Hollywood is Where You
Find It
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Where would you go if you wanted to see a 1926
Rolls Royce, a complete gunsmith facility, a concert grand piano
rebuilding operation and one of the most comprehensive collections
of motion picture equipment and still cameras (collected by one
person) in the world, all contained under one roof?
Hollywood? New York? London? A scavenger hunt?
Guess again. This unlikely conglomeration of eclectic and cinematographic
memorabilia is located in the tiny town of Midland, North Carolina
(population 4000). You may very well ask yourself how your writer
discovered such a fantastic array of Hollywood history literally
hidden away in the backwoods of North Carolina. Well, even if
you didn't ask yourself, I'll be happy to tell you.
Some time ago I spent four months on a show
photographing cars spinning, crashing and flipping for Hal Needham.
Our production offices and locations centered around Monroe,
a small town in North Carolina. You know it's a small town if
it has only one telephone prefix! When working six days a week
in a situation like this, you tend to look toward the outlying
areas for sources of recreation on your one precious day off.
(After you've done your laundry of course.)
Some of the local crew had mentioned that there
was a man with a collection of antique cameras not too far from
our home base. The director of photography on our show was Mike
Shea. Mike was somewhat of an expert on motion picture equipment.
I got the idea that he was an expert when one day someone was
talking about macro lenses and Mike casually rattled off every
macro lens that Kilfitt Optik made since 1950 and he knew the
range of f/stops on each lens! Well, Mike and I were somewhat
apprehensive about our expedition since neither of us was born
with a sense of direction. (We'd make Columbus look like an advisor
to Rand McNally.)
In any case, we made our way through the back
roads and wooded areas to a beautiful sixty-five acre plot of
land on which sets a farm with a 5000 square foot warehouse that
was once a bowling alley located thirty-five miles away. This
grand and unusual place is the pride and joy of a man by the
name of Martin Hill. As a young man, Hill wanted to write and
direct motion pictures and did in fact start out by making documentaries
and local television commercials. Yet as time progressed his
farm and family obligations necessitated his buying and selling
motion picture equipment to supplement his earnings. As Hill
put it, "After a while it became a case of the tail wagging the
dog." As his equipment business became successful he decided
to concentrate entirely on that aspect of the business.
Anyway back to our journey… Meandering up the
100 foot driveway is an experience in itself. As we approached
his shop, the first thing that caught our eyes was the pile of
Mole-Richardson 10Ks stacked against the building. The characteristic
Mole-Richardson "techno-red" colored lamps clashed with the forest
green background. A completely refurbished RKO studio crane sat
by the roadside (more on that crane later). Just outside the
front door two of Hill's associates painstakingly worked on a
vintage Simplex projector probing into the weathered motor for
signs of life. I wondered how many feet of film had cranked through
that projector over the years. For all we know, Mack Sennett
might have sat in front of this very one while watching his dailies.
As it turns out, quite a lot of Hill's equipment was used in
order to "prop" the Richard Attenborough film Chaplin.
Entering Martin Hill's facility you do not
know where to look first. An array of chrome camera and tripod
fittings highlights the familiar shapes and colors unique to
Mitchell, Arriflex, Auricon, and Cinema Products Equipment. Cameras
fill every nook and cranny of this combination techshop/museum/showroom.
Two college students were busily looking over
an Arri 16S that they were considering purchasing for their film
school project. A sea of vintage fluid heads, geared heads, shelves
and shelves of lenses of every make and description line the
walls. The place is so packed with equipment that you must take
special care when moving around as the inventory has found its
way onto much of the floorspace. We felt just like kids in a
candy store.
Walking through Hill's shop is like walking
through select pages of film history. This equipment has "been
there and done that"! Technicolor's three-strip camera #7, which
was one of seven Technicolor cameras used to photograph the burning
of Atlanta sequence in "Gone With the Wind" sat right
in front of me. I couldn't help wondering if Harry Wolf, ASC
had
threaded this particular camera while he was working on "Gone
With the Wind." Mitchell BNC bodies were everywhere. As a
matter of fact, Hill proudly boasts that at one time he had over
ten percent of the 364 manufactured BNCs in his shop. Here are
some obscure facts to impress the crew during your next rain
delay: BNC number one was made from NC body #3 and no serial
#13 was ever made owing to superstition.
I walked over to a BNC that had an F&B Ceco
Camera Co. plate on the housing. For all I knew, this was one
of the cameras I used to practice with back in 1967 in Ceco's
camera prep room on 43rd Street in New York City. If only this
equipment could boast of its adventures.
I asked Hill to talk about the equipment with
the most interesting history attached to it. He referred me to
the RKO studio crane in front of the building. Hill purchased
it at an auction at the University of South Florida at Tampa.
The United States Army Pictorial Center had given the crane to
the university and said that it had been on some "famous movie," but
they couldn't recall just which one. The crane lay dormant in
a field and to avoid transporting the unwieldy piece of equipment
back to North Carolina, Hill "practically gave it away" to a
local equipment rental company in Tampa. At that time the crane
was refurbished and rented to local production companies. Hill
then repurchased the crane which by this time had been fitted
with a trailer for transport. Someone saw the crane and sent
Hill a production photo of Orson Welles directing a scene from "Citizen
Kane." Lo and behold, Welles and Greg Toland were sitting
atop a crane that was identical down the last nut and bolt to
Hill's crane. I put my hand on the repainted white frame of that
crane and imagined the creative energy generated by Welles and
Toland while sitting on this piece of Hollywood history. I couldn't
help thinking that this important piece of "memorabilia" should
be in a museum to be viewed by all of the movie buffs wishing
to experience the same feelings that I was feeling.
Another "star" in Hill's ensemble is 20th Century
Fox's #104 camera. In the golden days of the studios, Directors
of Photography and cameras were a team and worked together whenever
possible. Fox's #104 was assigned to Arthur Miller, ASC and was
also used by Greg Toland on such films as "Tobacco Road" and "How
Green Was My Valley." Many of the Shirley Temple movies were
filmed with this camera. As Hill detailed its history I felt
privileged to be viewing a camera that John Ford had looked through
while lining up shots for films that have become associated with
motion picture history.
The oldest piece of equipment in his shop is
a Moy Bastie camera, circa 1905. There are many wooden hand-crank
models that appeal as much to your appreciation of fine antique
woodwork as to your marveling at one of the rudimentary tools
of our craft. Other interesting acquisitions that Hill has made
through the years are Paramount's BNC that shot the original "Star
Trek" series, Universal's BNC #17 that photographed the
Abbott & Costello
pictures and Alfred Hitchcock's last film, "Family Plot."
Hill has a very rare Mitchell VistaVision camera as well as the
last BNC sold in America. The list goes on and on.
So, if you are ever near Midland, North Carolina
and you are as thrilled as I am to be around this stuff, I strongly
suggest that you pay Martin Hill a visit. He has a genuine respect
and admiration for those of us who utilize various pieces of
equipment in the day to day process of making motion pictures.
One footnote: It struck me that we as working
members of the motion picture industry could do much more to
preserve the technical side of our motion picture heritage. Film
preservation consciousness is at an all time high, but what of
the "men and machines" that made it all work? Must we rely on
individuals like Martin Hill to preserve the housings and histories
of great cameras from the past? In England, photographic museums
display cameras that have engraved plates of the films and the
cinematographers who photographed them. As surely as we must
save species of animals that are headed towards extinction, we
must preserve and protect the technical and mechanical heritage
of the greatest art form of the 20th century.
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