Guest Blog by film critic Jack Garner

Silent film legend Buster Keaton was long known as “Old Stone Face” because he never cracked a smile, even while houses collapsed around him and tornadoes blew through town. However, at least one thing was known to put a smile on his face: his George Eastman Award from Eastman House. Author Marion Meade noted in his biography, Cut to the Chase, the great comedian considered his Eastman award more prestigious than an Oscar®.

Keaton was part of the astonishing first group of winners of the aptly nicknamed “George” award, on Nov. 9, 1955. He joined an all-star roster that included Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Ronald Colman, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, and Lillian Gish. Though not all came to Rochester for the honors, many did, including Keaton, Pickford, Swanson, and Gish. They attracted a sellout crowd at the 3,000-seat Eastman Theatre.

Lillian Gish speaks from the Festival of Film Artists stage at the Eastman Theatre in 1955.

In the more than a half-century since, Rochester and George Eastman House have been host to a sparkling array of Eastman Award winners, from Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart to Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, and Meryl Streep. The award ceremony is held every few years, the centerpiece of a night of black-tie celebrating and important community fundraising at the Eastman House and its Dryden Theatre.

The event adds prestige to the Eastman House film archive, generates awareness and enthusiasm for the collection and the Museum’s motion picture preservation activities among important Hollywood figures, and is a great excuse for a grand party.

And sometimes, the honorees return the favor with important gifts to the museum. Director Martin Scorsese, the 1994 honoree, now stores some 8,000 titles from his world-class film collection at Eastman House, where they are often scheduled for screenings and will eventually be a permanent part of the Eastman House collection. And the 1997 honoree, actress Isabella Rossellini, has made Eastman House a repository for films by her famous father, Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini.

The awards began in 1955 as an idea by the Museum’s first director, Gen. Oscar Solbert. Founding film archivist James Card recalls in his memoirs that with the proliferation of film festivals in 1955 — and the growing popularity of the Academy Awards® — he should have foreseen that the “PR-conscious director” would conceive of a ceremony of his own. Card wrote that he was called into Solbert’s office: “ ‘We will award Georges,’ he announced. I firmly believed he was confident that in a manner of time, the Oscars® would be superceded by Georges.”

Certainly, that hasn’t happened. Yet the awards, which are held in high regard among those who’ve been honored, and probably a few who wish they would be honored.

First called the Festival of Film Artists Awards in both 1955 and 1957, the name was changed to the George Eastman Award “for distinguished contribution to the art of film” soon after but has had the nickname ‘The Georges” on and off since.

“The George Eastman Award was the first token of recognition established by a US cultural institution to pay tribute to the artistic achievements of the leading artists of the film industry,” says Patrick Loughney, a former Motion Picture Department curator at Eastman House, and now at the Library of Congress. “In terms of longevity and the prestige of past recipients, only Oscar® stands in comparison.”

Part of the initial attraction of the Georges was that the 1955 and 1957 honors were awarded to stars, directors, and cinematographers from 1915 through 1930, and were selected through extensive balloting, organized by Card, through mailings to any and all significant surviving participants of that important period of film history.

After the initial flurry of the 1955 and 1957 honors, the complex and difficult balloting process was put aside, and the museum directors, archivists, and boards began the process of selecting the stars, which were usually just one per ceremony, and usually about once every two or three years. The new process began in 1965 with Fred Astaire, and continued in the ’70s with Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller, Blanche Sweet, and director George Cukor (who, before becoming Katharine Hepburn’s favorite Hollywood director, honed his craft in the ’20s at Rochester’s Lyceum Theatre).

This reporter’s observance of the Georges began in 1978, when the incredibly likeable Jimmy Stewart was honored. As part of the ceremony, the Dryden Theatre hosted a screening of the then-rare and out-of-circulation Vertigo, which drew film aficionados from around the world.

1978 Eastman Award honoree James Stewart poses playfully on the site of the Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden while touring the Museum grounds.

The Eastman House also revisited the concept of honoring several stars at a large Eastman Theatre celebration in 1982, when several exceptional women were honored simultaneously: Joan Bennett, Dolores Del Rio, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Luise Rainer, and Sylvia Sidney.

