Section 1:
Q: I'll just start off, Don, asking you some
questions; actually some things we've already
talked about, how you became hired at the
Register and how was it that you got hired at
the Register coming, almost several months,
just a few months after being at the
University of Iowa, with this with this very
renowned staff of photographers.
A: Well, I considered it quite fortunate. I
graduated from Iowa in 1939 with a degree in
economics and I wasn't even sure how I was
going to earn a living. The School of
Journalism wasn't going to pay attention to
me because I didn't graduate from the School
of Journalism and they weren't going to help
me get a job. And you don't end up earning a
living with a degree in economics unless you
had a Ph.D. But, I was interested in
photography and committed myself to
photography and really what we call
photojournalism now, which I have to tell you
was called news photography before we got
that fancy. But in any event, I'd spent the
winter in Cedar Rapids, [IA]. I'd gotten
married and I worked at what I could do. I
worked in a camera shop and learned how to
print. I worked part-time for the Cedar
Rapids Gazette, particularly for sports. And
somewhere along the line, at the end of the
winter, I heard just by, I think a traveling
Kodak representative coming through, that the
Register had been looking for an editorial
photographer, apparently for some months and
I had not heard.
Q: That's a big job.
A: I couldn't believe it.
Q: At the Register.
A: Well, as a matter of fact, a friend of
mine, I'm reminded of this, who'd graduated
with me, I learned later had tried to get the
job and didn't get it. In any event, I got an
appointment by telephone, drove down to Des
Moines, which was a big new city - I'd been
there a couple of times, but it was a big
city to me. I interviewed with Ken MacDonald
and showed him my string books which were
gathered from really my last two years in
college and six to eight months at Cedar
Rapids working with the Gazette.
Q: The string book is a kind of portfolio?
A: Well, yes. It's really a scrapbook that
you paste in the stories and you paste in the
photographs. Fortunately, all through school,
the last two years of school, I got two
things. I got a dollar for every photograph
that was printed and a photo credit, which
kept me going. In any event, MacDonald talked
to me and two weeks later I got a call
saying, "Come down, you're hired."
Q: So how was pay?
A: Well, I remember it well. Considering what
I'd been earning before I thought it was
good. It was thirty dollars a week. And as a
matter of fact, a lot of people were living
on thirty dollars a week in those days, so I
thought it was good.
Q: You're joining a staff of photographers
that are some of the best in the country. I
mean, talk about the feelings of excitement.
A: I don't suppose I ever thought I would end
on the Register directly, but I always felt
good about the photographs that I was
producing and the sense that this was the
career for me. So, I guess on a practical
basis I really I had thought I would be hired
by the Cedar Rapids Gazette. I think I
presented them enough to do it. But I will
tell you, the editor of the Gazette then was
Vern Marshall and he was an "American
Firster," and I interviewed him one time. I
walked into his office, I had been working as
a free-lancer for them. They had no
photographers, I thought it was an ideal time
to benefit me and start a staff position. I
can remember walking into his office,
knocking on the door, introducing myself and
as soon as he got to the subject, I can still
remember him saying "I haven't got time to
talk to you." And that was the end of Cedar
Rapids.
So, even that might have been a little
ambitious, but oddly enough I don't think I
was surprised that I was taken up by the
Register. I will tell you they had a staff
of very seasoned photographers, starting with
George Yates who was the chief-of-staff and
was known all over the country and really
known nationally. He was quite an imposing
figure in his own right. He spoke with a
British accent, particularly when he wanted
to impress somebody and he had a long gray
mustache that he twirled when he wanted to.
It was like being dropped into a movie set,
that group. There were two or three other
senior photographers. John Robinson, one of
them, and two others. They were the nucleus
of the staff and then there was one other
junior member who had preceded me on the
Register, having come from Iowa, a man who
had became a good friend of mine Jervas
Baldwin, J.B. just died, I think about two
weeks ago, in strange fire out here in Adel
[IA]. But he and I were the new group, the
two at the bottom of the scale. And J.B. had
gotten..., of course he had been around for
about a year, a year and a half, and he had
gotten his feet wet. I was just stuck on the
day side, I suppose so they could keep track
of what I was doing, and did my thing at the
bottom end of the ladder.
Q: Could you talk about that seniority
situation? How were the assignments made?
Would a certain photographer get something or
was it based on the availability of a
photographer?
