A Golden Age in Black and White

Andy Warhol once said that his “idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.”

Working in television for 48 years gave Jerry Weiss the opportunity to take many good pictures.

In his first show, at Orlando Gallery in Sherman Oaks, Weiss will display 29 of the pictures he took while working as a cameraman for live TV during the 1950s. There’s Sid Caesar mugging on the set of “Your Show of Shows”; a youthful Frank Sinatra singing, cigarette in hand, for a TV special; Martha Raye taking a break from rehearsals for “The Four Star Review.”

Make no mistake--Weiss wasn’t just taking snapshots. He was a graduate of the School of Modern Photography in New York, which he attended concurrently with high school. He was working for an illustrative photography studio when, in 1948, he became smitten with the emerging medium of television. He enrolled in TV school, then spent one year at a station in Cleveland before landing a job at NBC-TV in New York.

As a camera operator for pioneering live shows such as “Your Hit Parade,” “Your Show of Shows” and “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” Weiss worked with entertainment legends, from Jimmy Durante to Bob Hope. With him at all times was his Roloflex--a professional medium-format camera.

No one minded his camera on the set, Weiss said. There was a camaraderie on those early shows, like a summer-stock theater company. “We never wanted to go home,” said Weiss, who now lives in the Cahuenga Pass near Universal City. “It was so exciting.”

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Weiss said some stars would ham it up for his lens, mugging and posing, and he would indulge them with a few frames. But it was the candid shots that he wanted most--like the one he snapped of Humphrey Bogart leaning back in a chair during rehearsals for a live performance of “The Petrified Forest,” Bogie’s only TV performance.

In another photograph, Audrey Hepburn is listening to an unseen director before presenting a charity award in 1954. She exudes natural grace and poise, even in such an unsuspecting moment. It’s one of the only photos that Weiss--an admitted unknown in the fine-art photography world--has sold. Last year, it garnered $1,400 at a Focus on AIDS charity auction.

In 1954, Weiss moved to Los Angeles to help pioneer color television at NBC’s Burbank studio. He won his first Emmy for camera work in 1958 for “An Evening With Fred Astaire.” He gained increasing responsibility, eventually becoming a technical director--for which he won three more Emmys.

Weiss has worked to preserve the era captured in his 16-by-20-inch black-and-white prints in ways other than photographs. While serving as vice president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, he pushed for restoration and archiving of early television shows. Some two-inch videotapes and kinescopes--film recordings of TV broadcasts--were restored, but plans for a library and archive at the Academy’s site in North Hollywood were abandoned.

But his efforts indirectly brought his photography to the attention of Hank Rieger, editor and publisher of the quarterly Emmy magazine. “Whenever we’d try to have a fund-raiser to obtain money for promoting the archives--at receptions and so forth--I’d show my pictures. I’d put them in the lobby or whatever,” Weiss said. Rieger published Weiss’ work from 1991-1993 as a feature called “That Was Then.”

Since then, Weiss has offered prints of Sinatra and Hepburn for AIDS charity auctions and got a photo of Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda published in the 1995 book “Kissing,” a collection put together by the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Santa Monica.

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Now in his mid-60s, Weiss has come full circle. He’s retiring from television, he said, and would like to get back into photography. But he doesn’t regret the career choice he made in 1948. Flipping through his portfolio--past Bob Hope in mid-dance step and Harry S. Truman chatting with Burgess Meredith--it’s evident why not. It was, indeed, an exciting time to work in television.

“I’m just sorry I didn’t take more pictures,” Weiss said. “As I got busier and busier [on set], I had less time. That’s why most of my pictures are of the ‘50s live TV.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: “The Golden Age of Television: Photographs by Jerry Weiss.”

* WHERE: Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

* WHEN: Reception from 8-10 p.m. Friday. Runs 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday through June 1.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: (818) 789-6012.