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McClain, Hubert (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This interview was primarily conducted by Kaye Briegel, but Ken Naverson, a photographer who was also present., also asks some questions. The interview was conducted at McClain's home. 2/4/1981
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- 2020-10-27
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- *** File: cbhmcclain1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:16)... Introduction. Hubert Anthony McClain was born March 6, 1909 in Kansas and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied agriculture at Kansas State College. His father was a farmer, fisherman, inventor, who built heavy farm equipment. His farm was in Protection, Kansas which was near a fort built by farmers to protect themselves from Indian attacks. His father was self educated who also built round houses for railroads in the midwest. (2:16-6:13)... McClain's sister was born in 1912 and also attended college. McClain did graduate work at the University of Kansas in chemistry and biology and graduated in 1930. During the Depression he worked for Wilson and Company as a research chemist on Tender Made hams. Photography was his hobby until he started selling photographs to newspapers. In 1917 he probably sold his first photograph, a picture of his father's wheat field. He was a self taught photographer until the 1950s when he attended Art Center in Los Angeles. At the time he was working for the Los Angeles Times taking society pictures. (6:13-9:31)... McClain started talking photographs of agricultural scenes including the process of harvesting sorghum. He sold the images to rotograveure sections of newspapers. He had to take the photographs a year in advance. Then he began to work for the Kansas City Star in the early days of 35 mm photography. He took candid photos of the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra in rehersal. A string bass player named Kenneth Winstead was impressed with the photographs when they appeared in the newspaper. Winstead, whose family had a photography store in Long Beach, recommended him and they called McClain and asked him to come to Long Beach and manage their store. (9:31-13:44)... In 1937, McClain moved to Long Beach with his wife and two children. Winstead Brothers had been taking photographs in Long Beach since 1919. They had photographic studio in Hutchenson, Kansas and during World War I, they had a portrait studios in Army training camps. The business collapsed when the war was over and they moved to Long Beach where they established a photo finishing plant and a portrait studio. They were in business with their relatives, the Adamsons. Otis Adamson ran the photo finishing plant. They developed and printed photos for drug stores and shops on the Pike. A. P. McInturf took high class portraits and shared their location. (13:44-16:37)... Kenneth Winstead, who played in the Kansas City Philharmonic, was the son of Thomas Winstead. He was the main technician and businessman of Winstead Brothers. George Winstead was more social and outgoing. He solicited business, joined the Rotary Club and got involved in Long Beach politics where he served on the municipal Water Commission and was influential in getting Long Beach to be part of the Metropolitan Water District. When Tom died, there was a family fued and his heirs bought out George's interest and gave him back the photo finishing business about 1936 and George established a new photo finishing plant on Anaheim which, at the time of the interview, was operated as City Photo. (16:37-24:33)... McClain came to work for Winstead Brothers after George Winstead left the business. There were two photographers, one was Billy Ward and the other was named Brown. Earl McCutcheon was the man McClain replaced as head of the processing and finishing plant and he later established Camera Supply. Many Winstead photographs don't look like usual comercial photographs. Many of the photographs of businesses were taken at the request of the business owners. (24:33-27:16)... McClain talks about the lenese he used. He had a Gunlack Turner and Wright triple convertable symetrical lens made by Gunlack Optical Company in Rochester. People who used them either praised or damned them. If you had a good one, you held on for dear life. If you had a bad one, you sold it. Sone of the Winstead photographs were probably made with light from flash powder. Those flashes lasted 1/5 to1/2 a second. There is a Winstead photograph of Lord and Taylor Cafe and in it, one can see a photographer in a mirror on the front of the building. McClain believes that photographer isn't George Winstead. (27:16-28:16)... Winstead's photos date from the 1920s. Winstead first set up their photo finishing business in 1919 and then added studio and commercial work in 1922. They took many photographs of the Pacific Coast Club opening. (28:16-29:14)... Lord and Taylor's restaurant served expensive sirloin steaks and similar things. The parrot shown outside in the photo was a traffic stopper. Another local photographer, Larry Inman, came to town later. Occasionally he employed younger photographers, but he primarily ran a one man operation. Inman photographs were more commercial than Winstead's. (29:14-32:58)... Inman had a big building with twelve inch doors on the back so trucks could back in. In the Lord and Taylor photo, a commercial photographs would have tried to stay out of the shot. Many of these photo were made on 8" x 12" negatives which were expensive. So photographers took time to get the shots just right. When Winstead first came to Long Beach there was nothing much to photograph. Long Beach was just a business town for south Los Angeles County. (32:58-34:28)... All McClain knew about Daugherty is that he had a photography studio on the Pike. (34:28-37:02)... Winstead wrote numbers on his negatives in India ink. And sometimes a machine was used to add the numbers. It was common for photographers to do that then. He also kept day books but they were destroyed when Winstead Brothers was sold. (37:02-41:36)... George Winstead ran his photo finishing business until after WWII when he sold the business. After WWII, Winstead's daughter, Wilma, established a camera shop on Long Beach Boulevard about 20th Street. She ran it a couple of years until she married for the second time. Winstead kept their negatives in their original film boxes. After WWII, the store was sold and new owners inherited the negatives and day books. McClain doesn't know what happened to them after that. Some are at the Historical Society of Long Beach at the time of the interview. (41:36-45:19)... A commercial photographer would have charged about 5 dollars for a photo like the one of Lord and Taylor. He