A: There were a number of factors that went
in to it. First of all, when you came on
duty, if I came on at eight in the morning
there would be on a clipboard, we just had
assignments-slips of paper from the various
departments. And the basic premise was that
when you walked in, if you saw an assignment
you read it and you went out and did it and
took care of it on a time factor. However, on
assignments that weren't that routine, ones
that might take some preparing ahead of time,
or something of more substance than just a
catch-as-catch-can kind of assignment, you
were often talked to the day before. "We got
this coming up," or an editor would come,
well, from the news side. We had a photo
editor...both the Tribune and the Register
staff was a common staff for both papers. So
you might take a Register assignment even
though you were basically on the Tribune
time. And sometimes one of the editors, the
news editor or a picture editor from one of
papers, would walk over and talk to George
Yates and say I've got this coming up
tomorrow at two, do you want to give this to
a specific photographer? So occasionally, he
would elect a photographer to take the
assignment. Now on what basis, I don't know.
He might even, in my instance with a new
photographer, give an assignment that was
different to see how I would do. I had no
idea. --
Section 2:
Q: And talk about the equipment you were
using, this was old stuff. I mean nothing
like what we're using now.
A: The cameras were Speed Graphics. As a
matter of fact, I was given, what I referred
to as a "hand-me down" Graphic, a
three-and-a-quarter, four-and-a-quarter.
Four-by-five was the size Graphic that other
photographers had used. That may be an
interesting distinction to make, but the
costs of running a photo department was a
factor in all of this and apparently at one
time Yates, or whoever made those decisions
believed that a three-and-a-quarter,
four-and-a-quarter camera would save film.
Both large cameras. They had come to the
conclusion that a four-by-five produced a
better image and more flexibility, but I was
the one that got what was left from the last
photographer and it wasn't for eight or nine
months that I was finally updated into a
four-by-five Graphic. But a four-by-five
Graphic was a heavy, big camera. It folded
out in front. It had a flash gun on it and
we used flash bulbs in those days. We
weren't too far from the days, I would guess
ten years before, when they were still using
flash powder. We thought this Speed Graphic
was a new camera. And the old Graflex, if
you'll remember maybe in some movies, you'll
see photographers with a great big box and it
happened to be leather in those days and not
plastic, but a shield coming up here and they
would look down, their head would go clear
down into the sighting area and they would
raise a holder with flash powder in it and it
would fire flash powder in it and it would
fire flash powder. It would leave dust and
dirt all over the place.
Q: And explosives.
A: Yes, it would go "whump" and get this
material all over. I didn't see that. I saw
it working for a commercial photographer in
Cedar Rapids. He was still using it when I
was there in 1939 and 1940. The newspaper no
longer used it and was using flash bulbs. --
Section 3:
Q: Back to the Register and before you were
hired, had you realized how well renowned the
paper was?
A: I don't think so. I grew up in Cedar
Rapids and didn't have much contact with Des
Moines. My family, when they wen to buy a
Sunday paper, bought Chicago Tribune. We
were that close. Ireally didn't know much
about the Register.
Q: Did your perception change after you were
hired?
A: Oh, after I was around the staff awhile
and began to understand the place of the
Register in the whole hierarchy of
newspapers, I began to not only realize, but
as a fact, it was the best paper in the
country. Repected everywhere. I learned
pretty quickly that I had found the right job
and the right place.
Q: Questions I've asked others who have
worked at the Register the years you were
there: What do you think made the Register
such a wonderful paper? Was it the
ownership? The way it was managed? The
people?
A: There would be anumber of factors as I
thought of it over the years. The Register
was a high quality paper in all departments.
They are at the international level in the
news, national level, they really didn't
pander to..., although we had lots of local
coverage, they wanted to be certainly a
regional paper, an Iowa paper and as you
know, it is the newspaper that Iowa depends
upon. I got the sense of that. One of the
factors that came, that really I didn't
recognize until I had worked on the paper for
a while, was that the sports section was
probably the best sports section in the
country. Now, that came about because of the
time and effort that was put into it, the
space, we had a big sports section on Sunday
called, "Peach Sports Section" and the
photographs that were produced for the "Peach
Sports Section" were far superior to anything
that even Chicago papers did. We just
devoted a lot of time and effort to the
sports page. And I think there was a
carryover, I don't know if it would be a
direct connection, but somewhere along the
line, probably a few years before I got
there, somebody had made a decision that
photographs were going to be a major part of
the Register's offering to the public. So we
were a photographic newspaper as well as
being a type paper of quality.
Q: This was something different than what
was happening at the other newspapers?
A: I think other newspapers would not devote
the time and effort to it. We devoted a lot
of space, spent a lot of money, to offer more
photographs, larger photographs, sequence
photgraphs eventually, which you didn't see
in other newspapers.
Q: Was there a demand for it from the
readers or was it just a new philosophy of
how a paper works?
A: I always thought somebody, or it may go
back to Gardner Cowles who owned the paper.
Gardner Cowles Sr. was still alive, I think.
Gardner Cowles Jr., called Mike, was very
interested in photography and I suspect he
was the motivating factor behind all this.
