WESTERN WAYS STORY

THE WONDERFUL WORLD-WIDE WESTERN WAYS OF CHARLES AND LUCILE HERBERT As Told To Phyllis Balestrero

In 1923, Charles Herbert invested $700 in a photographic expedition out of New Orleans headed for the West Indies. He had never seen a motion picture camera and signed on as cook and deckboy. The expedition soon ran out of supplies and money. When it docked in Mobile, Alabama, a sheriff seized the boat. The only things Herb was able to get as return on his $700 was a 35mm wooden box Ernemann motion picture camera and heavy tripod. Out of a job and money Herb went to Miami with Captain Carl Pryer and that winter helped him make commercial films in Florida.

He started by shooting scenes without film until he felt at home behind the camera. It took practice to develop steady cranking with his right hand and to pan or tilt with his left, both at the same time. A cameraman had to look through a peephole, compose and focus the scene right on the film, then close the iris to where experience had taught him to stop. There were no exposure meters.

Herb's first successful free-lance story was of a modern pioneer caravan from Ft. Myers, on the west coast of Florida, blazing a trail across the Everglades to Miami, promoting the Sunset over the Bay at La Paz, Baja California. The Herberts' Western Ways coverage of Baja has appeared in all leading travel and geographic publications.

Western Ways Features was the first news agency allowed to photograph the Yaqui Easter Ceremonials.

When Herb had completed his first full year for four season work he had set the pattern for most all of his future work. Here is how he operates and generously advises all aspiring feature photographers or cameramen to follow.

FOLLOW THE SUN, for good shooting weather, cover north in summer, south in winter - search for virgin territory or the only one of its kind features - know a sure-fire picture when you see it arrange for full co-operation with participants - make duplicate or multiple shots of essential scenes and be sure the scenes tell the story. DO NOT TELL THE EDITOR YOU HAVE A GOOD STORY HE WILL DECIDE IN DUE TIME.

It will help him decide, if you give him plenty of accurate, essential information along with the film. It is a smart idea to study the features he uses, then work hard to match his pattern.

The "Wild Palomino Stallion" has been one of the most popular photographs ever taken of the wild horse in his natural habitat. Although this shot was taken in Wyoming the situation is universally western.

Tamiami Trail. An unseasonal rain had bogged them down 35 miles from Miami. Herb grabbed his camera, hitched a ride on a lumber truck most of the way, sloshed through five miles of mud and made the feature in record time with full coopera-tion of the pioneers. He "expressed" the film to Pathe News in New York. The editor sent him a congratulatory telegram, $245 for the story and an offer to cover the Miami territory.

Herb's boyhood-dream had been to heed the call to "Go West, Young Man" and be a part of it. Soon he had that chance. Dick Dandall, big game hunting guide, stagecoach driver and pionéer dude-ranch operator, had a window display in a Miami store, with saddle, chaps, big hat, boots, rifle, bear traps and pictures of horseback riders in the mountains at his OTO Ranch in Montana. Herb went in and came out with an offer from Dick to make a promotional film of the OTO, in return for a summer stay on the ranch. He spent the summer in Montana and from that time on went from one section of the country to the other, from Montana to Florida, to New York to sell films, then back to Miami, Cuba, and the West Indies, setting a pattern of "following summer," which he did from then on. He met Lucile in Miami. She was a legal secretary who also sang in a church choir and occasionally substituted for the organist. Six months later they were married on June 13, 1926, and 46 years later still believe 13 is a lucky number.

By January 1929 they had been back to Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas. Herb's pattern of "following summer" had given him the edge needed to win the Fox News $500 first prize for free-lance cameramen three years in a row and an offer to join the staff of Fox Movietone News. When Charles and Lucile Herbert brought the first motion picture sound outfit into Arizona in 1929, his assignment from Fox Movietone's newsreel editor was to "get the sounds of the west:" cattle bawling, horses running, coyotes howling, buffalo stampeding, cowboys singing and Indians chanting. No "offstage" sound was accepted. The films had to show the subjects making the natural sounds.

At that time Arizona had received little exposure from the newsreels. But Arizona offered so much variety and cooperation that 15 subjects were filmed in two weeks. Herb got his "natural sound!" When a herd moved in, over 2,000 throats bawled a massive sound wave. The sound was deafening; the ground seemed to vibrate; the volume indicator on the amplifier jumped up past the top volume mark. As Herb says, "that was a sound of the west that even shook up the editors when they previewed the film."

Later the crew returned to Tucson to film a sequence of striking scenes of Arizona's trademark, the saguaros, at Saguaro National Monument.

San Xavier was the next stop. The camera was set up on top of the hill behind the "lions of Spain" to photograph the beautiful "White Dove of the Desert" as a setting for the Mission school activities. Papago children sang and danced a round dance, a social dance in which they moved round and round in shuffling steps. Herb described it as a sort of Indian version of "Ring Around a Rosie."

