.

Yes, yes.

And I think he was starting to get calls from the motion picture industry because of the push for minorities.

Okay. So did, now you had conversations with Joe did you?

I…

You knew him or…?

I did, I did, I did a project for Joe. Mm, [Pause] as he was a cameraman and he was doing videos and things of this nature.

Yes.

And he hired Bill and I to work as assistants on one of his projects.

Okay.

But I didn’t, I didn’t know Joe at all to speak with and, mm, he just contacted me and somebody had mentioned we were in photography and this, that and the other and he said ‘come and work with me’.

Yes, yes.

Mm, I never got a chance to talk with him about his, how he got started in his career.

Yes, yes.

Until later on. But, mm, the things, there’s a lot of things that will come out that I, maybe I pushed away because I, I didn’t, I particularly didn’t care about what people thought about me or didn’t want African Americans on the set, because certainly that was the issue. No matter what studio I went through, no, what set I went on.

Yes.

There were guys that would help me and the guys that wouldn’t help me and, mm…

And that just, and that wasn’t just personal, you thought there was a degree of racism?

This is what was happening in America.

Yes, yes.

No, no doubt about it.

Yes.

There was no doubt about that because the guys would say to me, they said ‘you know you’ve taken work away from guys’, you know, ‘that are my cousins or my brothers or this, that and the other’, or they would, you know, be very, have little undertones of things. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem like you can do this job’, or this, that and the other. ‘Well, what’s your background’? And then when I’d say I was a Navy photographer and then I’d say I’d gone to Brooks they would look at me because some of those guys hadn’t even gone to college they’d just had got on the job training. And, mm, there were, there were so many incidents. Well, not so many instances but there was always an incident, incidents that would happen and it was almost like you’d leave Universal, you’d go to Paramount, the same thing. You’d leave Paramount and go to MGM, the same thing. It was all basically they didn’t want African Americans on those sets because it had been so closed for so long.

Yes, yes.

Well, forever, and this was the beginning of it. Mm, all the guys that I went through the Program with were still working and doing fine. Mm, Chuck Mills I think was the second African American camera operator and he got in around the same time, Seventy-one, Seventy-two, but he just got a call and he went to work as a second assistant.

Yes, yes.

Mm, the rest of us just ploughed through. And fortunate enough I was able to work with guys that I had met while on the Training Program and other guys that I, you know, ‘I’ll give you a shot’. But Bill Wade was the spearhead for it, he got me working and I stayed at Universal and they just kept giving me jobs. When one show would finish I got another job.

Yes.

One show would finish I got another job.

Yes.

I just kept working.

Yes.

And that’s how you meet the people and…

Bill Wade, he was white, yes?

He was white.

And he was your Navy, that’s right, the navy connection?

No. Mm, Dick Barlow was the Navy.

Dick Barlow. Sorry, yes.

Connection at Paramount.

Yes, yes, yes. Got you there. Now as I understand it Joe Wilcox, mm, had been, he’d been an assistant?

Absolutely.

For about eight years?

Absolutely.

Now, mm, and I think it’s mandatory that you’re assistant according to union rules for five years isn’t it?

That’s right.

Yes, yes.

That’s right.

So, okay. Mm, in your case this, this career pattern was emerging. You were, you were going to be an assistant for five years. How many, oh well, how many years were you assistant for?

About five and a half years.

Five, right, okay.

Yes.

So you did that and before moving on?

Absolutely.

But Joe, Joe Wilcox always at least the, mm, information that I’ve, I’ve read he was promised on numbers of occasions that he, you know, they were going to make him into a camera operator and he, and that, you know, for many years it just, it just didn’t happen.

Didn’t happen.

Yes. And I, I mean this could happen. I’m sure that promises are made in this industry and, you know?

Oh yes.

And sometimes they don’t, you know, get carried out. But, but, you know, in this, in, in Hollywood there was always that feeling that he was being held back and he felt that and I’m sure he felt that as well?

He did, he did.

But you’re not, you’re not saying the same thing as Joe Wilcox are you?

