Irving Lerner

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Irving Lerner (7 March 1909, New York City - 25 December 1976, Los Angeles) was cinematographer, director, or assistant director on documentary films such as One Third of a Nation (1939), Valley Town (1940), The Land (1942) directed by Robert Flaherty, and Suicide Attack (1950). Lerner was also producer of the OWI documentary Hymn of the Nations (1944), directed by Alexander Hammid, and featuring Arturo Toscanini.

Irving Lerner was also an important director and film editor with directing credits such as Studs Lonigan (1960) and editing credits such as Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977). Lerner died during the cutting of New York, New York, and the film was dedicated to him.

In ["New Frontiers in the American Documentary"]http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Huffman/Frontier/others.html of the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, Nicole Huffman has this to say about Irving Lerner: Irving Lerner grew up in a Russian family with leftists ideals. He was an anthropology major at Columbia University in 1929 and supported himself by compiling bibliographies and taking still photos for the college. When he was assigned to film dancers in Harlem, his classmate Margaret Mead showed him the basics. In 1931 he joined the Film and Photo League in order to use a camera in a political atmosphere. He covered the May Day Celebration and the W.I.R. Young Pioneer Camp. Lerner wrote reviews and film news for numerous journals while also doing still photography. In 1935 he was a strong supporter of Nykino, believing that the Film and Photo League's newsreels had been "formless and as poorly made as the commercial reel." Lerner was also a part of Frontier Films, assisting in the editing of films such as China Strikes Back, yet his participation became less and less until his departure in 1938. The years following he was cameraman for Robert Flaherty on The Land, in charge of the Educational Film Institute of New York University, edited Van Dyke's Valley Town, The Children Must Learn, To Hear Your Banjo Play, Here is Tomorrow, and John Ferno's and Julian Roffman's And So They Live.

An anecdote from [Duncan L. Cooper]http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0103.html#fn12: According to supervising editor Irving Lerner, the struggle over the final content of "Spartacus" became so intense that Universal executives, in an unprecedented move, periodically came right into the editing room and ordered him to reinstate or delete individual scenes, overriding Douglas' instructions. As a result, a number of scenes, particularly those featuring Charles Laughton, went in and out of the picture several times. The process of arriving at a final cut on which Lerner, Douglas, Kubrick and Muhl could even temporarily agree dragged on for so long that Lerner was finally forced to walk off the picture in order to begin directing his own film, Studs Lonigan. Irving Lerner, Interview With David Chandler, June 29,1960, pp.3,17

"Murder by Contract"http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/article.jsp?contentId=183439, Martin Scorsese and "New York, New York": When Martin Scorsese dedicated New York, New York to the memory of Irving Lerner, it wasn’t because Scorsese’s somber, fatalistic musical had anything in common with Lerner’s handful of noirs, apart from spiritual darkness. Of Lerner’s small output, the film that Scorsese was most influenced by, and cited frequently, was Murder by Contract (1958). A quickie shot in eight days on a microscopic budget, it’s a potent reminder of how less can be more.(...) We can understand why the young Scorsese was much more taken by it than by the A-movie on the double bill he saw. We see in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) Travis Bickle’s genuflections to Edwards’ ascetic preparations. Scorsese says he recalled Perry Botkin’s potent music for Murder by Contract – a single guitar, which Botkin played, redolent with hints of ‘50s Italo-pop and Anton Karas’s zither music for The Third Man (1949). Howard Shore devised a similarly guitar-flavored score that underlined the web-of-fate element in Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed (2006). Martin Scorsese [said]http://goingtothepictures.blogspot.com/2006/10/martin-scorseses-guilty-pleasures.html about "Murder by Contract", “This is the film that has influenced me most. I had a clip out of it in Mean Streets but had to take it out: it was too long, and a little too esoteric. And there's a getting-in-shape sequence that's very much like the one in Taxi Driver. The spirit of Murder By Contract has a lot to do with Taxi Driver. Lerner was an artist who knew how to do things in shorthand, like Bresson and Godard. The film puts us all to shame with its economy of style, especially in the barbershop murder at the beginning. Vince Edwards gives a marvelous performance as the killer who couldn't murder a woman. Murder By Contract was a favorite of neighborhood guys who didn't know anything about movies. They just liked the film because they recognized something unique about it.”.

The "Blacklist": Irving Lerner was an American citizen and an employee of the United States Office of War Information during World War II who worked in the Motion Picture Division. Lerner was allegedly involved in espionage on behalf of Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU); Arthur Adams was Lerner's key contact.^{[citation needed]}

In the winter of 1944, a counterintelligence officer caught Lerner attempting to photograph the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, which was part of the Manhattan Project. The cyclotron had been used in the creation of plutonium and Lerner was acting without authorization. Lerner resigned and went to work for Keynote Recordings, owned by Eric Bernay, another Soviet intelligence contact. Arthur Adams also worked at Keynote.

[edit] Filmography

As Director

A Town Called Hell (1971) (uncredited)
The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969)
Ben Casey (TV series, 13 episodes, 1961-1965)
Seaway (1965) (TV series, unknown episodes)
Mr. Novak (TV series, 1 episode, 1963)
Cry of Battle (1963)
Target: The Corruptors (1 episode, 1961)
King of Diamonds (1 episode, 1961)
Studs Lonigan (1960)
City of Fear (1959)
Murder by Contract (1958)
Edge of Fury (1958)
Man Crazy (1953)
Suicide Attack (1951)
Muscle Beach (1948)
To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)
Swedes in America (1943) with Ingrid Bergman

As Producer

Hay que matar a B. (1975) (co-producer)
The Darwin Adventure (1972) (co-producer)
Bad Man's River (1971) (executive producer)
Captain Apache (1971) (associate producer)
Custer of the West (1967) (executive producer)
The Wild Party (1956) (supervising producer)
C-Man (1949) (producer)
To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947) (co-producer)
Hymn of the Nations (1944) (producer) (uncredited)

As Editor

Mustang: The House That Joe Built (1978)
The River Niger (1976)
Steppenwolf (1974)
Spartacus (1960) (uncredited)
The Marines Come Thru (1938)
China Strikes Back (1937) (unconfirmed)

As Second Unit Director or Assistant Director

A Town Called Hell (1971) (second unit director)
Custer of the West (1967) (second unit director: Civil War sequense)
Spartacus (1960) (second unit director) (uncredited)
Valley Town (1940) (second unit director)
One Third of a Nation (1939) (second unit director) (uncredited)

As Actor

Hay que matar a B. (1975)
On Camera (1 episode, 1955)
Pie in the Sky (1935)

As Miscellaneous Crew

The Savage Eye (1960) (technical advisor)
God's Little Acre (1958) (associate to director)
Robot Monster (1953) (production associate)

Editing Department

New York, New York (1977) (supervising editor)
Executive Action (1973) (associate editor)

Production Manager

Men in War (1957) (production supervisor)

As Cinematographer

The Land (1942)

Dedicatee

New York, New York (1977) (our gratitude and respect to)

[edit] References

FBI memo, “Soviet Activities in the United States,” 25 July 1946, Papers of Clark Clifford, Harry S. Truman Library
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press, 1999), pg. 325