Finding Lost Voices: Changing the Way We See Film, the Groundbreaking Life of Cinematographer, Brianne Murphy (1933 - 2003)

A weekly email that brings back the voices of those who have been forgotten or misremembered

Welcome to the latest issue of Finding Lost Voices. I want to begin this week’s post with a thank you to all who have become paid subscribers. I appreciate your support as I transition into my next research project — writing my book Strong about the history of strong-bodied women in the United States from the late 1800s to the present. This work requires travel to research collections, and your subscription to this blog supports that research. If you’ve enjoyed these posts and have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

On Sunday night, like 19.7 million other people, I tuned in to watch the Academy Awards. But for me, those shimmering dresses and dramatic speeches didn’t bring me back to the films that were being lauded. Instead, they reminded me of what stories were missing and the time I spent at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood while I was researching and writing my biography Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb. Babb’s husband, the incredible cinematographer James Wong Howe, received ten Academy Award nominations during his lifetime, winning twice in 1955 and 1963. In Hollywood, he is a well-known and respected name, but the reason his papers are at the Margaret Herrick Library is not because of this. They are there because, after Jimmie’s death in 1976, Babb spent ten years of her life collecting and assembling his papers for their collection.

Sanora Babb and James Wong Howe at the Academy Awards

Babb was no stranger to the Oscar’s ceremony. But both times the envelope was opened on stage and James Wong Howe’s name was called out as the winner, when he went on the stage to accept his award, he never thanked her. At the 36th Academy Awards ceremony, on April 13, 1964, when Howe was presented his second Academy Award by a towering James Stewart for Hud, the western he made with Paul Newman, he merely thanked his director, Martin Ritt for giving him the opportunity to work on the film, and the “wonderful crew from Paramount Studios” before thanking the Academy and walking off of the stage. Like the other almost exclusively male recipients of the awards, he did not thank his wife for what she had done — and sacrificed —to help him receive his award. However, for a brief second, when Howe’s name was called, the camera panned to his seat and viewers could see Babb, in her seat next to his, clapping wildly with joy.

When he won his Academy Award in 1955, Howe became the first Asian American to receive an Academy Award, which was an incredible achievement—especially in the 1950s. (Babb and Howe had just been given the legal right to marry in 1948, due to California’s ban on interracial marriages.)

But the Academy Awards still remain a place where women are objectified and overlooked. (Don’t even get me started on the fact that Demi Moore did not receive the Academy Award for her acting in The Substance.) A fact that is likely not going to change until we change who is hired to be behind the camera. Did you know that an Academy Award for cinematography has never been given to a woman? So today, I’d like to highlight the career of Brianne Murphy (1933–2003), a pioneering cinematographer who wasn’t afraid to fight back against a sexist industry.

Cinematographer, Brianne Murphy (1933 - 2003)

Geraldine Brianne Murphy was born in London to American parents in 1933. When World War II threatened London, her family returned to the United States. She attended Champlain College and Brown University and joined the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City during the 1950s to study acting. But acting wasn’t where her heart was. As she later revealed in an interview with American Cinematographer, “I wasn’t crazy about acting, but I was crazy about show people.” In the 1950s, there were not many opportunities for women to enter the film industry, so Murphy had to be inventive.

Her opportunity came when On the Waterfront (1954) was filming in New York. She stood around near the set where the filming was happening, hoping to learn something about the filming process. As luck would have it, she recalled in an interview, one of the camera crew members thought she was working on set and asked her to "take a Zeiss [a camera lens] over to [the rental house] F&B and swap it for a Cooke [another type of camera lens]." I said, 'Sure.' I didn’t have the vaguest idea what he was talking about, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Of course, once I got over there, I asked, 'What’s a Zeiss? What’s a Cooke? And what’s this thing in my hand?'

Cinematographer, Brianne Murphy (1933 - 2003) Behind the Camera.

Standing on set, Murphy got to know the director, Elia Kazan, and she got a feel for how a film was created. There were no women on set except for the actors, but Murphy did not let that deter her from what she wanted. Over the next year, she learned photography while working for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. With this knowledge, she moved to Los Angeles, where she soon met low-budget filmmaker Jerry Warren, who recruited her as a unit photographer. (She would marry Warren in 1956, and they divorced in 1959.)

The union for cinematographers (which controlled most of the camera work in Hollywood) did not allow women to join. When Murphy tried to join, she said the union officer told her: "My wife doesn't drive a car, and you're not going to operate a camera. You'll get in over my dead body." (She would finally be asked to join in 1973.)

Brianne Murphy, Ted Voigtlander and Michael Landon

To get non-union feature-film camerawork, she used the name “Brian Murphy” or her initials, and when they called her, she would speak in a low voice to get a foot in the door. Most of the time, she would earn the job due to her knowledge, experience, and tenacity. But some employers would fire her as soon as she arrived on set and discovered she was a woman.

When asked if the camera was not too heavy for a woman to handle, Murphy would reply: "No more than carrying a child."

In 1975, Murphy got a career break when Richard C. Glouner — famous for his hit, Emmy-winning series Columbo — had to leave the show during production and named Murphy as his replacement. As Murphy recalls, “He said that there was only one choice: Bri Murphy. [The studio then asked,] 'Okay, what's his number?' Glouner said, 'Well, I hope you don't hate your mother, because it's a woman.' They said, 'No way are we going to put a woman on a sound stage at Universal.'” Glouner stood his ground, and Murphy was hired, establishing her career as a director of photography.

When actor Anne Bancroft made her directorial debut with the 20th Century Fox comedy Fatso (1980), she hired Murphy as her director of photography, making Murphy the first woman to hold that position on a major studio release.

She would go on to work on many of the shows I grew up on, including Little House on the Prairie, and she would fight to change how women were perceived in Hollywood. Murphy died of cancer at the age of 70 on Aug. 20, 2003, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Judging by what I saw last Sunday while watching the Academy Awards, there is still a lot of work to be done in changing the way we see films. And what better way to change that than to change who has the eye behind the camera?

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Upcoming Events

March

TONIGHT - March 5, 4:30 - 6:00 PM- Iris Jamahl Dunkle in Conversation with Gavin Jones at The Bill Lane Center for the American West: Stanford, CA

TOMMORROW - March 6 - 6:30 - 8:00 PM (MT) The Creative Writing Reading Series and the Center for the American West Present a Reading with Iris Jamahl Dunkle (Online - link to Zoom Meeting)

March 13- 5:00 PM Iris Jamahl Dunkle Reads from Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, Garden City Community College, Kansas

March 14 - 6:30 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle at Books and Books in Key West, FL

March 21 - 2:00 PM Iris Jamahl Dunkle at the New York Public Library, New York City

March 30, 4:00-5:30 PM, Iris Jamahl Dunkle at the Occidental Center for the Arts, Occidental, CA

April

April 12 - 3:00 PM Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Full Circle Bookstore, Oklahoma City.

May

May 17 - 5:30 - 7:30 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle at the National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA