Sam Greenwald

Sanford Greenwald was born in San Francisco in 1898. His earliest memory was of the San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906, at 5:13 a.m. He looked out the back window and saw all kinds of iron, wood and concrete flying all over the place. Since that day, he wanted to be a newspaper photographer, and when he finished school, he went to work at the San Francisco Bulletin, which was later called the Call Bulletin. He worked as a still photographer until about 1915 and then went to work for one of the first newsreels, the Gaumont News. They would pay him a dollar for every foot used in the reel, while also furnishing the negative. Greenwald bought himself a movie camera for $75 with a tripod and two wooden magazines that carried 200 feet. His first story: he saw in the newspaper that they were having a Field Day at the Old Soldiers Home near Napa. So he threw his camera and tripod into his Model "T" Ford, and went up there to cover the story. He filmed the raising of the flag as an opener, then when the flag was raised, he ran out of filmÑthat was his first story. Greenwald became interested in aerial photography in 1915, when the Pan Pacific International Exposition opened in San Francisco. There was a pilot, Art Smith, who flew a pusher-type plane. He arranged a ride for Greenwald, tying him to a strut, and flying around in a couple of loops and a power dive into a landing. That was his first airplane ride. In the same year, Eugene Ely flew one of these pushers, made a landing on the battleship Pittsburgh, which, at the time, was anchored in San Francisco Bay. They had built a runway on the quarterdeck and he came in, landed, turned around and took off again. That was the beginning of the big airplane carriers. In 1917, Greenwald enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent down to Miami, Florida, which was the only Marine Air Base in the country. He was a flying cadet and learned how to fly in a Jenny with an OX5 engine. When the war was over in 1919, he went back to San Francisco and met Eugene Castle. Eugene was the founder of Castle Films and an old schoolmate of his. He was working for Fox News at the time with Bert Moisant. Greenwald joined them on the staff of Fox News. They started a Pacific Coast Edition. With an anchor in San Diego and one in Seattle, they would make 300 feet of the Pacific Coast News, send the national reel out 300 feet short, and tack on the Pacific Coast Edition. Two years later they received a note from New York saying they were going to discontinue the Pacific Coast Edition because they weren’t satisfied with the work. All of them were fired. A day or so later, New York wired, "Please recommend someone else for the job." Castle asked Greenwald why he didn’t take it under a different name. Greenwald used the name Morris and worked under that name for two years. In those days, New Yorkers never left the Hudson River. After working under the name Morris for $50 a week, he found out that the opposition (Pathe News, Universal News and Gaumont) were paying $75 a week, so he sent his employer a letter saying he thought he should get the same salary. They informed him that the budget was low and they couldn’t afford it. Greenwald became angry and sent them a reply, "Please accept my resignation, effective immediately." They replied with, "Your resignation is accepted. Can you recommend someone for the job?" Morris’ reply was, "Greenwald is the only cameraman here who will take it but he wants $75." They wired back, "Put him on." Greenwald then became very interested in aviation. Glen Curtiss, a pioneer of aviation, had an agency in San Francisco, complete with a Jenny and a test pilot named Danny Davidson. They decided to do a story together. Greenwald said, "Danny, I’ll get a whole flock of Bibles and put them in a bag in the front cockpit of the plane and you fly in the back. When I get ready to crank, you take the bag and let the Bibles fly out." They did that, and then the story cut to a wagon up at North Beach in San Francisco. An old Italian was asleep there by his fruit wagon and this guy comes along and steals an apple. Just then, all the Bibles fall down and he opens one up and reads, "Thou shalt not steal," so the man puts the apple back. Those were the kinds of pictures they made on the old newsreels. Then Danny suggested to Greenwald, "Nobody has ever landed in Yosemite Valley so let’s take a trip and, if we can, we’ll land there." In 1919, they flew up there and shot footage. When they landed, it was near a group of cows and they went to find a place to eat. Two hours later when they returned to their plane, the cows had eaten the cloth off the wings of the plane. They had to send a man from the Curtiss agency to put cloth back on the wings before they could take off. They were the first airplane to land in Yosemite Valley. Another incident that Greenwald recalled happened in 1919, when the battleship California was launched from Mare Island in Navy Yard. There was a small channel there, and the engineers arranged some cables to stop the battleship in midstream so it wouldn’t run into the city of Vallejo. The ship went into the middle of the stream and broke the cables, going into twenty houses on the other side of the channel. In 1920 a couple of army pilots came to San Francisco and met the editor of the Bulletin. Greenwald had his office at the Bulletin while he was working for Fox News because they