W. Howard Greene Filmography

Raiders of the Seven Seas

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Payne, Donna Reed, Gerald Mohr, Lon Chaney, Jr., Anthony Caruso

Synopsis: John Payne stars as legendary pirate Barbarossa -- aka Redbeard -- in Raiders of the Seven Seas. Capturing a Spanish galleon almost single-handedly, Barbarossa claims haughty Contessa Alida (Donna Reed) as his own property. Engaged to marry naval officer Alfredo (Gerald Mohr), Alida despises Read More

When Worlds Collide

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hanson, John Hoyt, Larry Keating

Synopsis: First published in 1932, Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer's speculative novel When Worlds Collide was immediately purchased by Paramount as a possible project for director Cecil B. DeMille. But because none of Paramount's scriptwriters were able to come up with an adequate screen treatment, the Read More

Al Jennings of Oklahoma

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Dan Duryea, Gale Storm, Dick Foran, Gloria Henry

Synopsis: The real Al Jennings was a wizened little man who, after a largely unsuccessful career as a western outlaw, reformed to the extent of hitting the lecture circuit and even producing his own films. Jennings was still alive when Columbia's Al Jennings of Oklahoma was produced in 1951, so one can Read More

High Lonesome

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Drew Barrymore, Chill Wills, John Archer, Lois Butler, Kristine Miller

Synopsis: When there is a sudden outbreak of mysterious murders in the Texas Big Bend country, a young drifter new to the area, played by John Barrymore, is the prime suspect. Captured and held for the murders, the rancher who is holding Barrymore does not realize that he has been set up to take the fall Read More

Tycoon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Wayne, Laraine Day, Judith Anderson, James Gleason

Synopsis: This John Wayne adventure is set in South America's rugged Andes Mountains. The Duke has been assigned by a powerful US mining magnate to build a railroad to his newest mines. The two men lock horns over the route the railroad will take. The cost-conscious, people-insensitive industrialist wants Read More

Slave Girl

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, George Brent, Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford, Lois Collier

Synopsis: Slave Girl is the sort of fare that the Universal higher-ups used to dismiss as "tits and sand;" nonetheless, this kind of entertainment (along with the equally lowbrow Abbott and Costello and Ma and Pa Kettle pictures) paid the bills for the studio's more ponderous projects. The slave girl of the Read More

Pirates of Monterey

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rod Cameron, George Lewis, George Magrill

Synopsis: Pirates of Monterey is set during the early 19th century, at a time when California was asserting its independence from Mexico. Rod Cameron plays Phillip Kent, a devil-may-care mercenary hired to transport a shipment of rifles to the American army detachment at Monterey. Along the way, he is Read More

Salome, Where She Danced

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Rod Cameron, David Bruce, Walter Slezak, Albert Dekker

Synopsis: This campy little drama launched the career of B-girl Yvonne De Carlo. It is set during the Franco-Prussian war and chronicles the exploits of Salome, a beautiful Viennese dancer who falls for an American reporter and for him gets involved in cloak-and-dagger activities involving the Bismarck Read More

Cobra Woman

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu, Edgar Barrier, Lon Chaney, Jr., Mary Nash

Synopsis: On the eve of her wedding to Ramu (Jon Hall), the beautiful Tollea (Maria Montez) is spirited away from her tranquil South Sea island to the mysterious, forbidden place of her birth, Cobra Island. Ramu follows and, with help from his young-but-not-too-bright friend Kado (Sabu) and their chimp Read More

The Impatient Years

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jean Arthur, Lee Bowman, Charles Coburn, Edgar Buchanan, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: In this domestic comedy, a housewife nervously awaits the return of her husband from military service. They married after a brief, passionate courtship and now she does not know if she really loves him. Sure enough, sparks fly upon his return and the couple decide to get a divorce. Fortunately Read More

Can't Help Singing

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Robert Paige, Akim Tamiroff, David Bruce, Leonid Kinskey

Synopsis: Deanna Durbin's first Technicolor feature is a lavish musical western, replete with a Jerome Kern-E. Y. Harburg score. Set in the mid-19th century, the story finds Caroline (Durbin), daughter of a wealthy senator, bound and determined to wed dashing cavalry officer Lawlor (Robert Paige). When the Read More

The Climax

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Boris Karloff, Susanna Foster, Turhan Bey, Gale Sondergaard, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: The Climax was hurriedly and economically filmed on leftover sets from Universal's super-production The Phantom of the Opera. In his Technicolor debut, Boris Karloff plays Dr. Hohner, a brilliant but unstable theatrical physician who murders a beautiful opera star when she rejects him. Ten year Read More

Salute to the Marines

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: William Lundigan, Wallace Beery, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, Keye Luke, Ray Collins

Synopsis: In this wartime comedy drama an ultra-macho but aging Marine sergeant does all he can to keep his men intimidated and towing the line while they are stationed in the Philippines at the beginning of WW II. The tough-as-nails jarhead does have a terrible secret though--he has never been involved in Read More

