Ernest Haller

Ernest B. "Ernie" Haller was a cinematographer who worked on the second pilot for Star Trek: The Original Series,.

Haller was a veteran Hollywood cinematographer with some 180 films on his credit. He first ventured into Hollywood in 1914 as an actor, then became a director of photography by the 1920s. In the sound era he worked on many celebrated classic movies, including Captain Blood (1935, featuring Leonard Mudie), Jezebel (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939, featuring Phyllis Douglas), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Dark Victory (1939, featuring Leonard Mudie), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939, featuring Gil Perkins), Mildred Pierce (1945), Rebel Without a Cause (1955, featuring Corey Allen, Ian Wolfe and Chuck Hicks and music by Leonard Rosenman), Hell on Devil's Island (1957, featuring Roy Jenson), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Lilies of the Field (1963, featuring Stanley Adams and music by Jerry Goldsmith). He was nominated for the Academy Award seven times and won for Gone with the Wind.

Director James Goldstone recommended Haller for the second pilot of TOS in the last minute, as finding a cinematographer became problematic. He came out of semi-retirement to work on the project.

When Bob Justman, Herb Solow and Gene Roddenberry were interviewing him for the job, Justman was concerned, as he never heard anything about him. He asked: "Could you tell me what you've done? Recently?" Haller replied: "Not much, recently. I've been sort of semiretired." Justman began to worry. "Well, have you done anything that, you know, we might have heard of?" "Well, yes. I did do a picture you might have heard of. Back in thiry-nine." While Justman and Solow began calculating how long ago that was, Haller broke the ice: "It was called Gone with the Wind." Suddenly realizing what he had just said, all three of them immediately agreed to hire Haller. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, p 82)

Haller died in a car accident in Marina del Ray, at the age of 74.

Cinematographer

 * TOS:
 * &mdash; director of photography