furnished news tips. There was no airmail in the country, yet. The editor and army pilots planned to fly the first air mail letter from San Francisco to Sacramento. The pilot asked Greenwald, "Will you carry the letter for me and make movies at the same time?" Greenwald accepted. They flew up to Sacramento, landed, and gave the letter from the postmaster in San Francisco to the postmaster in Sacramento. It was the first air mail in the United States. At the same time, the army started to fly the forest patrol. They flew Dehavilland planes with Liberty Engines. Greenwald tied his camera to an open cockpit, and wired pan and tilt handles and his tripod in the rear cockpit. While the camera was pointed with the wind it was all right, but when they got up the air flow was terrific. At 2500 feet things happenedÑthe finder flew off, the pan handles flew off, and then the door opened and the film and magazines flew off. Greenwald tapped the pilot on the shoulder and yelled, "Let’s land, I’m out of business." In 1921, Joe Hubbell was working for Hearst and he ran the old Hearst International Newsreel, as well as the Examiner photographers. He called and asked Greenwald to come to work for Hearst International Newsreel in LA. Greenwald got in his Model "T" Ford and started down to Los Angeles. Greenwald was willing to tackle anything. He hooked up with stunt pilots. On one occasion they went to Santa Monica Airport and got a stuffed fox and tied it on the top of the wing. Al Wilson got up on the top wing with a whip. Greenwald was in another airplane and the story was that he was training a fox on the top wing of an airplane. The next morning the SPCA came out to the field and wanted to know where that fox was. They did all kinds of stunts. They took two stunt men, dressed them up as cowboys and wired a table on the top wing. The two stunt men were playing cards and drinking beer. Greenwald shot this from another airplane. Another time they took one of the stunt men over to Universal Studios and put a bulletproof vest on him, put a rope under his shoulders, and put him on a branch swinging back and forth while sharpshooters were shooting at him with live bullets. Another stunt involved an Italian man named Joe who could hardly speak English. He said he wanted to do a stunt for a newsreel. They had a big box built like a coffin. They put his arms in a straight jacket, put him in the box and nailed the cover on with a chute on the box. The plane took off and went up 2500 feet, and the box was dropped. Greenwald explained how they saw the boards fly out and Joe jumped off and opened his own parachute. He did it perfectly, and then came back to the office and they said, "Joe, that was great. How much do we owe you?" He replied, "Is $25 too much to ask?" Greenwald finally quit Hearst International News and went to work for Paramount News. He started with them in 1927 and his first assignment was Lindbergh. He had come back from Paris and he was touring South and Central America in the Spirit of the St. Louis, and Greenwald went down to Panama by boat to film his arrival there. In 1927, Paramount offered a prize of $500 for the best picture in their first reel. Greenwald and his cohorts put together a stunt. They bought a Jenny for $400 and stuffed the wings with oil-soaked rags with a switch on the dashboard that would set them on fire. They got a Devry 35mm camera, put it on the tail of the plane with asbestos tied around it. Ed Unger was dressed in an asbestos suit to rescue the camera. The pilot’s name was Johnson and he was also a stunt man. He took off, while Greenwald was in another plane, as well as one more camera man in another plane, and two cameras on the ground. The pilot went up to 2500 feet, set the airplane on fire, and his next move was to get out. He had turned on the camera with the wire from the tail. He tried to get out but his parachute got caught in some bailing wire and he couldn’t get out. The camera on the tail of the airplane registered his fight to save his life. The ground was going around in the background as he was trying to free himself and he got out about 250 feet from the ground, opened his parachute and the cameraman on the ground got the shots of him falling with the burning plane in the background. The picture was an unexpected thriller- and the Los Angeles crew won the $500. Greenwald continued to work with many camera pilots, including pioneers such as Cliff Bergere, who made his first flight in 1916, Leo Nomis, Frank Clark, who Greenwald documented taking off from the top of a building in downtown Los Angeles, Elmer Dyer, who Greenwald was in the Air Force with, and others. After he retired, Greenwald was inducted into the OX5 Hall of Fame. The induction took place at the Curtiss Aviation Museum in Hammondsport, New York, where he recalled an airplane, a Curtiss airplane. It was red, round and called an Oriole. Greenwald was surprised to see that it was the same airplane he had made the picture about the Bibles withÑhe knew the number on the plane. Greenwald regretted retiring, and said of his retirement, "I should never have retired. It’s like running into a brick wall. After being active for so many years, to start doing nothing. I don’t advise anyone to retire unless they are forced to." Greenwald was a pioneer in the field of filming, combined with aviation. His adventurous spirit led him to a career documenting and advancing the evolution of aerial photography.