Albert Bettcher(1920-2017)
- Camera and Electrical Department
Al Bettcher began his career with the 168th Signal Photo Corp in WWII. After the war he filmed the Japanese War Crimes Trials in the Philippines. When he returned home, he started at the Columbia studios still lab, where he worked for 7 years before breaking in as an assistant cameraman on the feature Overexposed. He assisted for 9 years, then rose to operator. He has nearly 50 years of credits to his name, including the original Blade Runner, King Kong, Body Heat, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the original Batman series and its 1967 feature, Breathless, Lovespell, Pal Joey, Bye Bye Birdie, Pepe, three different Three Stooges movies, and countless television shows. He was the hand-held cameraman on The Graduate - those are his feet in the flippers. He was given an SOC Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990, and he was inducted into the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1985.