From San Xavier the crew moved north to cover the Smoki Ceremonials. The Smokis are a group of Prescott business men, organized to help perpetuate Indian rituals. Each year they include the Snake Dance of the Hopi who hold live rattlesnakes in their mouth. This was too much for Herb's New York film editor. He reported the subject was "nerve-wracking" and would not be used. Four years later, in a little cinema in Tunis, the Herberts saw it and the audience enthusiastically applauded.

An assignment to feature Two-Guns White-Calf, model for the Indian head on the "buffalo nickel" took them to Glacier National Park, Montana, in 1929. Herb and Lucile made friends with many Blackfeet they worked with and, after pictures, they talked and joked over ice cream sodas. By the time the Indians were ready to adopt them into the tribe Herb had already left but Lucile was still there gathering data. Down by their teepees they formed a circle. Lucile stood in front of her sponsor, Max Shortman, who named her Princess Pretty-Bird Woman, after an ancestor, then pushed her into the circle. With this ritual she was reborn as a Blackfeet. George Bullchild gave her the birth certificate prepared for her in picture-writing on deerskin.

The next time they visited their Blackfeet friends, Emma Weasel-Feather complained they had waited 17 years for Herb to return and join them. After a little huddle, George Bullchild asked Herb if he had been across the waters. Herb said he had. Then Theodore Lone-Star asked, "During the war?" and Herb answered, "Yes, in both wars and in between wars." After another little pow-wow he was named Chief All-Over (the world) and reborn a Blackfeet. Herb and Lucile later found picture-writings which described his ancestor, Chief All-Over, as a highly-esteemed, notorious horse thief. In 1924, Herb photographed the Sioux Indians at Mandan, North Dakota, for the Northern Pacific Railway. The Sioux then adopted him into their tribe chiefly because they liked having their pictures taken.

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Live sound on film had become a reality and Fox was setting up crews in the major cities of the world. The need for field-men was dwindling; no free-lance man could afford to buy sound equipment, so Herb decided to accept the offer. In New York he was teamed up with a soundman and Movietone Crew #38 was born. During the next three years that crew worked back and forth from the southwest to northwest, Wyoming to Florida, Mexico, Cuba, and in 1930 a second visit to Arizona to cover a Lion Hunt near Prescott and the Tombstone Helldorado Celebration. In these three years they had produced 281 feature stories for Fox. By that time Fox had started the Magic Carpet of Movietone travelogue series and Herb was selected to concentrate on these one-reelers. This put him at the top of the ladder for newsreel cameramen with a free hand to set up his own schedule and make arrangements for co-operation along the way. He started with a streamlined 250-pound outfit on a Pan American sponsored winter trip through the West Indies and the north coast of South America.

One day while they were deep in the British Guiana jungles a cablegram was delivered to him, ordering him back to New York. Using a dugout canoe, then a motor launch to the seaport, a plane to Puerto Rico and boat to New York, he and his soundman arrived with just three days to get ready for a complimentary Italian Line trip around the Mediterranean. Once in such colorful territory this trip turned into a three-year jaunt through Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa, England, Ireland, Malta, Sicily and the Canary Islands. When they returned to New York in late 1934 they had produced 39 Magic Carpets.

A month later they were on the way to South America, Herb by Pan American Flying Boat to Buenos Aires and Lucile by Grace Line through the Panama Canal, down the west coast, making contacts with the tourist offices along the way, and finally crossing the Andes to join Herb in Argentina.

After returning to the States, Herb joined the staff of the March of Time. He covered Alaska, CCC, TVA, and other features before starting on a round-the-world trip with China the first stop. Lucile says, "China was a fantastic story-book land in 1936 with pictures everywhere but it was difficult to get permission to make them." It took a month to get up to Top Side to request permission.

After projecting two sample March of Time films, the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang-Kai-Shek gave them permission and promised cooperation. A young lieutenant was assigned to Herb as his aide, translator and censor. A special hand lettered scroll was given to them to identify them and get the help needed.

China marked the end of their career as a movie team making documentaries for the March of Time. For seven months they worked in China filming the New Life Movement. They returned to the United States by way of Hawaii, spending six months on Kailua Beach, then to a cabin they had built in the mountains of Montana near Yellowstone Park for the summer. They were determined to go back to freelancing, making still pictures along with travelogues.

While working in the southwest in 1939-40 Herb became convinced that Arizona had the best climate and year-round weather for photography and offered more of his kind of picture possibilities - ranching, agriculture, industry, Indians, and distinctive scenery. It was also a relatively virgin territory since most photographers seemed to prefer large metropolitan cities.

After years of traveling, they chose a homesite in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson. Herb located a view for a picture-window through his camera-finder and made a frame for it. He set it up and told the contractor to build a house around