No, no.

Your experience seems to be slightly different?

Well, Joe was eight years ahead of me.

Yes, yes.

He experienced far more than any of us had gone through because he was the pioneer.

Yes.

So it was really difficult for him.

So it’s almost a generational thing of those who came before Nineteen… roughly 1970 and those who came after?

After. Now we had the same things happening to us but it was just a different, a different footprint had been established with the federal government behind a Program.

Yes.

It had to open up. When Joe got in he found, he was [Pause] industrious enough to be able to get into the motion, motion picture business and sustain himself.

Yes.

And he was able to work with some big cameramen and people like that just because of who Joe was.

Yes, yes.

His knowledge and the way he presented himself because he had a great career going.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And that was it. We had to have somebody do it. He did it basically on his own with help from whoever.

And do you think it was, it was the experience and the example of people like Joe that opened up doors for you, or you’re talking about the federal government and the Program, and the Minority Programs?

And Joe Wilcox

Yes, yes.

Sure. He had to be instrumental in it because Joe really was a very talented, talented guy. It was, it was no show with Joe. He really knew what he was doing. He was a very confident guy. I had the opportunity to work with him once I became an operator from meeting him prior is why he hired me on Roots The Next Generation and it was just clearly out of the blue. One guy was leaving as an operator and he called me and I was a brand new operator, I hadn’t even been operating maybe a year. So it was a big opportunity for me.

What year was that, roughly, can you remember?

Yes. It was like 1978 that I did Roots The Next Generation with Joe.

Okay. And you said at the time you, you were hired by Joe but you had really no contact, you didn’t know about his own experiences so…?

I’d, I’d never talked with Joe about his experience as a matter of fact.

Yes.

Mm, I’ve heard it on the radio where they’ve glossed over it but I’ve never actually, I never did actually sit down with Joe and say ‘what motivated you to get into the motion picture and how did that door open for you’?. I don’t know that.

Yes.

I don’t know the history of that.

Yes, yes.

Which I’m sorry to say. But I know working with Joe he’s the most competent, mm, cameraman artist I worked with in my whole career.

Yes, yes.

And that was way back in 1978. He had a command on a set that was, everybody was doing their job. Everybody was into the project, everybody cared because they could see how Joe cared. Mm, never had any problems. Probably at that time was the first all African American camera crew.

Yes.

Probably the first time where they had more minorities on the set than whites. A number of things happened with that and there was never a problem. We did I think seven two hour episodes for Roots The Next Generation, they were each two hours.

Yes, yes.

And it was the greatest experience of my whole career, I can always look back to that.

So at this stage though were you an assistant, you were still…?

I was a camera operator.

You were camera operator but…

I’d moved up, I was a camera operator for about a year.

Okay. So Joe, mm, became camera operator in 1972 and you did it in Nineteen seventy…?

Seventy-seven.

Seven, 1977. So…

Joe might, might have been an operator before Seventy-two as I said.

It’s, that’s, that’s the information I…

Okay.

That’s the information.

Okay.

But you’re definitely a camera operator by…?

Seventy-seven. I had, 1977. I did my first show was Emergency.

Okay.

And the interesting thing about that is I was the second assistant on Emergency, I was the first assistant on Emergency. I left, came back to Universal and I was the operator on Emergency, all in those five and a half years.

Mm, mm. So your career then, mm, has probably less traumatic than, than Joe’s, less resistance than, than Joe’s?

A lot less resistance.

Yes.

For some odd reason.

Yes.

I think for a number of reasons. I think I was in, I was in the right place at the right time and the right thing happened.

Yes, yes.

Not taking that job at Paramount and meeting all those people because Joe didn’t have that experience to go to all the different studios and meet that group of people that I did.

Yes, yes.

And every Camera Department knew me from, you know, the Minority Training Program. So when I called them they could say and I could say ‘I was there on the Minority Training Program, Norm Langley’, and they could say ‘oh yes’, or they’d say Norm Langley’ or they’d ask somebody and then they’d say ‘oh yes, Minority Training Program’. So that was beneficial, so I had basically six or seven studios that knew me.

