March / 2004

remembering . . .
Reginald H. Morris csc
“Captivating camerawork”

Reg Morris csc

Reg Morris csc with director John Huston on the set of the 1980 thriller Phobia.

Directors of photography get mentioned in movie reviews only occasionally, but during his remarkable career in feature films Reginald Morris csc got his fair share of accolades in the press. “Captivating camerawork,” one scribe called his cinematography on the 1986 telefilm Barnum with Burt Lancaster as the legendary showman. If he had needed one, that could have been Morris’s slogan. His genius behind the camera gave him comfortable status with the celebrities he worked with over the years, like Lancaster, director John Huston, Sophia Loren, Michael Douglas, Henry Fonda, James Mason, Jack Lemmon and many more.

Morris, a charter member of the CSC when it was founded in 1957, passed away peacefully at Rouge Valley Centenary Health Unit on Jan. 8 after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He was in his 86th year. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Muriel, and children Lesley, Melanie and Anthony and their families. His brother, Oswald, also a cinematographer, lives in England where Reg, as he liked to be called, was born in 1918.

Reg began his film career as a combat cameraman during World War II. He was attached to the British 8th Army cinematography unit in North Africa for the duration of the war and was also part of the peacekeeping force in Greece immediately after. He returned to England in 1946 to pursue a career in cinematography, working at Denham and Pinewood studios until immigrating to Canada with his young family in 1955.

The family lived in Quebec while Reg worked with the National Film Board of Canada. He went freelance in 1963 and moved his family to Toronto where he built his successful career as a cinematographer in both television and film. Besides the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Reg was a member of IATSE and ACTT of England.

He won numerous awards, including both the CSC feature (Black Christmas) and commercial cinematography honours in 1975, the CSC feature award (Second Wind) in 1976 and the CSC TV drama award (The Fortunate Pilgrim) in 1989. He was nominated for Genie awards in 1980, 1981 and 1984 for his work on Murder by Decree, Phobia and A Christmas Story respectively. Other film credits include Tribute, Middle Age Crazy, Loose Cannons and Porky’s I and II, still the biggest box office hits in Canadian film history. Television credits include The Seaway, The Forest Rangers and Lady in a Corner and Christmas Eve, both with Loretta Young.

As his own personal favourite, Morris told CSC News in January, 1997, that “I always thought the best film I ever shot was Murder by Decree,” a Canada/UK co-production made in England in 1978. The film starred Canadian actor Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason as Dr. Watson. Also featuring Sir John Gielgud and Canadians Donald Sutherland, Susan Clark and Genevieve Bujold, the movie still gets occasional TV replay.

Reg Morris csc began his film career as a combat cameraman during World War II, attached to the British 8th Army cinematography unit in North Africa. His photo, but not his name, appeared in this magazine ad for DeVry cameras, saluting the 1943 war documentary Desert Victory.

One of his most historic credits was as DOP on Drylanders (see CSC News, January/1997), the 1963 motion picture that was the National Film Board’s first feature-length presentation. Directed by Donald Haldane and starring Frances Hyland and James Douglas, Drylanders was shot in Superscope. Morris, an NFB staff photographer in Montreal when Drylanders was shot on the Saskatchewan Prairies in 35mm black and white, recalled that Superscope was a wide-screen process for which the camera had to be adapted. “They widened the gate slightly to give them the wide-screen ratio. It was a regular lens.”

Press reviews of Drylanders lauded Morris’s cinematography: . . . “beautifully photographed,” “superb camera work,” “a magnificent camera,” “glimmering photographic moments.” The Ottawa Citizen enthused that “nothing should be taken away from Reginald Morris’s low-keyed, wide-screen photography, with its shots of cloud-spattered skies, swirling snow, dust blizzards, harvest threshings, and endless Prairie vistas striking exactly the right note of atmosphere.”

Personal reviews of Reg’s life and art have been just as generous. CSC President Joan Hutton csc expressed sadness at his passing and recalled that “I worked with Reggie when I was a second assistant and have never met a finer gentleman.”

Peter Luxford csc said that Reg was “a wonderful mentor for me and many others in the film industry,” while CSC Affiliate Perry Hoffman said he was “a true friend in a business where genuine friendships are hard to come by.” Former Society president Robert Rouveroy csc called him “a cameraman’s cameraman,” and Harry Lake csc said he was a “master.”

“Reg was a long standing member of I.A.T.S.E. Local 667,” the union said in a tribute, “who willingly gave of his time as an Executive Board member and most importantly, as a wonderful mentor to many of our members.”

(The CSC News thanks Muriel Morris for providing biographical information and photographs.)

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