Happy Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month, everyone! Today, Editor Sophie is exploring the life and legacy of legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe.

James Wong Who?

Wong Tung Jim was born in 1899 in what is now Guangdong province, China. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1905, when his father moved him and his new stepmother to Pasco, Washington. It was there that a teacher assigned him the anglicized version of his name, James Wong Howe, which he would use for the rest of his life. Wong Howe developed an early interest in photography thanks to a Brownie camera he bought at a local drugstore; a brief foray into headless photography quickly led him to spring for the version with a viewfinder.

As a teen and young adult, Wong Howe bounced around between a number of odd jobs on the West Coast, including a stint as a professional boxer. He eventually made his way to Hollywood, where he began working as part of the cleaning staff at Famous Players–Lasky (you may know it today as Paramount Pictures). As a slate boy, he caught the attention of legendary producer and director Cecille B. DeMille. Wong Howe received an on-the-spot promotion to assistant cameraman in 1919, when the crew needed an extra camera operator for a complicated shot involving actor Gloria Swanson and a live lion during the production of DeMille’s “Male and Female.”

James Wong Howe’s jump from assistant cameraman to director of photography can be credited to his side hustle at the time, doing portrait photography for Hollywood stars. That included actor Mary Miles Minter, who was known for her extremely pale blue eyes that often appeared washed out in photos and film, thanks to the orthochromatic film used at the time. When Wong Howe had the opportunity to photograph her, however, he managed to make her eyes appear dark. This delighted Minter, who requested that Wong Howe be in charge of photography for her upcoming feature film, “Drums of Fate.”

There was one tiny problem: Wong Howe didn’t quite know how he had managed to make Minter’s eyes look so dark in his original portraits. He figured out a way to reverse-engineer his accidental breakthrough: when taking her photos, he’d been standing near a black backdrop that had reflected into her eyes, darkening them enough to counteract the way orthochromatic film tended to overexpose the color blue. When it came time to film “Drums of Fate,” Wong Howe photographed Minter’s close-ups through a hole cut in a black velvet curtain to achieve the same effect.

That was the start of his five-decade-long career as a cinematographer, which successfully navigated both the advent of sound and color film. In 2003, Wong Howe was voted by members of the International Cinematographers Guild as one of the 10 most influential cinematographers in history: “[Billy] Bitzer, Howe, [Gregg] Toland and [Freddie] Young were in the first and second generation of cinematographers who were literally inventing a new visual language.”

“A New Visual Language”

One of the visual language elements that James Wong Howe is best known for is the use of deep focus. As a filmmaking technique, deep focus essentially just means that everything in front of the camera lens — background, foreground, and middle ground — is clearly visible to the audience. “Citizen Kane” (heard of it?) is probably the most famous example of effective use of deep focus: Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland use it to immerse audiences in the frantic yet isolated world of Charles Foster Kane. It’s often cited as the advent of the deep focus shot, but Wong Howe had been using the same technique since as early as 1931’s “Transatlantic,” 10 years before the release of “Citizen Kane.”

Some of Wong Howe’s best deep focus work (as well as his tone-perfect lighting) can be seen in the 1957 Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis film “Sweet Smell of Success.” James Wong Howe was specifically requested to shoot “Sweet Smell of Success” by Lancaster (who doubled as a producer for the film), after working with him two years earlier on “The Rose Tattoo,” the first of two films to earn Wong Howe the Academy Award for “Best Cinematography.” “Sweet Smell of Success” is well worth a watch for Wong Howe’s gorgeous photography of 1950s New York alone, but you also get a whip-smart script and the joy of watching two of the smarmiest, most hateable dudes to ever grace the silver screen absolutely destroy their own lives. It’s great!

Aside from deep focus, James Wong Howe was also a master of lighting — particularly low-key lighting, which resulted in the nickname “Low-Key Howe.” If you don’t know what that means, picture the typical look of a film noir: deep shadows that emphasize angles and outlines, withholding information from the audience at will. At the same time, he liked to prioritize using “natural” light sources (that is, as natural as anything can be when it’s constructed on a sound stage or highly curated on-location set). When he couldn’t find a natural light source, he’d build them into the scene, from car headlights on a rural road to flares on a busy World War II airfield.

When Wong Howe made the jump to Technicolor in 1938 for David O. Selznick’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” his preference for naturalistic lighting got him in trouble with the people at Technicolor, who had strict rules about how films using their color technology should be lit. In fact, he was banned from using Technicolor for three years following his work on “Tom Sawyer.” This was probably perfectly fine with Wong Howe, who much preferred the freedom that came with working in black and white.

When it came to capturing the right mood for a film, camera work was also incredibly important to Wong Howe. His short career as a boxer was likely a big influence on his approach to the pugilistic films “They Made Me a Criminal” and “Body and Soul” — he was one of the first filmmakers to bring the camera inside of the ring to help capture the brutality of a fight. I highly recommend this short video essay from Mark Laurila, which explores an oft-repeated anecdote about Wong Howe donning a pair of roller skates to get the perfect shot for the final fight in “Body and Soul.” From creating an early version of a crab dolly, to employing handheld cameras for a documentary-like feel (sometimes even going as far as to attach the camera directly to an actor), to deploying shots typically used in war films within a romance film, Wong Howe wasn’t afraid to experiment with moving his camera in unconventional, “gimmicky” ways, as long as the end results contributed to the overall artistic and narrative arc of the film.

A Lifetime Behind the Camera

All of James Wong Howe’s innovations and incredible body of work came at a time when he was one of very few Asian Americans working behind the scenes in Hollywood. Wong Howe, despite living in the U.S. since he was 5 years old, couldn’t become a citizen until 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. And he wasn’t able to legally marry his partner, white author Sanora Babb, until California overturned its anti-miscegenation laws in 1948. Wong Howe was simultaneously one of the most sought-after cinematographers in his lifetime, earning 10 Academy Award nominations and two wins (for “The Rose Tattoo” and “Hud”), while also dealing with everyday racism of fellow crew and cast members on set.

Before we wrap things up, here are a few final bits of James Wong Howe trivia that I just couldn’t leave out:

Even if every film I’ve discussed so far sounds unfamiliar to you, you’ve probably seen Wong Howe’s work at least once without even knowing it: he was the uncredited cinematographer for the live-action orchestra sequences in “Fantasia.”
Wong Howe was reportedly Francis Ford Coppola’s first choice to photograph “The Godfather,” but he wasn’t in good enough health to commit to it at the time.
His final film was “Funny Lady” — this might only be notable to me because I had literally no idea there was a sequel to “Funny Girl.”
He only directed one feature film in his lifetime: “Go, Man, Go” from 1954, which is about the origins of the Harlem Globetrotters and features Sidney Poitier in one of his earliest film roles.

If you want a more in-depth dive into Wong Howe’s life and legacy, this 2022 Criterion Collection piece by film critic Walter Chaw is fantastic, aptly describing Wong Howe as “a director’s ideal partner, steadfastly devoted to the process of telling a story.” That said, my recommendation for you this weekend: go find yourself a film photographed by James Wong Howe (there are about 140 to choose from, and many are streaming for free on sites like Pluto, Tubi, or Kanopy), mute the sound if you’re feeling daring, and kick back to enjoy a master at his craft.