Yes.

Whereas Joe was one guy knocking on doors and he was that good to break it down.

Yes. But he took a while to, to do it?

Yes.

And he had support. Well, I mean like lots of people in the industry have support from Ivan Dixon. Did you know Ivan Dixon?

I did.

Yes.

He was an actor turned director.

Exactly.

Yes.

Yes. And, and he had given quite a considerable, you know, he gave some quite crucial support to Joe at a particular, at a particular moment.

Right.

And no doubt when doors were being shut he, he managed to, to, to open up things. Mm, do you feel that, I mean you had any one like Ivan Dixon who was useful and helpful to Joe? You’re talking much more about networks rather than a patron, a one individual.

I think what happened is by being put in to all the different circumstances there seemed to be always somebody that would step up and give me a helping hand.

Okay, yes.

So it wasn’t just one or whatever it was a group. And some of these guys that I met on the Training Program are some of the guys I worked with on and off my whole thirty-nine years.

Yes.

Because we all basically came up together or they were just ahead of me.

Yes.

And whenever they would see my name on a list or we, I would contact them because you do a lot of networking and calling when you’re out of work, they would say ‘okay if I have some I’ll definitely call you’, and that would happen. But I had a network to call, a big network.

Yes, yes.

And of course, the studios, you know, as long as that system was in place...

Yes, yes.

Then they would, it just opened up so many doors for me.

Okay. So you networked with contemporaries of yours, people that you, you went through training with and you also networked with people who you met while you were being trained, while you, while you were visiting these, all of these different, these studios?

Studios.

So you, you, there’s no particular, one individual that, that, you know, the Ivan Dixon kind of character?

There, there was not.

Yes.

Because it was, mm, [Pause] Bill Wade would say to me, mm, you know, ‘you’re an Universal guy and we’ll keep you working’. Mm, whereas in Paramount, they said ‘whenever you’re out of work you call us we’ll have something for you’. Mm, once I’d worked at Disney. Disney was pretty much like that too. And then when Dick Barlow went over to Warner Brothers he said the same thing to me. So I mean there were still that, those doors that were open for me. Mm, I, I was very, very fortunate there’s no doubt about it. The Lloyd Aherns, mm, [Pause] the Chuck Mills, mm, I mean a number, number of guys that went up the ladder that I knew would always give me a call on different jobs.

Yes.

And it just happened. Some of his nephews, Lloyd Ahern’s nephews. Mm, Bobby La Bonge, Marc La Bonge I worked with those guys. That was the network.

Yes.

And the guys from Disney were another network with Jimmy Lutz . Even Rod, Rod Mitchell, the guy that was on the Training Program, we all helped each other. So it was, mm, always a way that I was able to find work. And I, I’d take day calls, night calls, rain calls, winter calls, out of town calls, you name it would do it. I had, I never said ‘no’. I said ‘no’ like in 1980 to a job because my son was graduating, it’s the first time I had taken some time like that, and as it happened the following week the strike happened anyway.

Yes.

So I missed one day of work for a ‘no’, I took a ‘no’ after eight years.

Right.

Mm, I don’t think I ever said ‘no’ again probably for another ten or twelve years and for whatever reason other for the fact maybe I had another job. That’s probably what it was because I never refused a job.

Yes, yes.

Never, never, never. And I’ve been in some crazy, crazy spots at crazy, crazy times but it was the excitement for me. I enjoyed, mm, every job that I was on from the supposedly bad jobs, because I’m not a complainer, where some guys would complain about the work or the circumstances or get involved with the politics of it I stayed away from it, I just worked. Mm, I let the union take care of any problems as far as mill penalties or hazard pay or any of these things the union took care of that. It wasn’t me to go to a unit manager or producer or anybody else and stop the show or say, you know, negative, anything negative of why you guys aren’t doing that? That was not me.

Well, I’m going to come to talking about the union in a while?

