Biography

POWERS, LEN (Leonard Stephen Powers) Born December 12, 1892 (although he incorrectly gave 1894 on some documents), Rodney, Iowa. Len grew up in Grant, Iowa with his grocer father Charles, mother May, and siblings Charles, Hazel and Clara. He went to school in Portland, Oregon and for a time was a professional boxer. Powers began work as a cinematographer with Reliance in 1914. He shot Blue Blood and Red (1916) for Raoul Walsh at Fox, and Headin’ South (1918) for Douglas Fairbanks, directed by Allan Dwan; he also worked for Magnetic, Mack Sennett, and Hank Mann Comedies. His first film for Hal Roach was the Our Gang short Young Sherlocks (1922). He directed or co-directed 14 Dippy Doo-Dad shorts for Roach in 1923 and ’24, and because of his success with all-animal casts he was asked to film a rooster crowing for the official Pathé logo. After that, Powers was a cameraman exclusively for Roach through 1933, mostly working with Charley Chase. (He moonlighted as a gagman for Mack Sennett in 1927.) With Laurel and Hardy he worked on From Soup to Nuts, Habeas Corpus, Unaccustomed As We Are, Berth Marks, The Hoose-Gow, and The Music Box. He worked at Universal in the early ’40s and was camera operator on some Johnny Mack Brown Westerns toward the end of the decade. His last known credit was photographing stills for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). Powers’ wife, the former Muriel Elizabeth Davey, died in November. 1945, but he was survived by their daughter Murlen. Died January25, 1965, Hollywood, California, age 72; of a heart attack.