The seventh of these legendary women was Louise Brooks, the silent screen siren who spent her last decades living in Rochester, and who had spent many hours studying films at Eastman House for her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood. The ill, apartment-bound recluse didn’t make it to the ceremony, but she sent word that she was thrilled with the honor  — which came only three years before her death.

The Eastman House has continued to be remarkably successful in attracting prestigious names to receive Georges and to be the all-important magnets for the fundraising ceremony. Fortunately, the awards establish their own natural sort of celebrity networking. Martin Scorsese, for example, led Eastman House to his friend and former wife, Isabella Rossellini, which led to another award (and to important treasures for the archive).

Meryl Streep in the Dryden Theatre with her 1999 Eastman Award.

As Meryl Streep said when she was honored in 1999, “I can see I’m in very august company.” And, since she’s an Oscar® champion and arguably the greatest actress of her generation, she and the newest recipient to be named, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winner Richard Gere, make the company even more august when future Eastman award recipients are determined.

The only time things didn’t work out as planned was in 1994 when Scorsese was honored and had to withdraw from attending at the last minute because of complications on the set of his movie, Casino. In his stead he sent Griffin Dunne, who’d starred in Scorsese’s After Hours.

On one of the grandest nights of Eastman Award history, on Oct. 24, 1987, recipient Gregory Peck was surprised by the appearance of one of his favorite co-stars, Audrey Hepburn. “I’m honored to bring to this ceremony the film industry’s admiration for your talent, their respect for your integrity, and the love they feel for you.”

Peck was delighted. But he also said he was happy because the Eastman House honors also put a spotlight on the Museum’s important role as a leading center of film preservation.

“For a long time, Hollywood didn’t realize the importance of preserving its films,” he told the audience here. “These old films are an invaluable source of information for film students. And, for the general public, they’re a window into the past.”

Audrey Hepburn shows her Eastman Award to a sold-out Dryden crowd in 1992, after its presentation by then-chairman of the Museum’s board of trustees Bruce Bates.

Five years after Peck’s ceremony, Hepburn would herself be honored with an Eastman Award. Though her adoring fans didn’t know it at the time, they witnessed history. Those close to Hepburn knew she was quite ill, though she put on a brave and stunningly gorgeous face. Ultimately, it was a bittersweet occasion, the last major public appearance by the Hollywood icon, who died four months later.

Jack Garner was staff film critic of Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle for 28 years and for 20 of those years was the nationally syndicated chief film critic of Gannett News Service. A fixture in Rochester journalism since 1970, he was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Attica prison rebellion in 1971. Today he is a member of Eastman House’s Motion Picture Acquisitions Committee and the Eastman House Council, and in 2007 was honored with the George Eastman Medal of Honor for his contribution to motion pictures and the community.

Sure, the times are changing and technology moves foreword. Yes, it’s sad that films days are numbered, but quit your whining. There’s another revolution in photography and it’s coming from Rochester, the “image city.”  I’m referring to the counter culture of historic photographic processes and they’re hot. Photographers all over the world are making their own plates and papers— and they’re doing it here at Eastman House.

Azo print made with the gelatin emulsion process being taught in April

Tintype being fixed

Coating paper in the gelatin emulsion darkroom 

 Scully & Osterman Skylight Studio, where we’ll shoot tintypes in March

The revival in the daguerreotype process started at George Eastman House back in the 1970s. Hey, we also jump-started the current craze in collodion photography by teaching the very first wet plate workshops in the mid-1990s. In the last two years we introduced dry collodion plates, collodion chloride printing-out paper and even did workshops in the earliest processes of Niepce, Daguerre and Talbot… the heliograph, physautotype and photogenic drawing! In private tutorials here at the museum we’ve taught albumen on glass and even orotones!

In March we have a great three day Tintype Workshop where we’ll make plates under the skylight over at Scully & Osterman Studio and see amazing original images and even collodion era cameras and equipment from the archives at the museum.

Gelatin silver emulsions are soon going to be the next historic photographic process revival and now is the time to gather information before the culture is gone. This April ex-Kodak emulsion engineer Ron Mowrey and I will teach our third gelatin emulsion workshop!