Okay.

But I wonder if we can just pause here. And I know what you’re saying, I’m hearing a very strong message that doors were open to you. You, you found opportunities and you were able to do things in, as part of that group that arrived, minority group that arrived in 1970. But you’ve also talked about the resistance that, that you found, mm, presumably on a day to day basis. I wonder if we can pause and just look at that which is really the other side of the coin of what you’ve been talking about?

Well, as far as, say, resistance. Now I can cite a few examples of directors who would, mm, you’d stop the job and they would ask the cameraman and they’d say ‘who’s your operator’? ‘Oh’, he said ‘it’s Norm’. ‘Come over Norm and meet him’, and you could look at him and see a black operator. That was unusual.

Yes.

You know there weren’t that many.

Yes.

Mm, and then you’d do, start doing the job and there were certain things that they would say, they would say ‘no, no, no don’t frame, I don’t like the way that’s framed’ or ‘no that’s not going to work for me’ or whatever.

Yes, yes.

Mm, producers would not want to hire a black operator. You know, ‘why don’t we get somebody with more experience’?

Yes.

These type of things?

But they would never say overtly, they would never say overtly, it would be because of you say experience or artistic differences?

Right, right, right.

Or whatever. Do, you thought with any evidence that you thought this…?

I don’t, I don’t think I could, I could document something that would be, you know, rock solid proof. But I know from how other people were treated on a set that it was because I was an African American. There’s no doubt in my mind about it because I’ve watched producers, I’ve watched directors, I’ve watched assistant directors, I’ve watched cameramen how they treat African American actors, how they treat their African American crew, whether it’s an electrician, grip or whatever, there’s a big difference in the way they would talk to them and the way we would, they would talk to us. Mm, [Pause] I was pretty good about certain things but I also made sure especially with crew from electricians on down that I didn’t like these jokes that they would tell, any things that referred to African Americans in a bad light or whatever was happening in the news that they would bring to work and made sure that I would hear. Sometimes I would, I would comment on it, other times I would let it pass, but I made sure that I would talk to that individual later on. I understood what he was trying to do. It didn’t work, I didn’t want to be talked to like that. I don’t talk to you like that, so forth and so on. Pretty normal man, but I was very upset about it because you’d hear it and you’d continually to hear it, it gets old and I would tell them ‘it’s old, find a different message’.

You also said that you heard opinions expressed that, ‘hey, you’ve arrived in the industry, mm, that means my relative can’t, can’t get a job’. Did, did you, did you hear that much in the early days?

In, in some, some form you would hear an overtone ‘well, he’s taking’, you know, ‘a job’, you know, ‘my brother could have had, my cousin would have had’. Or a line that some of the cameramen’s sons would say ‘ah, I had to do it on my own but look he got in on a Training Program’. [Laughter] Well, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘What do you mean you had to do it on your own’? If my son wanted to be in the motion picture business I guarantee you I would find a way to get him in so they couldn’t tell me that, but guys would tell me that and say ‘well, I had to work at gas stations’, or ‘I had to work at convenience store and come in and load night after I worked eight hours of this, that and the other’, and I would look at the guys and I would listen to their story, I never said anything to them about it but in my mind I said ‘it doesn’t make sense, you are trying to tell me? Here I was completely excluded, you have a father in the business who had to give you some helping hand’. Do you see what I’m saying? So I, I didn’t understand.

Though there were hard times in the industry in the 1960s weren’t there? There, there was quite high levels of unemployment in the, in the 1960s and I just wonder if there was a kind of partly that resentment builds up when there’s a kind of almost a lost generation of people who because, you know, the collapse of the old studio system, you know, TV which a lot of it was across in New, you know, in New York City. Hollywood was going through a quite a substantial period of change and I just wondered if, if there hadn’t, if you, you know, I’m sure Joe Wilcox was, had experiencing much more of that generation?

Yes, sure.

But still things weren’t, you know, things were, I mean and there was a lot of older men around and, you know, the younger ones hadn’t got the work in the 1960s.

Sure.

And I wonder if you’d kind of come across that kind of, that kind of thing?

I don’t think so. Mm, I think in the Seventies there was an abundance of work. I mean literally I think Universal had something like over thirty shows working on that lot or more.

Yes, yes.

Paramount probably the same.

All for TV, it’s all TV?

All TV.

TV series, yes?

But they also had a motion picture set they did.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

But tons of TV work, that’s why I could work seven days a week sometime. I mean it was amazing. Mm, but no, mm, because by the time the Eighties rolled around the motion picture industry was starting to change because of independent production. Somewhere in the Eighties that happened.

Yes.

And you had the same thing going on like maybe happened in the Sixties. A lot of the, a lot of the jobs were being taken by independent productions or they were going out of town or they were doing whatever. I think in every aspect of the motion picture business there were areas where they’d got to a crunch because always what seemed to happen over my thirty-nine years is every so often, just like in any other business, you have to reinvent yourself.

Yes.

What you were doing back then in the Seventies you don’t do it fifteen years later, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. Plus what was happening is now you started having more women on sets, assistant directors, producers, directors and everything else. I’ve watched guys, top guys try to talk to a woman director like she was his assistant.

Yes, yes.

Guys crash and burn. He’s burnt the bridge because that whole thing once it’s set up, by the next time she sees you ‘hey babe’, talking about ‘hey babe’ or this, that and the other or this, that and the other.

Yes.

You’re not working on that project. Do you see what I’m saying? So I mean you see all these things evolve. Also there were a lot of guys that were prima donnas , and that happens in any profession. Some guys can get away with it, some guys can’t, and if you’re a marginal guy there’s a problem. So the aspect of it is you’re only as good as your last job. That’s the way the motion picture industry is.

Before we get on to the 1980s and independent productions and talking about how your, mm, career developed there’s, I, I want to talk about the union but before I do, mm, there was just one other person’s name I wanted to mention, Wendell Franklin. He was similar to Joe Wilcox, he was an African American, mm, production assistant. Yes, that’s how he gets into the industry. Did you come across him at all?

No.

He was at Universal. He may have preceded, he may have been there sort of five years, five years before you but he had a very similar tough time of it in the 1960s. He, in fact I think, he’d worked in the parking lot and had graduated slowly but surely, he’d made it into, into the industry itself, but you’d not come across him?

I didn’t know him.

Okay.

I did not know him.

Yes, and then later he directed a film I think what it was called? ‘The Buff’ but…

Okay, okay.

Yes, doesn’t matter. Okay, let’s, let’s turn our attention to the union. You were talking about the union and how it, your particular style was not to be confrontational but to leave it to the union. But you, you had to be in the union, did you take part in union meetings?

Absolutely.

Were you active in it?

Absolutely.

Tell me, tell me a bit about that?

I was one of the, I would go to all the union meetings which they would have quarterly or whenever, and it was on Saturday.

Which camera local is this? What was the name?

Started out as Local 659.

Before the merger?

And then it was Local 600.

Yes, before the merger?

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So you were in Camera Local 659 and you took an active part?

Oh yes. You should put 600, that would be better.

Yes, yes.

Yes. I did take an active part because [Pause] the, that was the whole learning process what was going on with the union, what was happening at the time. Plus it’s another form of networking because there would be sixty, seventy guys at these meetings on Saturday and that’s what they would talk about, you know.

The unions though in the late 1960s and the early 1970s had a reputation for being hostile to, mm, African Americans or to well, opening up jobs to almost anyone other than their own relations. What was your experience in Camera Local?

I never had, I never had, I never had a problem getting a job, mm, because I was a Group One and I‘d, like I said the establishing part of my career was the eight years I worked on and off at Universal but primarily at Universal. By the time I got into the early Eighties I had become pretty, pretty established by then. Because not too long after that I went to work, I started doing feature films as a camera operator and, mm, there were, I was just, it seemed like I was always thrown into a unique situation. The cameraman I was working with about Eighty-three, Eighty-four was just breaking into feature films and when he got his first film he asked me to do it with him. Mm, when we’d finished that film he got a call from…

Which film was that, this one?

