Karl Brown was born on December 26, 1896 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and cinematographer, known for Under Fiesta Stars (1941), Flames (1932) and The Ape Man (1943). He was married to Edna Mae Cooper. He died on March 25, 1990 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
[Describing his days at Kinemacolor Co., a studio in the early 20th century that shot all of its films in the "Kinemacolor" process] Our little one-reel pictures were made to exploit color for color's sake. There was one about a hospital fire, showing lots of flames; another, from a [Nathaniel Hawthorne] story about a pumpkin that becomes a man, showed up the golden yellow of the carved jack-o'-lantern very well indeed. There was another about British soldiers, featuring the red and gold and white of their uniforms . . . The audiences [in] California seemed to care nothing about our beautiful colors. What they wanted was raw melodrama and lots of it, and what seemed to stir them most of all was the steady flood of pictures made by a man named D.W. Griffith.
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[describing his mentor in his 1973 memoir "Adventures with D. W. Griffith"] [Griffith] was the White Knight of "Alice in Wonderland," forever noble, forever gallant, forever dreaming, and forever falling off his horse.
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Fact
1
Worked in the lab for Kinemacolor Co., a production company that shot its films in a color process called Kinemacolor, one of the first--if not the first--studios to turn out full-color films.
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Began his long career as a 16-year-old assistant cameraman to D.W. Griffith.
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Former still photographer and lab technician, first associated with director D.W. Griffith as minor actor, then assistant to cinematographer G.W. Bitzer. Invented the double-printing technique used for the crucifixion scenes in Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916), on which he worked as second cameraman. Later perfected the miniature projection process, used for magnification from small models (for example, King Kong (1933)). In the late 1930s started a new career, writing or adapting screenplays for several B-productions, several of which starred Boris Karloff.
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Had been a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) since 1919, shortly after the organization was chartered. Served as Vice President from 1924 to 1925.
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