And on reason I can believe all this: he was
the founder of Look Magazine which became,
with Life Magazine, the two great
photographic magazines of the '50s and '60s.
I think he must have put the energy and
direction into the whole operation. --
Section 4:
Q: And also, I don't know if my timing is
right on this, but Picture Magazine was also
a critical part of the newspaper?
A: I'll surprise you on this. We had a
rotogravure section prior to Picture
Magazine. when I came there, the rotogravure
section was on a high quality brown paper,
was printed, believe it or not, in Chicago,
sent out here and stuffed with our papers.
Of course, with the Register's name on it,
and we ran color - we had no run of the press
color in those days - we ran color on Sunday.
We ran the rotogravure section - probably
went for five or six years - well it was
still going when I came back from the Navy.
Shortly thereafter, somebody made a decision
at the higher level that we could locally
produce the Picture Magazine. But, I guess
I'm saying color and staff-procuced color
were around before Picture Magazine. Picture
Magazine came along, and you are exactly
right, that gave more impetus into this
picture process.
Q: Sorry I don't know the term, but define
rotogravure. What is that?
A: Well, it's a different press process, one
that I never saw work. The inks are
different. The quality of the paper is
different. When I was a young person growing
up, whether it was the Chicago Tribune or the
Des Moines Register or whatever paper, if
they wanted to print color they had to print
it in this special rotgravure section. It's
an inking process and a press process that is
different than what we used for press runs.
Q: You also brought up Look Magazine. You
were also a contributer to Look and Life and
a variety of other publications.
A: Oddly enough, I don't know that I ever
had a photgraph in Look. Look was more of a
feature magazine. Life ran some features,
but it had a news bureau associated with it.
And of course, if you were on a newspaper,
whether there was a connection with Look and
the Register or not, the magazine that wanted
timely products, timely photographs, that
would be Life, responded more to what we had
to offer, at least certainly what I had to
offer. So I had a big run with Life, but I
had never - the people at Look knew me, in
fact the chief photographer mad a comment
about my book and all that - but I never did
have anything published in Look. --
Section 5:
Q: you touched on George Yates and I'd like
you to expand a little bit more on that
because everybody I've talked to said this is
a guy that had one heck of a colorful
personality. You've talked about his
mustache. What did you mean when you said
sometimes he used his English accent and
sometimes he didn't?
A: He was an actor. He was a great
photographer. I don't think I realized this
as a young man coming on, how much he
accopmlished. And it may be that years later
I looked back... First of all, he had
equipment - he didn't even have the Speed
Graphic, he had these old Graflex cameras.
He did a lot of aerial work from open cockpit
airplanes in days when films were very slow.
It was difficult to do it. He never got to
the position I did of flying an airplane and
being a photographer, but he was a
photographer, an aerial photographer as such,
in the days when it was very difficult.
Charlie Gatschet was the pilot in those days.
he was the pilot when I came on. In fact, I
remember Charlie Gatschet coming up to me
about the second or third day that I was on
the staff, he hadn't been around, he had been
flying the Register's current plane then, I
think it was a Spartan Executive -
magnificent 200 mile-an-hour airplane in the
days when no one had that kind of airplane.
Q: We're talking 1940s here.
A: Sure, sure. 1940, when i came on the
staff. Gatschet was the pilot and Yates was
the photgrapher. But, back to your point
about Yates specifically, he had come from
England. I never did question him how old he
was, but he was a tall, rangy, stately
Englishman. In our normal conversation, you
didn't get an English accent. But when
somebody came by, and he wanted to stand up
and meet him, the actor in him developed an
English accent. And he would often even
stand and stomp one foot as though he were
coming to attention. he was just what I'm
saying, not only a great photographer - and
he truly was - but he was an actor.
Q: He was also your supervisor.
A: He was our supervisor.
Q: How was working with him?
A: Well, he was pretty liberal. When I look
back on it, although for..., in the early
stage he was probably testing me to see if I
had what they wanted, and perhaps giving me
some assignments and watching. Once I was
beyond that stage, I think all of us fell
into a category of taking assignments as they
came. We were pretty interchangeable.
George Yates didn't initiate the assignments.
The all came from the desks. They were
brought over. He might want to say, "I think
Ultang ought to take this" or "Robinson might
take this.". But failing that, we simply
took the assignments as they came up.
Q: From the news...?
A: The assignments were all generated by the
news side.
Q: I was going to ask you that question.
Regsiter people and other newspaper editors
were more interested in telling a story with
text and obviously the phots that
supplemented text back in those days. What
kind of give and take would go between you
and the editors when photos were cropped or
actually excluded? Were there any hard
feelings? [remaining transcript not available] --
Section 6:
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Section 7:
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Section 8:
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Section 9:
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Section 10:
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Section 11:
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Section 12:
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