Paul Ivano, ASC (born Pavle Ivanišević, May 13, 1900 – April 9, 1984), was a Serbian-French-American cinematographer whose career stretched from 1920 into the late 1960s.
Born Pavle Ivanišević to Serbian parents in Nice, France, where the name was transcribed/recorded as "Paul Ivano Ivanichévitch", he served for two years with the Franco-American Ambulance Corps and the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps from 1916 to 1918. After the conclusion of World War I, he remained in the Balkans, acting as a photographer and interpreter for the American Red Cross. He arrived in the United States in 1919, and moved to California, the following year.
He began his Hollywood career on the crew of a Rudolph Valentino film, and became established as a reliable second-unit cameraman for major features and principal cameraman for minor ones. Among his second-unit credits are Ben-Hur, Hell's Angels, and Gone with the Wind. His most prestigious credit of the 1920s was Queen Kelly (1928), director Erich von Stroheim's last personal project, starring Gloria Swanson and highlighting Paul Ivano's luminous photography.
Director Julien Duvivier engaged Ivano to photograph Universal's all-star dramatic feature Flesh and Fantasy (1943). A half-hour sequence with Gloria Jean as a blind girl was removed from the film and made into its own feature, Destiny; Paul Ivano received screen credit for the Flesh and Fantasy segment. Duvivier left the studio but Ivano stayed on, filming Universal's comedies, musicals, and mysteries until the studio changed hands in 1946.MacGillivray, Scott and MacGillivray, Jan. Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven, iUniverse, 2005, p. 203. After his tenure at Universal, Ivano signed on with independent producers.
Ivano had filmed the aerial scenes for the 1930 feature Hell's Angels; in 1947, he captured the first-ever aerial helicopter shots for an American feature film in Nicholas Ray's film noir They Live by Night.Greco, Joseph. The File on Robert Siodmak in Hollywood: 1941-1951, Dissertation.com, 1999, pp. 117-118.
Beginning in 1951, Paul Ivano was much in demand in the new field of television. His first series was Mark Saber. He often worked for producer Hal Roach during the 1950s, especially for the Telephone Time series. His other long-term assignments were for The Texan starring Rory Calhoun and Family Affair starring Brian Keith.
Paul Ivano worked steadily until his retirement in 1969. He was interviewed about his silent-era career for the Kevin Brownlow-David Gill series Hollywood (1980).
Select filmography Cinematographer Year Film Genre Other notes1951Gold Raiders westernindependent production1950Champagne for Caesar comedyindependent production1949Search for Danger The Falcon mysteryindependent production1945 Pursuit to Algiers Sherlock Holmes mystery1945 The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry film noir director of photography1945 The Frozen Ghost Inner Sanctum mystery1945 Senorita from the West1944Destiny dramaincorporates Ivano's unused sequences from Flesh and Fantasy 1944 The Suspect director of photography1944 The Impostor 1943 Flesh and Fantasy episodic drama 1936 The Plow That Broke the Plains documentary film, selected in 1999, to be preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry cinematography (uncredited) 1929 Queen Kelly a film by Erich von Stroheim 1921 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse top-grossing film of 1921
Television Mark Saber Waterfront My Little Margie Telephone Time The Texan Please Don't Eat the Daisies The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Daktari Family Affair
References
External links
The Paul Ivano Papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences′ Margaret Herrick Library′s Special Collections