Butler would resume his US effects career at Warners in the early forties and direct all effects efforts on many films such as CASABLANCA before being taken on by Harry Cohn at Columbia in 1944 whereby he was in charge of all photographic and miniature effects produced at the studio - a station he held pretty much for the rest of his career until finally establishing his own independent effects house around 1960 when Columbia shut down their camera effects department. Larry Butler seemed to do the reverse - having started at WB with his father when he was just 15 and later joining the Alexander Korda operation based out of London in the late thirties working under Ned Mann on all of the big Korda epics. It seemed that the natural steps of progression were to start at Columbia and after you'd paid your dues to move on up to Warners. Former Paramount matte artist Jan Domela also painted on some Columbia shows in the mid sixties for Lawrence Butler, though to pinpoint exactly which ones is next to impossible as I've not spotted any clues in his family archives. Veteran matte man Lou Litchtenfield also worked at the studio for a time, as part of his self mandated gaining of experience at all the majors' in an effort to learn all the tricks of the trade. Hans Bartholowsky and Juan Larrinaga - the brother of Mario - were other matte artists connected with the photographic effects side of things at the studio until both moved across to Warner Brothers probably some time in the early forties. Other matte painters associated with the studio were New Zealander Ted (Edward Oscar)Withers (pictured at left and above right setting up a glass shot) who according to his nephew painted glass shots for Columbia and MGM probably from the late twenties. Several key names in the world of matte art were associated with Columbia, two of whom I've written about in my blogs extensively - Jack Cosgrove and Russell Lawsen who both did a team stint at the studio in the middle thirties before being snapped up by Selznick International and Universal respectively. In my blog on Frank Capra's LOST HORIZON I go into some of these personalities mentioned above, with then director of effects Roy Davidson helming the camera effects department from around 1934 until the early forties whereby he moved across to Warner Brothers to do much the same thing. It was a great era for collecting rare one sheets and publicity materials too, the sorts of things that don't even get used nowadays in those cold, faceless multi-plex prisons that call themselves moviehouses. Those days were the halcyon days of film exhibition where prints were constantly on the move and even films some twenty years old still had life left in them and would always be playing somewhere. I worked for some eight years from the late 1970's for Columbia Pictures at the New Zealand distribution office Columbia-Warner Film Distributors where we shipped 35,16 and occasionally 70mm prints to theatres throughout NZ and many of the South Pacific territories such as Tonga, Fiji and Samoa. Several instances of this blog NOT saving as I tirelessly typed away only to find zero at the end of it - causing me to bloody near throw the freakin' computer out of the window. Todays blog has been a really exasperating effort - with numerous internet problems, including the whole web here slowing up to a near crawl -which isn't unusual here with our very poor internet speeds.
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