I did Just One Of The Boys.

Okay.

It was a film we shot down at Phoenix with Johnny McPherson was the cameraman, a very talented guy also. He would, he started out originally as a gaffer, got into the camera and then went on to direct and produce. A very talented guy.

Yes, yes.

But I, he was, he was the type of guy that would always put himself in a situation where he had to have more money, more money, more money, so he kept working and that was the type of camera man you wanted to be with.

Yes, yes.

But I did. I worked with Johnny for a long time. But he also got a call after that to work with Steven Spielberg on his amazing stories in like Eighty-four, late Eighty-four, early Eighty-five. But what they did is they had two cameramen that alternated series. So I coming in with Johnny who was the head guy, I got a chance to work with Bobby Stevens who was the other guy that he alternated with.

Yes.

And that led me to later on work with Bobby Stevens because he knew me. But that’s how I met Steven Spielberg and within a matter of months he asked me if I would, mm, he was going to try and get me on Color Purple which was a big picture.

Yes, yes.

And, with a big director and I got on that show. Because a lot of guys didn’t want to work with Steven, operators that had worked with him before they kept saying ‘no, I’ve got another project’. There was enough work where they could do that.

Yes, yes.

So the cameraman, who was Allen Daviau called me and he said ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news’, because originally I guessed I was doing the second camera. And he told me, he said ‘you’ve got the picture’, he said ‘now the bad news is you’re the ‘A’ camera’, which meant you’re right there with Steven every single moment and he’s a taskmaster. And I said ‘okay’, I said ‘you know that’s great’, because I’m thinking I, why am I going to refuse this job, and I spent the sixty-two days working with him and, mm, I survived. It was difficult and it was hard.

Yes, yes.

But I guarantee you once I’d finished that show I was pretty much, [Pause] mm, looked at differently from working with Steven Spielberg and doing that project.

Okay, that was the 1980s but let’s get, let’s just finish off with, with the union. You were active in the union?

Yes.

What, what were the issues going back to the 1970s into, to the early days?

I’m trying to think what, what was happening the big, I’m trying to think because I was on the board, the executive board for a number of years also. Mm, the biggest thing we were always trying to, to get was… [Pause] It was trying to get what? We were trying to get of course, [Pause] money, more money for the jobs. Mm, at the time I think the steadicam was coming into play.

Yes.

So we were trying to get something for steadicam. Mm, some of the other issues I’m trying to think what they were. About staffing, you know, for extra cameras. Mm… [Pause]

Jurisdictional disputes between east coast and west coast?

Sure. Yes, yes that was going on at that time also.

Yes.

Mm, other, other, it seemed to me like there were always issues, you know, with hazard pay. Mm, what trying to get the cameramen, you know, credits or whatever. Mm, the union was, was kind of flexing and trying to grow and they were all trying to figure out how they could get a better position, mm, and foothold in the industry for the recognition. The, what else, what else was going on?

Was there any attempt to encourage, mm, African American participation? You say you were on the executive board. Do you think that when, you know, that group of African Americans arrived after 1970 that the Camera Local or indeed any of the unions really made an effort to say ‘okay come on we, we need these guys to take an active part in union activities’?

No. I think it was the, mm, individuals that said they wanted to be more active and take a part in it, you know. I believe CB was involved with the Electrical.

Yes, that’s right, yes.

Mm, I’m trying to think who was with the grips, but there were any number of guys that wanted to get on it.

Yes.

Because from there you saw the inner workings of how really the union is worked, run.

But CB told me that in fact he was encouraged to take, mm, mm, an active role within, within the union. Some older guys, white guys, said ‘look CB, I think it would be great if you ran for office’ and did various kind of things. You didn’t find that in the Camera Local? There wasn’t any, any one sort of saying ‘look, hey, the world’s changed, look this Camera Local instead of being virtually lily white…’?

Right.