This is the real stuff for all you people who have been so upset about the demise of emulsion. We’ll be making a simple printing paper emulsion, but it’s the first step to the more advanced film emulsions; so one step at a time. If we get enough interest we’ll give a film and plate emulsion workshop next year, but the prerequisite would be the basic workshop. So, the way to keep film alive…is to make it your self!

Read more about all our 2012 Photography Workshops, or contact me directly at mosterman@geh.org to arrange a private tutorial, custom group workshop or if you need some advice with a process that’s giving you trouble.

The following essay is from the recently published exhibition catalogue Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard. The book is published by Yale University Press, in association with the Phillips Collection, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The catalogue is edited by curator Elizabeth Easton with contributions from leading scholars, including George Eastman House Curator of Technology Todd Gustavson. His entry, Innovative Devices: George Eastman and the Handheld Camera is excerpted below. Reproduced by permission. 

In the digital age, making photographic images is so very simple—requiring about the same effort as throwing a light switch—that we do so almost without thinking about it. It’s easy to take for granted a process that seems to involve nothing more than pressing the button and instantaneously viewing the picture. But photography has not always been a simple practice. For nearly a half century after its invention, the medium was almost exclusively the domain of professionals. Not until the 1880s, when George Eastman’s Kodak camera and other instruments intended for the consumer-photography market set the cornerstones of amateur snapshot photography, did the camera begin to become a ubiquitous device.

The photographic process, announced in 1839 by the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, captured and fixed the images that were viewed through a camera obscura. This was accomplished through a combination of mechanics (the camera), optics (to improve the image), and chemistry (to sensitize and process the image). Over the next forty years, improvements made to all aspects of the process—cameras, shutters, lenses, and chemistry—led to cheaper and simpler image-making, generating a growing interest for the nonprofessional photographer.

The technicalities of early photography required the photographer, first, to sensitize the media and then to process the image immediately after exposure. Although this system was fine for the professional, it was generally too cumbersome and time-consuming for most amateurs. On April 13, 1880, George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, was issued U.S. Patent No. 226,503 for his machine to coat gelatin dry plates. The following January, with the financial backing of Rochester businessman Henry Strong, he formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company, becoming one of the first commercial producers of light-sensitive photographic emulsions. With reliable plates now available, companies worldwide began manufacturing cameras designed specifically to use them.

Although they were convenient, dry plates had several drawbacks: they were both fragile and heavy to transport. Lightweight, flexible support for photographic emulsion had been investigated starting in the mid-1860s, but without much success. George Eastman aimed his emulsion-making skills at this target and, late in 1884, introduced Eastman’s American Film, which used Rives paper—both flexible and lightweight—as support for its emulsion. Yet because this material was not transparent, during processing the images had to be stripped from the paper support, adhered temporarily to glass for printing, and finally, stored on a “skin” made of a semitransparent plastic. To complement his American Film, Eastman and a partner, William H. Walker (a pioneer builder of cameras with standardized parts), designed and patented the Eastman-Walker Roll Holder, which attached to most existing cameras to allow the use of roll film. To reflect its new product line, the firm changed its name to the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. Around this time, Eastman built an emulsions-manufacturing plant in London to avoid spoilage problems he had experienced a few years earlier with film that had been shipped across the Atlantic. From early on, he planned to produce and sell his products worldwide; the London plant was the first of many to be located in major European cities.

All things considered, Eastman clearly needed a new product.  Introduced to the public in the September 15, 1888, issue of Scientific American, the Kodak was Eastman’s first successful amateur camera.

These earliest Kodaks and the models developed over the next decade or so represent the beginning of snapshot photography. The snapshot, a term borrowed from hunting, is one taken quickly and without careful aim. Amateur photographers of the time met with derision for this type of shooting; nevertheless, the snapshot meant lots of exposed film and big business for photographic suppliers. Soon, the many new products made for the amateur market eclipsed those made for the professional, revolutionizing the industry. In 1892, to better connect the success of its cameras to their manufacturer, the Rochester firm changed its name to the Eastman Kodak Company.

