Merritt B. Gerstad

Birth : 1900-07-05, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Death : 1974-03-01

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Merritt B. Gerstad (5 July 1900, Chicago, Illinois – 1 March 1974, Laguna Beach, California) was an American cinematographer of silent and early sound films. After beginning as a cinematographer on films for Universal, he worked for MGM, working with director Tod Browning on (the lost) London After Midnight (1927) and Freaks (1932), and Sam Wood on the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera (1935). Later he was at Warner Bros. for Watch on the Rhine (1943) starring Bette Davis, Conflict (1945) with Humphrey Bogart in the lead, and the Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), his last credit.

Movies

Rhapsody in Blue
Additional Photography
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
Conflict
Director of Photography
Unhappily married Richard Mason concocts a meticulous scheme to kill his shrewish wife so that he'll be free to marry her sister.
Watch on the Rhine
Director of Photography
On the eve of World War II, the German Kurt Müller, his American-born wife Sara, and their three children, having lived in Europe for years, visit Sara's wealthy mother near Washington, DC. Kurt secretly works for the anti-Nazi resistance. A visiting Romanian count, becoming aware of this, seeks to blackmail him.
Night in New Orleans
Director of Photography
A policeman's family helps to exonerate him of murder charges in the death of a man he had under interrogation.
Tom, Dick and Harry
Director of Photography
Janie is a telephone operator who is caught up in the lines of love of three men: car salesman Tom, Chicago millionaire Dick and auto mechanic Harry. But Janie just can't seem to make up her mind between them. While fantasizing about her futures with each of the men, Janie spends her time desperately trying to juggle between them until she can make a decision.
The House Across the Bay
Director of Photography
Nightclub owner Steve Larwitt (George Raft) sees his empire of investments collapse as he faces tax evasion charges and attacks by rivals. Believing Steve will be safer in prison for one year, his wife, Brenda (Joan Bennett), testifies against him on advice from his lawyer, Slant Kolma (Lloyd Nolan), who is in love with her. After Steve receives 10 years in Alcatraz, Brenda moves to be near him and avoids advances of airplane builder Tim Nolan (Walter Pidgeon), who knows nothing about her past.
Andy Hardy's Dilemma: A Lesson in Mathematics... and Other Things
Director of Photography
Andy wants to buy a new car so he goes into the judge's home office where his father is about to write a $200 check to charity. He asks his dad for the $200 and they go used car shopping.
Slightly Honorable
Director of Photography
A lawyer is framed for the murder of a young party girl and tries to clear his name.
Eternally Yours
Director of Photography
Anita, engaged to solid Don Barnes, is swept off her feet by magician Arturo. Before you can say presto, she's his wife and stage assistant on a lengthy world tour. But Anita is annoyed by Arturo's constant flirtations, and his death-defying stunts give her nightmares. And forget her plan to retire to a farmhouse. Eventually, she has had enough and disappears.
Winter Carnival
Director of Photography
A divorced glamour girl keeps warm with a professor amid sports and romance at Dartmouth College's Winter Carnival.
Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police
Director of Photography
Captain Drummond and his girlfriend want to marry but a hidden treasure in the house in which they want to celebrate their marriage is complicating the situation involving a series of deaths and an elusive murderer.
She Married an Artist
Director of Photography
Because Thornwood's portraits of comely model Sally Dennis are in such great demand, he is obliged to spend virtually all his time with Sally, which prompts Toni to seek retribution in divorce court.
Souls at Sea
Director of Photography
Michael 'Nuggin' Taylor and Powdah save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about the slave trade on the high seas during 1842.
Seventh Heaven
Director of Photography
A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, and then marches away to war.
The Magnificent Brute
Director of Photography
A love triangle forms the basis of this drama. It all begins in a steel mill when a steel worker ignores the besotted gazes of his landlady at the boarding house and falls in love with a gold-digger. His best friend also finds himself smitten by the seductive young woman. But when the one of the workers fritters away a collection that had been taken up for the wife of a deceased co-worker on a foolish bet, he and the vamp take off until the good-hearted landlady intervenes and convinces them to stay and take their lumps.