I mean I don’t know how many, I don’t know how many African Americans were, you know, sort of…

Yes.

Appeared at union meetings but this is a significant change.

I’m sure what happened because there were any number of times during the first eight to ten years where guys would see me at meetings or we would be talking about the issues and they would say ‘you should run for the board, mm, you should try and run for the board’ or ‘you should do it’. Then there were certain things that, that happened that, mm, like George Deeby talked to me, he was the president.

Yes.

About running for the board.

Do you think George was sympathetic to the arrival of African Americans? I mean he’s…

I think so.

He’d been around, he’d been around a while by then hadn’t he, wasn’t he at this point?

Well, he came over, he was an electrician that got into camera.

Yes.

So he, and he’s a minority also so I think he was sympathetic.

Yes.

But, mm, George is just, he’s a, he is just a good person. He believes in the union.

Yes.

That was his, his whole thing.

Yes.

I took a course from him back in like Seventy-three because he was into electronics camera because that was coming in, and I took that course and, mm, that’s how I met George. And from that point on when we would see each other he would say, you know, ‘what’s happening’ and ‘how’s your career going’, you know, stuff like that.

Yes, yes.

So maybe George was one of the guys that talked to me about it, mm, about getting involved. But all of a sudden I just decided I would run for the board also, and it was probably a combination of things. Mm, the, mm, it was just interesting to watch the whole process and see how it happened. The thing that I’m sorry about is I never pushed for more minorities because at any given time you could see that we had gone up part way but leveled off real fast and it had started to go down.

Oh. What do you mean by that? So you guys…

They stopped the, they stopped the Training Program and stopped hiring.

Right. And, and the number of African American new recruits dried up then?

There’s probably fewer now than 1970 when they had the big push.

Now that’s interesting isn’t it?

That’s what I’m thinking.

Yes, yes.

They might dispute that, but I’m thinking there’s, they’re, I’m sure in numbers there are more but because of the influx of other guys it’s still way below the ten per cent that we should have had.

Yes.

That’s what I’m saying.

Yes, yes.

Mm, it’s still going shall we say.

So the Minority Training Program just, it had been introduced in Nineteen… in 1970 was it or Sixty…?

Seventy, Seventy-one was the first, yes.

Yes, and then you were Seventy-one, Seventy-two?

Right.

How long did that Minority, I, I believe, as I understand it the studios had an agreement with the EEOC and the Justice Department to, mm, review the situation after I think it was two years. In some cases those programs continued, continued for four years, but you’re saying once those Training Programs finished that was it?

I think the Camera stopped for a year, they came back with the temp.

Yes.

And I don’t remember how much longer it went on.

But not many years?

Mm, if it went another five years.

Oh.

I would think that was about it as far as I, I can remember.

Yes.

Mm, because I, I just didn’t see the influx of guys coming in.

Yes.

You know, that, that… Of course, when you’re talking about five guys each year for a couple of years and then after that one or two that’s not a big influx of people.

Yes, yes, yes.

So, mm, I, that’s the thing I wish I had of pushed more, mm, about.

But the Camera Local didn’t take any interest in keeping the Minority Training Program going?

It didn’t seem like it.

Yes.

Because it would have happened otherwise.

Yes.

So they did not.

Yes.

That’s what I’m saying. The industry on the whole did not.

Yes. Well, the studios I think lost interest, that was something, something else.

The studios lost interest.

But the Camera Local, and you were inside the Camera Local, didn’t do much?

No, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t either.

Yes, yes.

I’m sorry to say I did not either.

Even, even those who, and I’m thinking, thank you. Even those, and I’m thinking here of, say, camera operators like Haskell Wexler who’s got a reputation, you know, a kind of, you know, on the left. Mm, people like him within the Camera Local didn’t, weren’t pushing for, for minority inclusion?

I don’t think so.

Nobody was?

I don’t think so.

Nobody was, mm, you’re saying nobody was hostile but nobody was, they didn’t see it as an issue?

Right.

Or a problem or something that needed…?

