HARRY STRADLING JR

(7 January 1925 - 17 October 2017)

New York-born cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr, who has died aged 92, was part of a film cameraman dynasty. Both his father, Harry Stradling Sr (1901-1970), and his great-uncle Walter Stradling, Mary Pickford’s cameraman (1875-1918), were cinematographers, and his two sons, Bob and John Stradling, are also cameramen. Harry Jr started out as an assistant on Gaslight (1944) and subsequently worked on Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, The Kissing Bandit, Intruder in the Dust, Watch the Birdie, Young Bess, The Student Prince and Jeanne Eagels etc. He also worked with his father on Guys and Dolls, The Pajama Game, The Miracle, A Summer Place, Auntie Mame and Gypsy. Stradling Jr first became Director of Photography on Richard Quine’s Synanon in 1965. Then there was Burt Kennedy’s 1967 western with Henry Fonda, Welcome to Hard Times, after which he shot 86 episodes of Gunsmoke and 21 of Cimarron Strip before returning to movies with With Six You Get Egg Roll, Doris Day’s last film. There were more Burt Kennedy westerns: Support Your Local Sheriff, Support Your Local Gunfighter, Dirty Dingus Magee, Young Billy Young and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, plus Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man, Something Big with Dean Martin, and McQ and Rooster Cogburn, both with John Wayne. Some of his later films included Battle of Midway, The Big Bus, The Greatest, Convoy, Buddy Buddy and, for Blake Edwards, S.O.B., Micki + Maude, A Fine Mess and Blind Date. Caddyshack II (1988) was his last film. Harry Stradling Jr was Oscar-nominated for 1776 and The Way We Were (whereas his father won Academy Awards for The Picture of Dorian Gray and My Fair Lady).

MICHAEL DARVELL