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Elgin Lessley (1883-1944)

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Birthplace:
Higbee, Missouri, USA

Born:
January 10, 1883

Died:
February 8, 1944

Biography from TheMovieDB

Elgin Lessley (also credited as Lesly, Lessly, and Leslie) (June 10, 1883 - January 10, 1944) was an American hand-crank cameraman of the silent film era—a period of filmmaking when virtually all special effects work had to be produced inside the camera during filming. Though Lessley worked earlier with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and later with Harry Langdon, he is best known for the groundbreaking effects he produced with Buster Keaton, who dubbed him "the human metronome" for his ability to crank consistently at any requested speed.  Lessley's most striking effects were in The Playhouse (1921) and Sherlock Jr. (1924). In The Playhouse, through use of a specially shuttered lens and repeated back-cranking and re-cranking, Lessley allowed Keaton to appear as up to nine characters simultaneously, interacting with one another. In Sherlock Jr., Lessley's careful positioning of camera and actor in various locations produced the effect of a man stuck in a movie where his location keeps changing as he struggles to keep up. Lessley retired from filmmaking after shooting The Cameraman with Buster Keaton in 1928.

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Film Performances

  • 1926  The General
    Union General Who Gives Command to Cross Bridge (uncredited)

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Film Production

Cinematography:
1917  A Clever Dummy
1919  Back Stage
1920  Convict 13
1921  The Boat
1922  Day Dreams
1922  My Wife's Relations
1922  The Blacksmith
1922  The Electric House
1922  The Frozen North
1923  The Balloonatic
1923  The Love Nest
1926  Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
1927  Three's a Crowd
1928  The Chaser

Director of Photography:
1917  A Clever Dummy
1918  The Bell Boy
1919  Back Stage
1919  The Hayseed
1920  Convict 13
1920  Neighbors
1920  One Week
1920  The Garage
1920  The Scarecrow
1921  Hard Luck
1921  The Boat
1921  The Goat
1921  The Haunted House
1921  The High Sign
1922  Cops
1922  Day Dreams
1922  My Wife's Relations
1922  The Blacksmith
1922  The Electric House
1922  The Frozen North
1923  Our Hospitality
1923  The Balloonatic
1923  The Love Nest
1923  Three Ages
1924  Sherlock Jr.
1924  The Navigator
1925  Go West
1925  Seven Chances
1926  The Strong Man
1926  Tramp, Tramp, Tramp
1927  Long Pants
1927  Three's a Crowd
1928  The Cameraman
1928  The Chaser

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While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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