One Rainy Afternoon
Director of Photography
Suave French actor Philippe Martin provokes a scandal when, in a darkened theater, he mistakes young Monique for his mistress, Yvonne, and tries to kiss her. Charged with assault, the quick-thinking Philippe claims it's French tradition to do as he did, and is let go. To his surprise, Philippe learns that Monique has paid his fine. As the tabloids exploit the situation, Monique dates Philippe, until a photo appears of him kissing Yvonne.
The Great Ziegfeld
Director of Photography
Lavish biography of Flo Ziegfeld, the producer who became Broadway's biggest starmaker.
Strike Me Pink
Director of Photography
Meek Eddie Pink becomes manager of an amusement park beset by mobsters.
A Night at the Opera
Director of Photography
The Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.
The Daring Young Man
Cinematography
The Daring Young Man is hotshot-reporter Don McLane, played by James Dunn. Always on the prowl for a good story, McLane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister Martha Allen (Mae Clarke). After several reels of double-crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. But as Martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, McLane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system.
Imitation of Life
Director of Photography
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
Social Register
Director of Photography
Chorus girl Patsy Shaw crashes a high-society party, meets playboy Charlie Breen, they fall in love, and are on their merry way to wedded bliss. However, Charlie's snobbish, ever-loving mama doesn't think that Patsy is worthy and sets out to prove it.
Beloved
Director of Photography
Story about four generations in a family of musicians.
Only Yesterday
Director of Photography
On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young business man is about to commit suicide. With the note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices a thick envelope addressed to him at the desk. As he begin to read, we're taken back to the days of WW1 and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
The Mayor of Hell
Director of Photography
Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.
The Secret of Madame Blanche
Director of Photography
A murder trial reunites a former chorus girl and her son, a grandson of an English aristocrat.
Goldie Gets Along
Director of Photography
A small-town girl schemes to get to Hollywood only to run into the man she left behind.
Payment Deferred
Director of Photography
Bank clerk William Marble is desperate for money to pay his family's bills. When his wealthy nephew visits, Marble asks him for a loan, but the young man refuses. Marble decides to kill his nephew. It is a twisted path to justice after Marble is transformed by the crime he committed and the wealth he gains.
Strange Justice
Director of Photography
Socialite banker Henry Judson maintains his extravagant lifestyle by embezzling from his bank, but is caught by sleazy assistant manager Waters and is blackmailed by him into continuing. Close to being found out, the two devise a scheme which sends Wally, the ex-con boyfriend of pretty hat check girl Rose Abbott, to death row.
Night World
Director of Photography
"Happy" MacDonald and his unfaithful wife own a Prohibition era night club. On this eventful night, he is threatened by bootleggers, and the club's star dancer falls in love with a young socialite who drinks to forget a personal tragedy, among other incidents.
Freaks
Director of Photography
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Flying High
Director of Photography
An inventor and his lanky girlfriend set an altitude record in his winged contraption.
Guilty Hands
Director of Photography
A district attorney commits the perfect murder when he kills his daughter's womanizing fiancé and then tries framing the fiancé's lover.
The Great Lover
Director of Photography
An aspiring classical singer is romanced by both a famous opera star and his younger understudy.
Never the Twain Shall Meet
Director of Photography
Dan works for Pritchard and Pritchard out of San Francisco and is in love with Maisie, referred to as "the icebox" by his news reporter friend. As one of his ships returns to San Francisco, Dan learns that the Captain has contracted Leprosy and asks Dan to be the guardian of his South Sea island daughter Tamea. Dan soon learns that Tamea wants him and will do nothing without a kiss. But Tamea soon learns that she is different than Dan and Maisie and that makes her angry. Dan decides to go and live on the island with Tamea, but soon finds out that Paradise is not everything that he thought it was.
Daybreak
Director of Photography
An Austrian soldier must choose between a wealthy fiancee and a new girl who takes his fancy.
Gentleman's Fate
Cinematography
A bootlegger falls apart when his wife leaves him.