would have charged more if a flash was involved. Prints usually sold for fifty cents. Right after WWII, the minimum charge for a photograph was 25 dollars. Using 8 inch x 10 inch film, a photographer would set up his camera on a tripod and let the client look through the lens. The image appeared upside down, but this step made sure the client knew what he would get. Then the photographer would then expose the film. End of tape *** File: cbhmcclain2.mp3 (0:00-4:43)... Photographic and developing techniques used to be different. Photographers carefully tried to control such things as light, exposure and developing time in order to bring out contrasts and produce good images in either indoor or outdoor light. At the time of the interview, McClain believed photographer used cruder techniques than they did when he was younger. Photographs used to be exposed and developed one at time. Deciding on exposure time was more difficult before exposure meters began to be used. Orthochromatic film was not clouded by red light. People who developed photographs had to learn by experience. When McClain first came to work for Winsteads, he found their developing fluid must have been three years old and was as brown as strong coffee. McClain made them throw it away. (4:43-12:27)... Several people who owned Long Beach camera stores at the time of the interview previously worked for Winsteads. Both Tuttle brothers, for example, worked for George Winstead's photo finishing business. Up to 1936, when flash bulbs were introduced, flash powder was used when extra light was needed to make photographs. The powder was sprinkled on a pan and set on fire as the shutter was opened to make the photograph. Photographers had to carry wire brushes to clean the pans before adding more powder. They found it best to wear hats when using flash powder. It created a ball of fire around the photograph's head. Later there was synchronized flash powder that came in a cartridge and was ignited by a battery. The light created by flash powder made photographs that look different than those made with flash bulbs. (12:27-15:58)... Before coming to Long Beach, McClain had worked for the Kansas City Star. During WWII, Winsteads had nothing to sell. McClain went to work in a shipyard taking photographs of ship laundings, etc. to stay out of the service. After the war, he went to work for the Press Telegram, until 1948 when he took a job at the Los Angeles Mirror. Five years after that, he want to work for the Los Angeles Times where he took photographs for the suburban sections. He retired from the Times in 1974. (15:58-20:03)... The kinds of cameras photographers used changed while he was working for the Times. There were graphics and rolaflexes. Cameras using 35mm film first were used for sports photographs. He also used a Nikon reflect camera with a long photo lens. Then he got a motor driven model. (20:03-21:54)... At the Times, he was a sports and later a society photographer. When he worked at both the Times and the Press-Telegram, he always wore a suit to work. (21:54-27:27)... At the Press-Telegram he took photographs for news stories. Once he photographed the mayor every day for six weeks doing such things are issuing proclaimations. Sometimes public relations firms hire commercial photographers to cover special events and sent photos to newspapers in hopes they will run them. Sometimes editors send photographers to events just to appease public relations representatives but don't run the photographs. (27:27-30:04)... Sometimes newspaper editors send commercial photographers to cover events when their own photographers aren't available and sometime commercial photographers take photos and try to see them to newspapers. Ultimately, city editors determine which photos run in their newspaper. McClain remembers selling a photo of a raid on a gambling ship to the Press Telegram. When it appeared, the center was cropped out of it and didn't make any sense. (30:04-36:54)... Winstead shot 8 inch x 10 inch negatives. McInturff took portraits. Inman used a graphic camera before WWII. Newspaper used glass negatives until 1936 because they could print them while they were still wet. They didn't have to wait all night for film to dry and glass plates were 3 times more sensitive than film. McClain remembers his first assignment. Piccard went up in a balloon to record cosmic rays. The balloon drifted into Nebraska and crashed in a corn field. McClain flew there and photographed the balloon, gondola, etc. The plane on which he arrived was gounded, so he taped the exposed film under a seat on commercial flight, where the rival photographers who had come to take pictures of the balloon were riding, and instructed a copy boy from his newspaper where to get the film when the plane arrived home. (36:54-38:48)... McClain is not sure if Winstead ever used glass plate negatives. And no negatives of McInturf's portaints survive. McClain remembers seeing some of the prints and they were "artsy." End of tape (38:48-43:36)... Winstead had a camera that made post card sized prints. They took photos of US Navy ships in Long Beach and sold them to sailors to send home Right after the 1933 earthquake, George Winstead took maybe 150 photographs with that camera. They sent them to a photo finishing plant in Pomona and printed thousands of them. They set up saw horses in front of their store and sold the post cards to tourists for ten cents each. From that, they earned enough money to repair their store and plant. They also sold post card photos of Franklin Roosevelt, Wrong Way Corrigan and others. (43:36-45:16)... Post cards like that used to be sold in drug stores and other places. They aren't s avialable any more. McClain said, at the time of the interview, there was still a company in Los Angeles that will print photographs on post cards.
- SUBJECT BIO - Hubert McClain was a photographer who worked for both the Press-Telegram in Long Beach and the Los Angeles Times after coming to Long Beach to manage Winstead's photo finishing business. McClain was born in Kansas and took photographs using flash powder and glass plate negatives when he worked for the Kansas City Star. When he came to Long Beach, he worked at Winstead's photo and camera shop before finding another newspaper job. He knew and worked with most of the commercial photographer in Long Beach. In this single interview, he talks about some of the early photographers in Long Beach as well as how photographic technology and equipment have changed over time. TOPICS - Topics on this side of tape include: family background; education; photography; Lawrence Inman and Winstead brothersTopics on this side of tape include: family background; photography; education; employment; newspapers and Winstead family
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