1877-1967
German born early cinematographer and even earlier Edison employee Henry Cronjager was born on this day probably in Clausthal. He and his brother Jules immigrated to the United States, most likely in the very early 1890's, as he was known to be a working photographer in New York by 1893. Having worked in various photographic portraiture shops eventually got him a hire at the Edison art department later in the 1890's, his interest in still photography quickly morphed into interest in motion photography while working there. His first film credit does not come until spring of 1908, listed as shooting the almost completely unknown Edison short A Country Girl's Seminary Life. He undoubtedly had worked on films prior to this at the Edison lab; it seems unthinkable that he hadn't given the department that he was hired for, but this is his earliest mention in the Edison catalog. At Edison, he worked with both J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter, two men who would come to be regarded as among the best of the earliest film directors. He was chosen by Dawley to photograph his 1911 feature The Battle of Trafalger, one of the Edison studios earliest feature length films. the last film he photographed at Edison was the Oscar Apfel directed short The Passer-Bay (June 1912). The other studios that he worked with most often mentioned are Biograph and Fox, but little mention of his time at Thanhouser can be found. He spent about a year there working for director Carroll Fleming; with their short films were distributed theatrically by Mutual. And, his work at Biograph was in co-production with Klaw & Erlanger. He then became a kind of free agent for a few features before landing at Fox Films--his most oft cited silent cinematographic work of the late teens, though he was there for only a short time. He made a couple of films for Arrow in 1917, and I believe his only surviving work from this period is the expertly shot Crime and Punishment (February 1917), though it is by no means widely available. His first film at Fox was the "biographical" drama based on the life of General John Pershing: Why America Will Win in 1918. He also worked with director Marshall Neilan on several films in 1919 and 1920 that included performances by: Richard Barthelmess, Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, Lewis Stone and Matt Moore. He then moved on to working with director Frances Marion, photographing: The Love Light (January 1921) with Mary Pickford and Just Around the Corner (December 1921) with Lewis Sargent. But, it is Tol'able David, with Barthelmess and directed by Henry King that is most often put forward as amongst his finest work. He would also serve as cinematographer on the next two Barthelmess/King productions The Seventh Day (February 1922) and Sonny (May 1922). Through the mid-1920's his work was mostly for, one way or another, Paramount--working for a variety of directors that were either employed directly by Paramount or had their films distributed by the studio. One of his non-Paramount jobs from the era was the Maurice Tourneur comedy Clothes Make the Pirate in 1925; it is lamentably a lost film and one that I have always hoped a print would show up for--I like Tourneur and it looks a hoot! He also photographed Tourneur's next film Old Loves and New in 1926. In 1927 he worked on a few films for DeMille Pictures and photographed the only two American films directed by Swedish director Nils Olaf Chrisander. Cronjager never worked on any partial silents in the waning years of the decade, instead going right to work in 1929 on a full talkie. He was one of three cinematographers to work on Linda (April 1929) starring Warner Baxter, Helen Foster and Noah Beery, and was--shock horror--directed by a woman: Dorothy Davenport (credited as Mrs. Wallace Reid). The other two DP's were Hungarian Ernest Laszlo and Bert Baldridge. He moved right into the next decade, working on the Victor Halperin film Party Girl starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and released in January of 1930. He would photograph just four more film in his career, which ended in 1933 after he photographed Ace of Aces for RKO and director J. Walter Ruben. He does have two more connections to silent films however. Firstly, though he went uncredited, he was one of a long list of cinematographers to work on Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) in it's very early days in 1928, when it was being shot as a silent (his son Henry Jr. was one of the aerial photographers on the film, he did get a credit). Secondly, his work was featured in the little short experimental film Sigrid Holmquist by Swedish artist Maria Norrman; the film, through experimental editing of clips of other silent film stars such as Clara Bow, explores the life of Swedish silent film star Holmquist; it is itself a modern silent film (the film is currently streamable on Vimeo). Some of Cronjager's work is included in the film, along with three others. Cronjager retired in 1933, but stayed in the Los Angeles area. He passed away there at the age of 90 (!) on the 1st of August. His ashes are interred in the Abbey of Psalms at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Cinematography became the family profession. Henry Cronjager's brother Jules and his two sons Henry Jr. and Edward were all very successful directors of photography; as was his grandson William, who primarily worked in television.
[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)] 
[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)]
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