The Phantom of the Opera

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Claude Rains, Jane Farrar, Edgar Barrier, Leo Carrillo, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: This Technicolor retelling of the Gaston Leroux "grand guignol" classic The Phantom of the Opera has a little more opera than phantom, but that's because the stars are soprano Susannah Foster and tenor Nelson Eddy. Claude Rains carries the acting honors on his shoulders, playing a pathetic Read More

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jon Hall, Maria Montez, Turhan Bey, Andy Devine, Kurt Katch

Synopsis: The general perception of the Technicolor costume adventure movies that Maria Montez and Jon Hall made for Universal in the early 1940's is that they were pure escapist entertainment, intended to make people forget for an hour or so about the Second World War and the general world situation. And Read More

The Arabian Nights

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jon Hall, Maria Montez, Leif Erickson, Sabu, Billy Gilbert

Synopsis: In a harem in a Middle Eastern palace, the guardian leads the women he protects in telling the tale of Halroun-Al-Raschid (Jon Hall), the Caliph of Bagdad, who found himself an enemy close to home in the form of his half-brother Kamar (Leif Erickson), who was ineligible for the throne because of Read More

The Jungle Book

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sabu, Joseph Calleia, John Qualen, Frank Puglia, Rosemary de Camp

Synopsis: The Jungle Book isn't always faithful to the Rudyard Kipling original (in fact, it seldom is), but 1942 audiences swept up in the grandeur of the production values and the lush Technicolor photography didn't mind at all. Indian juvenile-star Sabu plays Mowgli, who having been lost in the jungle as Read More

Blossoms in the Dust

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Felix Bressart, Marsha Hunt, Fay Holden

Synopsis: Greer Garson is dignity and integrity personified in the role of the real-life Edna Gladney. After several life experiences which rival daytime drama for unrelenting misery and melodrama, Edna marries flour-mill owner Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a baby, who dies shortly after Edna Read More

The Shepherd of the Hills

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Wayne, Betty Field, Harry Carey, Beulah Bondi, James Barton

Synopsis: Harold Bell Wright's bestselling novel The Shepherd of the Hills had been previously filmed in 1919 and 1928 before Paramount offered the first talkie version in 1941. In one of his least typical roles, John Wayne plays a young Ozark backwoodsman forsworn to kill his father, who years earlier Read More

Untamed

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ray Milland, Patricia Morison, Akim Tamiroff, William Frawley, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: A courageous doctor braves a fierce blizzard in the Canadian wilderness to save a remote community from a deadly epidemic. He has come North to visit and ends up stealing a wife from her husband. When the epidemic hits, he and the wife begin their arduous journey. At one point, they are stranded. Read More

Northwest Mounted Police

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Preston S. Foster, Paulette Goddard, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. De Mille directed this lavish all-star spectacular paying tribute to America's neighbors to the North. In 1885, as Louis Riel (Francis J. McDonald) tries to organize Indians and French settlers into a fighting force that will battle against the ruling British, Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers (Gary Cooper Read More

The Bill of Rights

Crew: Cinematographer

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It is no secret that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were at each other's throats throughout the filming of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Boiled down to essentials: Davis felt that Flynn was unprofessional, while Flynn thought that Davis took herself too damned seriously. Besides, Davis Read More

Jesse James

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly, Randolph Scott, Henry Hull, Brian Donlevy

Synopsis: The real Frank and Jesse James were murderous thugs, light years away from the Robin Hood image imposed on them by revisionist dime novelists. But in 1939, 20th Century-Fox wasn't about to build an expensive Technicolor feature around the exploits of a couple of low-lives, thus Jesse James upholds Read More

Men with Wings

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, Louise Campbell, Andy Devine, Lynne Overman

Synopsis: Brash and vigorous director William Wellman always had a place in his filmography for movies glorifying the early years of aviation -- from the start of his career (Wings), until the end (Lafayette Escadrille). But, perhaps, never has his devotion to aviation been made more vivid than in his 1938 Read More

A Star Is Born

Crew: Cinematographer, Screenwriter

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine

Synopsis: A Star is Born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a "true behind-the-scenes" story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. Janet Gaynor Read More

Nothing Sacred

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: "This is New York, Skyscraper Champion of the World...Where the Slickers and Know-It-Alls peddle gold bricks to each other...And where Truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye..." With this jaundiced opening title, scripter Ben Hecht introduces his classic comedy Nothing Sacred Read More

The Garden of Allah

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut, Tilly Losch

Synopsis: Marlene Dietrich stars as the noble Domini Enfilden in this third film version of Robert Hichens' 1904 novel. After caring for her dying father, Domini is told by her Mother Superior (Lucille Watson) that she should go to the Algerian desert to rest and seek sanctuary. On her way to the town of Read More