George K. Hollister

George K. Hollister (March 7, 1873 – March 28, 1952) was an American pioneer cinematographer.[1]

December 1911 photograph with George K. Hollister standing at left, his wife Alice standing at center next to Sidney Olcott, and with children Doris Ethel and George Jr. sitting in back at center

Biography

Born in New York City, New York, little is known of his background. In 1905 he married a nineteen-year-old girl named Alice from Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of French-Canadian immigrants. They had a daughter, Doris Ethel, born in 1906 and George Jr., born in 1908.

Around 1908, Hollister was hired by the Kalem Company to train as a camera operator. Under film director Sidney Olcott, he was the camera man for the pioneering Kalem team that filmed in Florida during the winter and in 1910 would be part of the first ever crew to film on location outside of the United States. Traveling to Ireland with Olcott's crew that included leading lady and principal screenwriter, Gene Gauntier, George Hollister shot The Lad from Old Ireland and The Irish Honeymoon, a travelogue shot in Blarney Castle, Glengarriff and at the Lakes of Killarney. A Kalem crew returned to Ireland in each of the next two years and in 1912. Alice, Hollister's wife was a character actress of Kalem.

In December 1911, he embarked in New York with Olcott and a full cast of actors for a journey that would last eleven months. Alice and their two children accompany him. In January 1912, he was in Egypt, Cairo and then Luxor where he boxed about thirty films. In April, he is in Jerusalem to film his most important cinematic accomplishment in Palestine : From the Manger to the Cross. The film told the story of Jesus, and in 1998 was selected for the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress.

At the beginning of June, the troupe leaves Palestine, crosses the Mediterranean and then all of Europe by train and settles for the summer in Beaufort near Killarney, in Ireland where Hollister shoots seven films. He returned to New York on October 12, 1912. For this journey, Hollister travelled 30,000 miles, visited 12 countries on three continents, travelling by boat, train, car, on foot, camel, horse, donkey[2]...

George K. Hollister appeared as an actor in a few scenes in several films and did his last camera work in 1929. He died in Los Angeles in 1952 and is interred in the Great Mausoleum, Columbarium of Solace at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His wife Alice, who died in 1973, is interred with him.

Partial filmography

References
  1. IMDB entry
  2. Michel Derrien, Aux origines du cinéma irlandais: Sidney Olcott, le premier oeil, p. 82, TIR 2013. ISBN 978-2-917681-20-6 (in French)
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