"The basic principle I have had in making pictures was to make them look like real life, and then emphasize the visuals slightly ... I was never a soft-focus man. I like the focus [to be] very hard. I liked crisp, hard, solid images." — Arthur Miller.[2]
Born in Roslyn, New York, he began his movie career at the age of 13. According to a 1970 interview with Leonard Maltin, he once worked for a horse dealer. One day, he was returning home from delivering some horses and was sitting on a horse when a man offered him a job in motion pictures because he could ride bareback. Miller recalled, "The first day we went out to a golf course in Brooklyn, and I rode this horse all over, got chased, and all."[3] He found himself working as an assistant to filmmaker Fred J. Balshofer.[3] The two remained lifelong friends and in 1967 co-wrote a book about the early days of film titled One Reel a Week.
In 1918, he and his brother Bill founded the Motion Picture Industry Union.[citation needed] He moved to Hollywood and had a lengthy tenure at Paramount from the late teens throughout the 1920s. In 1932, Miller signed a long-term contract with Fox Film Corporation to be the cinematographer for every Shirley Temple film. He retired in 1951 for health reasons but remained active in the industry as president of the American Society of Cinematographers.
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