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THE MOVIE MAN

DEC 20, 2018 · 5 MINUTES  Save for Later

BY DANIEL EAGAN

WORKING FROM A LAB and factory in Essex, Ken Richter invented and built
specialized aviation and camera equipment that was used around the world. As a
globe-trotting pilot and cinematographer himself—in 1974, The New York Times
named him one of the top travel film–lecturers in the country—many of these
inventions were born of his own desire for better equipment.

Even as a youth in Randolph, Massachusetts, in the 1930s, Richter was obsessed

with the clarity of images. He ground his own telescope lenses, and earned a
scholarship to Harvard to study astronomy. It was a short leap to photography,
where he experimented with both still and motion-picture cameras. A er college,
Richter worked as a cameraman in Hollywood, shooting everything from comedy
shorts at Columbia Pictures to outdoor scenes used in montages.

Within three years, Richter le to film travelogues, those 15- to 20-minute tours of
places like Mozambique or the Yukon that were once part of a typical night at the
movies. He wanted the freedom to wait for the right atmospheric moment despite
what the weather or budget said, to invent his own equipment when nothing
available was good enough. And he wanted to see the world on his own terms, to
portray places like the Alps and the Sahara accurately, not as backdrops to
imaginary stories. Maybe the idea of shooting slapstick falls and punches on a
sound stage felt too confining.

By the early 1940s, the major Hollywood studios had tired of travelogues, but they
were still big business for independents like Julien Bryan and Don Cooper, who
would rent out auditoriums and civic halls to stage their film-and-lecture tours.

Richter trained with Bryan for a time and continued to contribute to his library
over the years, even a er going out on his own.

Working on films for Bryan and for the federal O ice of the Coordinator of Inter-
American A airs helped pay o Richter’s college expenses. By 1943, Billboard
magazine reported that he was booked far in advance for lectures at $100 each.

“I sell myself first,” he told Billboard. “The professional lecturer must be a

celebrity, and once that is achieved, that is all the advertising I need to do.”

Then a chance meeting with Plattsburgh Press-Republican reporter Shirley Perry

changed Richter’s life forever. She was interviewing him about his lecture tours,
but something more clicked between them. They married in 1947 and settled in
Essex, which would remain their base of operations for the rest of their lives.

With its unhurried pace and open vistas, the Champlain Valley gave Richter the
time and space to develop ideas independently. A er building an airstrip right
outside his factory, he was free to shoot and fly as he wished.

He still faced a grueling schedule. For three or four months he and Shirley would
tour Europe or Africa or another location, photographing cities, parks, festivals,
political leaders, singers, families.

Back in Essex, they would edit their material, cutting thousands of feet of footage
into 90-minute films while completing research on the sites they had visited.

Next came the tour.

“He’d start out on the East Coast and then work his way across the country,” his
sister-in-law Linda Young said. “Every year he would give a benefit screening at
the Whallons-burg Grange Hall, where he would show his latest movie.”

Richter’s films ranged from purely ethnographic, like Iran: Between Two Worlds,
which he made for Encyclopedia Britannica in 1953, to the light-hearted tourism
of O Canada! or To Austria With Love. He screened them in college classrooms,
libraries, community centers, concert halls—wherever he could find an audience.

“Ken used notes, but there were no scripts for narration,” Young recalled.
“Everything was extemporaneous for the entire show. Shirley was always in the
projection booth, taking care of everything that was not under Ken’s control.
She’d splice film if it broke, adjust the projector and cue him if the microphone
wasn’t working properly.”

The charm and humor that won over audiences throughout the country worked
just as well with advertisers. Richter made a series of educational films for the
silversmiths Reed & Barton. While filming those, he also appeared in
advertisements for the J. A. Maurer camera company.

“I went to Greece with them for three months,” Young said. “We went first class on
a ship from the Greek Line, I believe it was the Arkadia. Ken actually filmed a
commercial while we were on the ship, which paid for our first-class tickets.”

Young remembered a tense moment trying to cross the border into Yugoslavia, at
that time part of the Soviet empire. “The border guards weren’t going to let us
through,” she said. “Ken pulled out this binder of still photographs and showed a
picture Shirley had taken of Ken with Tito. When they waved us through, I said to
him, ‘I guess it’s a good thing that you know the dictator.’”

“Ken and Shirley knew everybody,” said his nephew Marshall Crowningshield, of
Whallonsburg.

Crowningshield and his cousin worked in the Richter shop. “Airplane parts,
temperature probes, runway ground scopes for airplanes and helicopters,”
Crowningshield said. “There was always something to be built. You would just go
over and grab an order and start working on it.”

As Richter told the Press-Republican in a 1965 profile, “One out of every five small
civil aircra flying anywhere in the world has something in it made in this barn.”
His companies, Richter Aero and Richter Cine, made a big di erence a er 110 men
lost their jobs with the closing of the Willsboro Georgia Pacific pulp plant that
year.

“They had high tea every day at four o’clock,” Young said. “It was a habit he
picked up in England. He always wanted to shoot in the best available light, so
they wouldn’t break for lunch. They kept the same schedule when they were
home in Essex. Shirley would fix a punctual, four o’clock high tea for all.”

As a testament to Richter’s skill and influence as a cinematographer, members of

the American Society of Cinematographers still refer to his 1978 article in
American Cinematographer on the factors determining 16mm image quality. In
1984, he won a Technical Oscar for his R-2 Auto-Collimator, a device to check the
accuracy of lenses. Today, used equipment from his Richter Cine Equipment goes
for thousands of dollars on online auction sites. And there’s the evidence from his
films, carefully composed works with vibrant color and startling clarity

Richter loved the Adirondacks, so when the Essex County Chamber of Commerce
needed a promotional film to attract tourists, the board turned to Ken and Shirley
Richter.

Released in 1960, the half-hour Adirondack Holiday quickly became a local

favorite. Tasked with covering as much of Essex County as possible, the Richters
filmed over four seasons, including attractions that still draw visitors, like the
Whiteface Veterans’ Memorial Highway and the Essex County Fair.

Many of the places they filmed are now lost. Footage of Land of Make-believe,
Frontier Town, tow ropes and ski slopes in Lake Placid will make viewers nostalgic
for the past.

For a long time, Adirondack Holiday was almost lost as well. All that existed were
black-and-white duplicates and poor quality videocassettes. But two years ago,
archivist Rick Prelinger discovered Richter’s original color camera rolls in a
collection of industrial films.

With the help of the National Film Preservation Foundation, Janice Allen (a close
friend of Richter’s) and Michael Kolvek at Cinema Arts Inc. have been able to
restore Adirondack Holiday to its original glory. It’s part of an e ort by archivists to
collect and preserve all kinds of photographs, moving images, and ephemera
related to the Adirondacks. The restored film was screened at the Lake Placid Film
Forum in October, and will eventually be available online.

The next step is to secure the remaining thousands of feet of Richter’s footage.
What other long-lost Adirondack scenery will be uncovered? Stay tuned.

KEN RICHTER PHOTOGRAPH AND ADIRONDACK HOLIDAY FILM STILLS COURTESY

OF THE AUTHOR ■

   

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January/February 2019
Adirondack Life

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