Remote Control
Director of Photography
A radio announcer gets caught up with a fake clairvoyant and his gang of thieves.
Those Three French Girls
Director of Photography
An addled Englishman's efforts to save three young women from eviction land them all in jail and leads to other adventures and mischief.
Call of the Flesh
Director of Photography
A student nun falls in love with a Mexican singer starring in a cafe next door to her convent.
Our Blushing Brides
Director of Photography
Three department store girls--Connie, Franky, and Gerry--share an apartment on West 91st Street in New York City. Each earns little more than 20 dollars per week. Gerry is the sensible one, but the others throw themselves at amoral rich men in an attempt to hook one and better themselves. They end up being hurt and disappointed despite Gerry's attempts to warn them.
Every woman's longing
Director of Photography
Tony, a prosperous Italian vineyardist in California, advertises for a young wife, passing off a photograph of his handsome hired man, Buck, as himself.
A Lady to Love
Director of Photography
Middle-aged Napa Valley grape-grower Tony posts a marriage proposal to San Francisco waitress Lena enclosing a photo of his handsome younger brother Buck. When she gets there she overlooks his duplicity and marries him. Then she falls in love with Buck.
Devil-May-Care
Director of Photography
A follower of Napoleon escapes the firing squad, flees to a woman's bedroom and winds up butler.
Navy Blues
Director of Photography
On shore leave, a young sailor meets and falls in love with a pretty young blonde. He goes home with her to meet her parents, but they don't approve of him at all. Their daughter takes offense at this, and in the ensuing argument she storms out of the house determined to live on her own.
The Thirteenth Chair
Director of Photography
Although his murdered friend was by all accounts a scoundrel, Edward Wales is determined to trap his killer by staging a seance using a famous medium. Many of the 13 seance participants had a reason and a means to kill, and one of them uses the cover of darkness to kill again. When someone close to the medium is suspected she turns detective, in the hope of uncovering the true murderer.
A Man's Man
Director of Photography
An aspiring actress goes to Hollywood to make movies and marries a soda jerk.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Director of Photography
This first cinematic version of the classic book is a part-talkie, although the only surviving print is silent (housed in the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY). It is a straight-forward telling of the intermingled lives of a group of strangers doomed to die in a collapsing bridge accident. The Art Direction, paltry and unremarkable, surprisingly won an Oscar over the far more remarkable work nominated in THE IRON MASK. The special effect scene of the lovers plummeting with the bridge into the chasm is unforgettable and remarkably done.
Tide of Empire
Cinematography
California's gold discovery in 1848 draws a "tide of empire" to the area, which becomes ripe for bandits.
London After Midnight
Director of Photography
The abandoned Balfour House, which former owner was found dead five years earlier, comes back to life with the arrival of two suspicious sinister-looking tenants. (This movie was lost in 1965 during a fire.)
Mockery
Director of Photography
There is hunger in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. One day while dim-witted peasant Sergei is searching corpses for food, he meets a young woman looking for the town of Novokursk. She asks Sergei to help her get there, and to tell anyone they might meet that he is her husband.
The Unknown
Director of Photography
A criminal on the run hides in a circus and seeks to possess the daughter of the ringmaster at any cost.
The Ice Flood
Director of Photography
Jack De Quincy, an American graduate of Oxford, is still considered a wastrel playboy by his father, owner of a giant lumber company in the American northwest. To prove he is a man his father sends him there to take charge of a large lumber camp, filled with brawny he-men who spend their time drinking, gambling and brawling when not cutting timber. Once there, Jack establishes himself by winning a fight against "Dum-Dum" Pete, the toughest man in those parts. Along the way he sees to it that a needed operation is performed on the camp's mascot, a crippled young boy, and saves his sweetheart, Marie O'Nei, that daughter of a rival lumber company, from drowning in the river when the spring thaw causes an ice-break flood.
The Phantom Horseman
Cinematography
Sheriff Bob Winton sets out to capture a mysterious bandit named "The Hawk," a phantom rider who is admired by the townspeople, because he steals from the Williams Lumber Co., a ruthless outfit determined to own all the land in the vicinity. This is a lost film.