The handheld camera loaded with roll film was a collector of moments, facilitating the preservation of visual impressions. Many artists frequently used the camera as a sketchbook, a tool for quickly transcribing a likeness that could later be “developed” into a more finished work. They were drawn to its potential for capturing the fast-paced, ever-changing nature of modern life and culture. An early “mobile device,” the handheld camera advanced a fresh way of seeing based on a new way of measuring time. Although the snapshot was not exactly an instantaneously produced image, it represented shorter pieces of time than previous photographic technology had allowed. And the camera’s waist-level perspective—differing greatly from that of the human eye—is readily apparent in many works of art. Frequently, the results were unconventional images that reflected the poet Charles Baudelaire’s influential characterization of modernity as “the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent.”

Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard exhibition opens tomorrow at The Philips Collection in Washington D.C.

For many in attendance, the highlight of last year’s Cannes Film Festival wasn’t Terrence Malick’s grand and ambitious The Tree of Life, but Aki Kaurismäki’s low-key, unassuming Le Havre. Inarguably Finland’s best-known filmmaker — his only close competition is his brother, Mika — Kaurismäki belongs to an elite group of directors able to combine a distinct cinematic vision with a deep, humanist generosity toward their characters. Think Renoir, Ozu, or Keaton, three of the director’s influences: like Renoir, Kaurismäki’s concern for the people who populate his films is rooted in a keen awareness of class; like Ozu, he delights in static compositions splashed with primary colors; and like Keaton, his heroes are stoic and his humor deadpan. As Roger Ebert has noted, Kaurismäki “has created a world all his own, and you can recognize it from almost every shot.”

Scene from LE HAVRE, 2011.

That’s particularly true of his latest effort, a wry comedy that finds a Tatiesque community in the port city of Le Havre, France, sheltering a young Gabonese immigrant from the authorities as they try to reunite him with his mother. Even though it deals with a serious issue, the film is relentlessly funny and optimistic, a fable for our times that delights in the power of working-class solidarity and basic human kindness. It’s also gorgeous: a sworn devotee of 35mm, Kaurismäki uses the run-down, seaside beauty of the location to its full advantage, creating frames full of aquatic blues and greens and reminding us that, in his words, “film is light, digital is electricity.” We’re very excited to be hosting an exclusive three-day run of this wonderful film, and to celebrate, we’ll also be screening three other Kaurismäki classics: the Oscar®-nominated The Man Without a Past (Jan. 17), the blackly comic The Match Factory Girl (Jan. 24), and the unique literary “adaptation” La Vie de Bohème (Jan. 31) — one of whose characters returns as the protagonist of Le Havre!

Our thanks to George Eastman House member Richard C. Reid for sharing his memories from our magical evening with Peter Ostrum:

 As part of its Visiting Artist series on Saturday, November 26, 2011, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film presented the enchanting 1971 fantasy film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  A capacity crowd of appreciative adults and children crowded the Dryden Theatre for the showing that marked the 40^th anniversary year of its release. As a special treat, even better than a Willy Wonka Candy Bar, they also got to meet and hear Peter Ostrum who played Charlie Bucket, one of the five children who had found the golden ticket inside a Wonka Bar that won them a tour of the magical candy factory by its mystical owner, Willy Wonka (so memorably portrayed by Gene Wilder).

At 7 p.m. Ms. Dresden Engle, Public Relations Manager for the Eastman House, introduced Peter— now Dr. Peter Ostrum, a large animal veterinarian practicing in upstate New York. The genial, thickly-mustached, unassuming 52-year old appeared greatly touched by the waves of loud applause and cheers that immediately filled the hall.

In his introductory remarks prefacing the film, Peter observed that on its initial release, the movie was not a hit at the box office and received lukewarm reviews from the critics. An adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s book, the picture essentially existed, Ostrum stated, to sell candy for the Quaker Oats Company which was the primary backer of the production.  Over time, however, audiences found the film through its video releases and took it to heart.

He then joined his wife and family in the audience for the viewing, his first one in many years, he  noted.  As the opening credits rolled and the words, “Introducing Peter Ostrum as Charlie,” flashed across the screen, the audience again broke into wild applause.  It was thrilling to hear them as they joined the characters in song as the film progressed. Clearly, for many viewers present, this was a film for which they held not only high respect but much love.

