Walter L. Griffin

Who was Walter L. Griffin?

Walter L. Griffin was a founder of the American Society of Cinematographers. Griffin started working in pictures in 1912 and spent a year and a half in the lab before he first cranked a camera for Universal Pictures. In 1915, he joined the Exposition Players’ Corporation, official cinematographers of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where he headed photographic and lab operations. When the exposition closed in 1916, he spent four months in Colorado, making scenic films for the Denver Tourist Bureau.

Returning to Hollywood, Griffin signed on with the National Film Corporation, where he shot some 25 comedies featuring National’s owner, William “Smiling Bill” Parsons. His best-remembered film is the Lon Chaney vehicle Nomads of the North, which was filmed for the National Film Corporation but was released through the Associated First National Exhibitors Circuit after Parsons’ untimely death caused the NFC to close. Through the early 1920s, Griffin ground out low-budget Westerns starring Bob Custer, Franklyn Farnum and Al Hoxie. In the mid-1920s, he gave up wide-open spaces for the great indoors and shot a number modest melodramas, such as Rose of the Bowery and The Heart of Broadway. His last known credit as a cinematographer is City of Purple Dreams.