An Intrepid Cameraman: June 1924

Alfred Jacquemin, 1944

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley heard about another hardy soul filming in Alaska, joining the parade that included Norman Dawn in 1922 and Lewis Moomaw in 1923 (who knew it was such a trend?):

Alfred Jacquemin, the intrepid cameraman, who rescued the balloonists on Hudson Bay shores in 1920, and who is now in Alaska, has cabled his manager here that he has secured moving pictures of the Major Martin trail, and is now on his way to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, 1918

Jacquemin certainly had an attentive manager, who thought to tell Grace Kingsley about his client’s adventures. More details about the trip appeared in the Seward Daily Gateway. He was part of a group  of sportsmen led by big game hunter Edward D. Jones, who in 1920 had headed up another expedition to Alaska sponsored by the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles to collect specimens.  As of May 10^th they were leaving for Unga, Sand Point and other far westward destinations on a steamer called Princess Pat. Most of them were there to kill animals, but Jacquemin and his assistant Gus Peterson were working for the Balmac Educational Film Service,* and they planned  to shoot a five reel feature including all of the boat trip, the scenery, and the big game animals of the Kenal Peninsula and Aleutians. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any evidence that the movie was completed, and the footage seems to be lost.

This trip was a short bit of Jacquemin’s long and varied career as a cameraman. Alfred Leon Jacquemin was born in Cardiff, Wales on May 25, 1886 to French parents, Auguste and Jeanne Landry Jacquemin. They moved back to France, and he married Lucienne Barbier on April 28, 1908. In his later interviews he said he worked for Gaumont in Paris for nine years. He served France in World War 1; most articles said he shot films for the government, but one said he served with the artillery (he could very well have done both).

He and his second wife Agnes moved to Canada in 1919. In January 1920 he was a cameraman for the Metropolitan Motion Picture Company in Detroit, Michigan, but by December he was working for the Aero Film Service of Toronto. That’s how he became part of the team that went looking for the balloonists mentioned in Kingsley’s story. Accounts of that story differed, but the Seward Daily Gateway had the most complete version of his part in it:

Mr. Jacquemin is a cameraman of national importance, having composed part of the party who went to the rescue of the ill-fated army balloonists who sailed from Rockaway, and fell in the Canadian woods in Ontario. Mr. Jacquemin travelled about 80 miles by dog sled to get pictures of the rescued balloonists and was one of the first services to be released following the tragic event.

It turns out they were right about his national importance, but it was to be Canadian importance. Before that happened, in June 1921 when Canada held their census he and his wife were living in Toronto, but he was unemployed. It looks like he decided to try his luck in the United States again in early 1923, and in 1925 he was hired by the Christie Company. He stayed there for two years, shooting short comedies like Dummy Love with Bobby Vernon and Sailor Beware with Vera Steadman, as well as the feature The Nervous Wreak. He even filed a Declaration of Intent to become a naturalized United State citizen on April 8, 1925, but he didn’t go through with it.

In 1927 his studio released some publicity photos about their camera department’s war service. Gus Peterson had been Jacquemin’s camera assistant on the Alaska trip. One article also said: “Jacquemin is one of the few men who have made moving pictures of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo,” but that isn’t co-oberated elsewhere. But who knows where his work at Gaumont took him?

In 1927 he was hired by the Associated Screen News of Canada and he and Agnes moved to Montreal. ASN was the largest private production company in Canada from 1921 to 1958; they made most of the newsreels and commissioned industrial films produced in the country. Working with director Gordon Sparling, Jacquemin shot many Canadian Cameos, which was a series of 10 minute long theatrically-released films about everyday Canadian life and people, as well as its history. He helped to preserve a record of what Canada was like, which was certainly of national importance! Highlights of his career included Rhapsody in Two Languages (1934), a portrait of 24 hours in Montreal in the style of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Royal Banners Over Ottawa (1939) the only color film of the King George and Queen Mary’s last trip to Canada. He also shot plenty of more quotidian subjects, like The Miracle of the Locomotive (1928) about how a train is built and Front of Steel (1940), about the value of steel workers in wartime. 

Royal Banners Over Ottawa (1939)

As of the 1931 census he and Agnes were living in Montreal, but on June 16, 1934 he married Eva Brabant Paradis. I can’t find anything that says what happened: Canada really needs to digitize more of their newspapers and vital records!

In recognition of his importance, in 1944 he was invited to join the American Society of Cinematographers (Canada didn’t get their own society until 1957). Their article about him still mentioned his 1924 trip to Alaska. They also told about his work on The Thousand Days, a review of the first three years of World War 2.

The last credit I can find for him is for Royal Welcome (1951), which was about then-Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s first visit to Canada. Jacquemin was the only cameraman allowed to travel on board the royal yacht Britannia on that trip.

After 1951, I could find nothing more about him. When Eva Jacquemin died in 1968 after a long illness, she was his widow.

Nonfiction cameramen should be remembered, too! Happily, the Canadian Educational, Sponsored, and Industrial Film Project is contributing to that: his longest, but still incomplete, filmography is available on their site. 

* The Balmac Educational Film Company aspired to make educational films for schools and churches, and by 1923 had complete four shorts, including The Land of Everlasting Snow and From Forest to Mill.  Their production manager was Capt. M. McKenzie, and it was headquartered in San Anselmo, CA. After this, they completely disappeared.

“Capt. M. McKenzie,” Camera, August 25, 1923.

“Christie Cameramen’s Colorful Careers,” Paramount Around the World, April 2, 1927, p.18.

J. Earl Clausen, “Missing Aeronauts Over Fifty Miles Out from Mattice,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 11, 1921.

“Princess Pat Party Sails for Westward Some Time Tonight,” Seward Daily Gateway, May 10, 1924.

“To Bring Wild Life in Natural Setting Here,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1920.

“To Shoot Approaching American Aeronauts,” Border Cities Star, January 10, 1921.

“Winter Sports Filmed.” Montreal Gazette, March 14, 1932.

“World’s Largest Bear,” Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1924.