Right. We had five, we have four, we have two, whatever. No problem, everything is fine. That’s the way I see it.

Okay. So in fact things in some ways after that dramatic early 1970s, and in your case the establishment of a successful career, the issue of minorities just disappears?

Left off very fast. Very fast.

So by, by when? So roughly, you know, does, does the issue become unimportant? By the end of the Seventies?

By the end of the Seventies, the beginning of the Eighties, Eighties.

And by the time, we’re, we’re talking about a different situation by the beginning of the Eighties aren’t we? We’re talking about the rise, as you were just saying the rise of independent producers. A whole, you’re not employed by, you know, Universal Studios or, you know, Paramount or whatever it is you’re, you’re working for independent production companies on a much shorter, on a shorter term?

Yes, that’s right.

Do you think that benefited you or do you think that benefited African Americans inside, inside the industry at all?

No, I think it hurt us.

Okay.

I think it hurt us because there was somewhere, some point each studio started dropping their Camera Departments. Instead of having the equipment there they would lease the equipment, and that meant there was no place to call to put your name on an available list other than the union. So instead of having six or seven studios to have available lists you were down to just the union. At some point in the Eighties that changed because it was more beneficial I guess for them to lease it and be able to write it off as opposed to owning it the way they had done earlier, these studios.

Yes.

With cameras. That’s the only thing I can see. So it wasn’t, it was not beneficial.

And you, by this stage of course, you had a strong network of, of connections. Mm, and is that how you got most of your work, not directly through the studios and not directly through the studios anymore?

I would say, yes. After the Eighties it would, it didn’t come as much from the studios as it did from the independent people that, you know, guys that you knew...

Yes, yes.

That were working on different projects that you would call personally yourself.

Yes, yes.

As opposed to calling them plus the different studios and so on.

Did, and in this context presumably African Americans if they’re, if they’re not part of the network they ain’t going to get, they ain’t going to get work?

They’re not working.

Yes.

That’s true.

Yes.

That’s exactly what happened.

So the 1980s as far as, mm, progress is, is, as you’ve been saying, going backwards?

Starting to go backwards.

Yes.

It is starting to go backwards because definitely by the Nineties it was a different ball game. Each one of those decades was different.

Yes, yes. So in, mm, we’re not talking about things getting better and we’re now talking about things getting worse?

Not only worse for the, mm, [Pause] the overall industry but the way you go to work and do your job. Because the pay scales had changed, they started introducing short term contracts and over this amount of money contracts and things of this nature so it meant also that you were getting paid less than what the union had, but it was under a union contract.

Yes, yes.

So there were a combination, in other words the whole industry was shifting. Mm, it probably went from doing independent pictures and there weren’t as many big budget pictures. And then big budget pictures came back but the independents still had made the inroads so there were more of those. There were just a lot of things that transpired, and it’s just like actually today, mm, the work today. Because now you have the high definition cameras and the film cameras and they’re, they’re making a big push for high definition, high definition cameras, and that cuts out, and they’ve also eliminated an operator on, on the union reel for extra camera. Now a cameraman can come in and operate a camera whereas before he could do it but it used to be hush-hush, now he does it and he’s taken a job away from another operator, that just happened under the last contract I got in. So in other words instead of having a six man or seven man crew you have a six man crew because after the cameraman gets finished lighting the set he’ll now go off and operate, goes off and operates the extra camera.

Mm, mm. And you as far as your experience of the 1980s and 1990s, would you say these were tough decades for you?

[Pause] See I, I might be the wrong person to talk because they were not. Mm, I was able to find work. I mean I had down periods but not long spans of time and, mm, the, the motion picture industry to me is always very interesting because how can you possibly say ‘I’m going to go work on this show’, say you’re going to do a series for nine months and then you’re out of work and if the show gets picked up maybe you’ll work in those three months or maybe you won’t but you’ll work again when the show starts up if the cameraman liked your work or if whatever if he’s working. So it’s a, you never know but for me it seemed like I could leave a job… [End of Recording].