Robert Bertram Brooks-Carrington ("Brooks / Brooky / Cowboy Joe")

Bertram Brooks-Carrington began in 1907 as a freelance still photographer, but in 1909 he joined Gaumont as a bookkeeper. He soon transferred to the Gaumont laboratories, and also worked for the company as a newsfilm cameraman, filming the Siege of Sidney Street for them in January 1911. Later that year he left Gaumont to join the Warwick Trading Company as works manager, at the time when they were developing the Aeroscope camera. He was replaced at Gaumont by Gordon [qv]. At the Warwick Trading Company Brooks-Carrington also acted as chief cameraman and editor of the Warwick Bioscope Chronicle, but he confessed himself ‘fed up with too much inside work’ and left to be a cameraman with British and Colonial. However, he soon returned to Gaumont as ‘a senior technician,' and by the outbreak of war in August 1914 was also working as a cameraman on the Gaumont Graphic.

A scheme for Brooks-Carrington to work as an official War Office cameraman fell through, so Braid [qv] sent him to France to film the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force for the Gaumont Graphic. Brooks-Carrington left ‘dressed in a theatrical costumier’s uniform’ and carrying a Debrie camera and lightweight tripod ‘in a very large Gladstone bag.' He spent the next few weeks trying to film at the front, and between trips was employed filming at the Gaumont studios in London. In October 1914 Braid decided to keep Brooks-Carrington in Britain, and he replaced him with Malins [qv]. In April 1917 Brooks-Carrington became an official cameraman, and by May 1917 he was working on the Western Front. He may have worked on the official film ‘With the South African Forces’ (1918), but there were problems with his work and with his health, and in June 1917 he was allowed to resign.

Brooks-Carrington returned to the Gaumont studios, but early in 1918 he was apparently offered a commission with the American Signal Corps, and became one of their official cameramen, filming mainly in Britain. It is possible that he was only loaned to them by Gaumont, for in November 1918 a Kinematograph Weekly cartoon showed him in civilian clothes and credited him as a Gaumont cameraman. He seems to have been demobilised in 1919, and in 1921 he went to film in West Africa, writing, photographing, and directing the film ‘White Man’s Grave’ with money from Greville’s Travel Films. He was later employed on freelance newsreel work, and was credited in the camera team which filmed ‘NORTH LONDON STATE DRIVE’ for Pathe Super Sound Gazette No.35/38 of May 1935. Brooks-Carrington was also credited in the camera teams which filmed ‘PATHE GAZETTE PRESENTS THE DERBY, 1935’ for No.35/45 of June 1935, and ‘OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE AT TWICKENHAM’ in No.35/99 of December 1935. He appeared again in the camera teams for ‘THE CORONATION OF THEIR MAJESTIES KING GEORGE VI AND QUEEN ELIZABETH’ in Pathe Super Sound Gazette No.37/38 of May 1937, and ‘TROOPING THE COLOUR’ in No.37/46 of June 1937. However, Jimmy Gemmell [qv] of British Paramount News recalled that ‘Brooks-Carrington was never a newsreel man - he was a freelance man; he just did a job here and there.' As he explained, Brooks-Carrington ‘was taken on as an extra man if you were hard up for a man - but we never employed him, because he was such a bloody awful cameraman.' He added that Brooks-Carrington ‘couldn’t take pictures to save his life,' and that they ‘used to call him ‘Cowboy Joe,' because he used to wear a big stetson hat.'

Sources

House of Lords Record Office, Beaverbrook Papers, BBK/E/2/5 and BBK/E/2/7: Cine Technician, April-May 1940, p.25: British Film Institute, Special Collections, Anthony Slide Collection, Transcripts of ‘Yesterday’s Witness’ series, interview with Brooks-Carrington: Kevin Brownlow’s interviews with Brooks-Carrington, 15 and 20/10/1972, and with Jimmy Gemmell, 25/10/1972: B. Honri ‘Kodak Museum Expansion,' Cinema TV Today, 12/7/1975, p.22: Stephen Badsey’s 1981 IWM guide, ‘Bertram Brooks Carrington.'.