Roman Freulich (1898–1974) was born in Poland to Jewish parents. He immigrated to the United States in 1912 at the age of 14 to live with family who had immigrated there earlier. It is reported by at least one source that the rest of his family in Germany later died in the Holocaust.
Following in the footsteps of his brother, Jack, Roman became interested in photography as a career and studied under professional portrait photographer Samuel Lumiere in New York.
In the 1920s, he moved to Hollywood, where Jack was already working for the Laemmle's at Universal Pictures in their portrait department. After recovering from tuberculosis in the early 1920s, Roman was hired at Universal where he worked alongside his brother. Jack continued to work mostly on portraits while Roman expanded his talents to include still photography.
Roman left Universal in 1944 and worked at Republic studios as head of the stills department until Republic closed its doors in the 1950s. After that, Freulich freelanced for United Artists and other studios until he retired.
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| Roman Freulich in his studio. |
I note the last of those is signed, dated 1932 (the year Ms Stuart signed with Universal) and dedicated to the Los Angeles Theatre Guild. The venue had opened the previous January, the last of the 'movie palaces' built along Broadway.
ReplyDeleteAccording to a 2003 article for Cinefantastique, revised and posted online by Steve Biodrowski just after Ms Stuart's death in 2010, the long hours and uncomfortable working conditions during the filming of The Old Dark House led to the creation of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933: "'James [Whale] joined all the English actors,' Stuart recalled. 'So on one side of the set they had their "elevensies" and "fourcies," and Melvyn [Douglas] and I would be sitting together, not invited. One day, Melvyn said to me, "Are you interested in forming a union together?" I said, "What’s a union?" He said, "Like in New York – Actor’s Equity. The actors get together and work for better working conditions." I said, "Oh wonderful," because I was getting up at five every morning; in makeup at seven, in hair at eight, wardrobe at quarter of nine, and then sometimes if production wanted you to, you worked until four or five the next morning. There was no overtime. They fed us when they felt like it, when it was convenient for production. It was really very, very hard work. He said, "We’ll have a meeting, and we’ll try to get overtime, eight hour days, eight hours in between for ourselves." So I started working as an organizer for SAG. Actually, my union number is 183, because I was so busy canvassing and getting others to join, that I forgot to join myself. Anyway, I’m one of the few remaining founders of the Guild. That’s one reason I’m very grateful to The Old Dark House. I thank that English cast for having their elevensies and foursies.'"
Fascinating! Thank you for the additional material, Steve.
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