Volume III: Biographies

VAN DER VEER, Willard

Cameraman (date?)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Willard Van Der Veer was a cameraman with Thanhouser at one time, according to a listing in the 1917 Motion Picture News Studio Directory.

Biographical Notes: Willard Van Der Veer was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 23, 1894. At the age of 10 he made his stage debut in The Bad Samaritan. Later he appeared with John Griffith in Richard III, with Ben Greet in Macbeth, with Mabel Taliaferro in Polly of the Circus, and in The Sign of the Four. His screen career was as a cameraman, and by 1918 he had worked with Vitagraph, Edison, Thanhouser, Federal, American, Colorgraph, and Pluragraph. Among his film credits are The White Coat, On Secret Service, and Betty's Tangled Romance. In 1916 and 1917 he lived at 385 Central Park West, New York City. In the 1920s he was a newsreel cameraman and photographer. He accompanied Admiral Richard E. Byrd's expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. He received an Academy Award for his cinematography of polar scenes released as a documentary by Paramount in 1930. On June 16, 1963 Willard Van Der Veer died of a heart attack in home in Encino, California. He was survived by his wife, Edna, and a son.

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