In the hour-long Question and Answer session that followed as the guest of honor and Ms. Engle occupied chairs on the stage, a pole of candy bars between them, Dr. Ostrum shared his memories of the film’s production.  It was largely a matter of being “at the right place at the right time,” he said of securing the leading child’s role. He was then a twelve-year old member of the Children’s Theater at the Cleveland Playhouse when his name was recommended to the film’s casting director. Since no script was available at that point, Peter read aloud from Dahl’s book as a few Polaroids were snapped. Weeks went by before he was one of a handful called in for a screen test.  Despite never being told he had actually won the part, he shared,  he was advised to have a passport and be ready in case he was called since he might have at best ten days’ notice (which was the case).

He flew to Munich in August 1970 where filming was done over the next five months. He was initially accompanied by his father whom, he noted, had been “a guest” of the Germans in the last war. His mother later replaced his father for the bulk of the time there. The first scenes he filmed were those seen in the beginning of the picture as he runs about town delivering newspapers, planned as a way to gently ease Peter into the whole process.  Of Mel Stuart, the movie’s director, Peter said he was “not the easiest person to work with,” adding that Mel would be the first to acknowledge this. He remembers Stuart generally knew what he didn’t want in the movie but had trouble communicating what he did want.  Roald Dahl, who had been contracted to do the screenplay, had sufficient difficulties with the director in translating from page to screen, to drop out of the project early, Ostrum added.

“Each day was a different surprise,” he said of the filming. His favorite scene? It was the dance sequence with Jack Albertson who played Grandfather Joe who accompanies Charlie to Wonka’s factory. The veteran actor of vaudeville, burlesque, Broadway, television and films, proved to be “a mentor” to Peter and they kept up a friendly relationship in the years that followed until his passing at age 74 in 1981. Peter’s least favorite scene involved the Wonkamobile when it was sprayed with flame-retardant foam again and again in the usual multiple takes made of any scene.

He found it easy to work with Gene Wilder  who, Peter observed, essentially had been given free rein by director Stuart to develop the Wonka character that we see in the film. Peter was especially grateful for the advance warning that Gene gave him prior to shooting the sequence towards the end of the film when Wonka screams at him at length for violating the terms of the contract he had signed.  Yet even with that heads up, it was tough scene on both of them because Gene hated having to be so mean to him.

At the director’s insistence, Peter and the other children were kept away from the sets as much as possible so that when scenes were filmed, their reactions to the strange rooms in the Wonka factory would be more wondrously genuine. In his case, however, Peter admitted to some peeking on occasions since he was there much longer than the other children.  What did take him and the other child actors by surprise was the sight of the Oompa Loopas, the factory’s workers, portrayed by  a team of little people actors aged from their 20s to 60s.

As for the impact on his life that making this one movie has had, it seems to have been reasonably good. He related a charming anecdote about nervously first telling his future wife about it while they were rowing on a lake (and prior to her meeting his parents whom he thought might tell her about the film before he could).  Concerned for her reaction, he instead was taken aback when she admitted she had never seen the movie. Once she had, she again surprised him by saying she never realized how big a part he actually had in the film.

Nowadays, Peter occasionally visits some schools doing live productions of the story to talk about the film and his role in it. He credits an Internet fan of the film as being most responsible for getting the surviving cast back together for a reunion in the 1990s, and they still keep in touch as a result.  As for the Johnny Depp remake in 2005, Peter said he liked it, adding that he was particularly grateful that it reinvigorated interest in the original film.  Interestingly, he admitted that, “I didn’t truly appreciate the film until I had children of my own.”

When filming was over, Ostrum stated he was offered a three-picture contract, but as no particular projects were discussed, and as he wanted to get back to “seventh grade and soccer”, he declined. Although a few years later he did take some tentative steps to get back into the business, ultimately, Wonka proved to be his only movie.  But Peter was clear about it: he had no regrets. “If I could only make one film, then I made a good one,” he said proudly.  By their quick and sustained applause, he knew the audience agreed that he had, too.