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MELENA RYZIK
NYT SYNDICATE
Talk to any honest filmmaker, and they'll tell you: a movie is only as good as its crew. Yet for decades the ranks of camera operators, sound mixers and electricians were filled only by men, most often white men. When production work came with a union card, it was a relatively high-paying career, but it was not welcoming to women.
That began to change, however slowly, in the 1960s and 1970s, amid the tumult of the civil-rights and feminist movements. One catalyst was a 1971 sex-discrimination lawsuit against an NBC affiliate in Washington. Alison Owings, a plaintiff, recalled that the goal wasn't even equal pay."It was equal work," she said."I just knew that women could do basically whatever the men were doing, whether station chief or camera operator."
Other lawsuits followed, and doors opened. Some women got their starts in television news and branched into filmmaking, fighting for union access. Some came from other professions or armed with degrees from film schools, a rarity in the trade.
Today some of these early union members have moved on to other careers, but several are still very much in the field. These are edited excerpts from their stories.
BEGINNINGS
CELESTE GAINEY, gaffer: I started out wanting to be a director. (At New York University's film school in the early 1970s,) you had a three-person crew and shot these little, 100-foot movies. I took on the lighting because I knew I wasn't able to direct actors until I figured out the lights.
CABELL SMITH, production sound mixer: (As part of the women's movement in New York, our) consciousness-raising group purchased a Sony Porta Pak to videotape our consciousness-raising sessions. After our consciousness were slowly raised, we started (filming) other groups. I had worked in advertising, and I remember just putting the cover on the IBM Selectric one afternoon. I never wanted to type again.
SUNNY MEYER, production sound mixer: Everybody in my home was into electronics and music. My brother was putting together this hi-fi studio in his bedroom. He would never say,"Go away, you're a girl." He would say,"Hand me the two-pin RCA connector."
JESSIE MAPLE, filmmaker and first black woman to join the cameraperson's union: My first career was in bacteriology. After I got married and moved to New York, I wanted something more exciting. I became interested in film. I started to research, how I can make the most money? The first union I got into was the editing union. They told me the requirements, I did all that, then I fought for my rights.
FIRST JOBS
NANCY SCHREIBER, director of photography: (In the 1970s, after) a crash production course, I answered an ad in The Village Voice for production assistants, $50 a week. And that was my education.
SMITH: (After the lawsuit at the NBC affiliate,) they wanted to put a woman on the flagship station, at 30 Rock. They had never seen anybody like me before. These were guys who very solidly did not believe a woman could do this. I wasn't getting political, but just by doing the job that only they thought they could do, it was a very political statement.
MEYER: (I got involved with) one of the top sound mixers in Hollywood, David Ronne, (who) started sending me on jobs. The first was The Graduate (1967). Mike Nichols had given him a list of sound effects. When the movie opens, you hear on a speaker a pilot say,"Ladies and gentlemen, we're landing in Los Angeles." I recorded that ” on a plane.
JOAN CHURCHILL, cinematographer/director: (After film school at the University of California at Los Angeles), I was working as an editor at a small educational company, making really boring films. My friends who were male started getting jobs directing, so I started shooting for them.
JOINING THE UNION
SMITH: I had to threaten to sue the union. I got a lawyer to write a letter. I got voted in at the next meeting. It was going to expose me to much better work.
MEYER: I tried to get in (for years). I (showed) them what I'd done and they'd say,"No, we don't hire women." I finally got in, shortly after I got 'Hill Street Blues' (1984-1985). The guy who got me in saw all the paperwork. We go to lunch, and he says,"Sunny, tell me the truth, you don't really do this, you're just union-busting, right?" He had just seen 15 years of (my) work. It was extraordinary.
CHURCHILL: My real battle was in England, because you could not work unless you were part of the union there. I got a letter from 12 cinematographers trying to get me deported. They'd never heard of a woman as a cinematographer. I was the first woman to get into the union. It was about a three-year struggle. My union card says"lady cameraman."
MAPLE: In the (cameraperson) union, you were supposed to stay an apprentice a certain time. If I had waited, I would never have become a cameraperson. So I took them to court. At the (time) they said minorities could not learn how to use the cameras.
CHALLENGES
GAINEY: My first day at NBC, I went out with the cameraman and sound technician, and neither spoke to me the entire day. They parked as far as they could from the location, because of course I had the heaviest equipment.
RISA KORRIS, cinematographer: I remember being in Boston, charging up Bunker Hill with 25 pounds (of camera equipment) on each shoulder, and a policeman said to me,"If you say you don't believe in women's lib, I'll help you get this equipment up the hill." I trudged up the hill myself.
MEYER: It was men who taught me and supported me, but there were some really awful things. The feeling of not being (considered) adequate, it's very painful. At one point I was in therapy and I said,"I've got to leave this job, it's too devastating."
SCHREIBER: I had no idea it would be so hard. When I was a gaffer, (cinematographers hired) me and the producers couldn't say anything, but to get hired to shoot as a woman, it's still hard. The blame I put on myself at the time ” was my reel not strong enough? It didn't occur to me there was sexism involved.
MAPLE: (Initially as a union cameraperson at CBS,) they gave me every kind of rough story. I get motion sickness. So every day they would send me up in the helicopter. I would get my story and then, when I would get off, I would be so sick. But they had to pay me $60 any time I went up, so I was making money.
GAINEY: I kept bugging them to get a feature. One day I got a call: Dog Day Afternoon (1975) (needs) an electrician. They didn't want to let me on the set. I said,"Really, I'm from Local 52!" All eyes were on me, waiting for me to make a mistake. It was exhausting.
SMITH: The path to being fully accepted as a production sound mixer on a big movie was closed to me. It was a real boys' club. I did small movies ” a bunch with James Ivory ” and, if I had really pushed, I might have (had a career in big films). But I wanted to have children, and I didn't want to go away for six months at a time. I felt like I could have a family and do commercials.
HIGHLIGHTS
GAINEY: After a few years the whole news system was really transformed. They fought us tooth and nail, but at a certain point everybody realised: My daughter could be doing this.
MEYER: With 'Hill Street Blues,' they were firing mixers who were good. I said,"I want to hear what (series creator) Steven Bochco likes and doesn't like." He liked distortion. I had no ego about it ” I just figured it out. And I got an Emmy nomination.
CHURCHILL: (On the Rolling Stones documentary) Gimme Shelter (1970), somebody had dosed me with acid. I was on a really bad trip. I crawled under the stage. By 4 in the afternoon, I was fine. They put me onstage. (While Mick Jagger was performing,) a guy behind me was writhing and obviously going though the same trip I had gone through. So I just shot that guy. And (co-director Charlotte Zwerin) loved that. That's why she hired me on (the pioneering PBS docuseries) 'An American Family' (1973).
MAPLE: I got so much publicity (from her battle to join the union), I got all these letters. Young women asking,"How did you do this?" I didn't start out to write a book, (How to Become a Union Camerawoman), I just said,"Let me document this, because I'm going to forget."
You can't stop progress. You can hold it up for a minute, but you can't stop it. Some people have asked,"Aren't you angry that you had to go through all that?" And I said,"No, I made money and I had fun. So why would I be angry?" You don't get anything unless you pay a price for it.
(Cover photo: Sunny Meyer works on the set of a non-union medical film in the late 1960s.)
