John Beecroft was a writer and editor who worked briefly for Paramount Newsreel during the Great Depression. During his tenure at the newsreel, Beecroft would occasionally write articles about the newsreel staff.

One article Beecroft wrote in 1933 was about news cameraman Henry DeSiena:

One day it’s a king, the next day a bum. There is no such thing as deadly monotony in the life of a cameraman. At least that is what Henry DeSiena of the Paramount Newsreel staff says. Today a cameraman may dine with a president, a chief justice or a queen and tomorrow he is glad if he can grab a sandwich in a quick lunch joint.

One day he is the honored guest of distinguished people who courteously put at his service every facility for making his job easy (and a cameraman’s job is to get a picture) – the next day’s job is done in spite of continuous threats and attempts to mob him and smash his camera and, maybe, ends with a police escort out of town and a clever smuggling of his exposed film. The cameraman never knows what his next day’s job will be and never can complain of the unending sameness of the days.

Of all cameramen, Henry DeSiena is one of the busiest and best known. Almost since newsreels have been made DeSiena has been meeting the incoming celebrities and they enter the New York harbor. He has seen hundreds of sunrises from the unsteady deck of a cutter on his way out to quarantine to meet a transatlantic liner. Even the tug Macon hasn’t met as many big names and strange people as DeSiena has in the course of his day’s work.

Among the people he has met and photographed are: the Prince of Wales, General Diaz of Italy, Admiral Beatty of England, General Jaques of Belgium, Marshal Foch of Franc, Marshal Joffree of France – (these famed and feared military leaders smiling stood where DeSiena told them to stand, and graciously took the postures DeSiena asked them to take – a performance that would have surprised any of the soldiers these generals command.)

Among the political leaders DeSiena has met are: Premier Briand, Georges Clemenceau, Lloyd George, the Crown Prince of Sweden, the King and Queen of the Belgians, Queen Marie of Romania, Ramsey Macdonald, Herriot, Guido Jung of Italy, and more recently, Professor Moley and Secretary Hull. And among other notables have been Marconi, Einstein, the delegation of Cardinals who came over to attend the Eucharistic Congress and rode out to Chicago in the famous crimson train; Colonel Lindbergh has posed for DeSiena, so have Sir Hubert Wilkins, Sir Thomas Lipton, Gertrude Ederle, George Bernard Shaw (DeSiena shot him when he was posing but got his best pictures when Shaw was just being G. Bernard Shaw.) That is the sort of acquaintances one can have if one is a Paramount cameraman.

Among these acquaintances there are friends and enemies. Clemenceau, the Tiger of France, was not exactly what one would call cordial. He objected vociferously to the cameras and ordered the cameraman off the train that was carrying him and them across the continent. But a good cameraman is not easily prevented from taking the pictures he has been assigned to get. When DeSiena was ordered off Clemenceau’s train, he got off promptly; but he took a fast car to the next stop on the train’s schedule, beat the train to the station, and when Clemenceau wasn’t looking, got back on the train again. And why shouldn’t he? It was an American train on which DeSiena had paid his fare, and Clemenceau, chances were, hadn’t done that. Clemenceau, however, was a match for DeSiena. When the cameras were next setup Clemenceau knocked them over and hacked at them with his cane and while making the air blue with choice French expressions.

But on another train trip DeSiena was better treated. It was the day after Coolidge had taken the oath of President of the United States in the sitting room of the little Vermont farmhouse and was hurrying to Washington to assume office. DeSiena was on the train carrying the new President to Washington. On this trip he had breakfast with Chief Justice Taft, President Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge.

Queen Marie, too, DeSiena says, was very kind and thoughtful. She appeared to be very glad to have him with her when she started on her much ballyhooed tour of America. The queenly Marie treated him as an honored guest, made all provisions for his comfort and did all she could to help him get pictures that would make the reel and be shown to forty million Americans, to say nothing of the crowds of theatre goers in Europe, even in Marie’s own capital, Bucharest.

In spite of breakfasts with presidents and teas with reigning and beautiful queens, DeSiena frequently has not been such a welcome figure in events that are attracting nation wide attention. On one Pennsylvania coal strike, DeSiena was shown a dummy hanging by its neck and was warned by strikers that his neck would be in place of the dummy’s in the noose if he didn’t get out of town and let them run their strike without him. On another strike which had gone along quietly until DeSiena came to town, the police suspected him of fomenting a riot in order to get some action and incidentally some pictures and gave him a police escort out of town.

Another time the strikers suspected him of working with the police and when DeSiena set up his camera on a roof overlooking a massed group of strikers, they mistook it for a machine gun and threw bricks and rocks at it. DeSiena has said there is little problem of how to keep fit. He gets plenty of exercise in a day’s work. If it isn’t climbing a Jacob’s ladder hauling after him four hundred pounds of equipment, it’s dodging rocks on a narrow parapet somewhere in the United States.

One incident in his career he very much regrets, and that was when he unwittingly complicated the Lindbergh kidnaper hunt. DeSiena had been at Hopewell several days before the kidnapping looking over the site with the intention of making some shots. Not being familiar with the location he asked the way to the Lindbergh home from a girl in a lunchroom and from another girl he met on the road. Two days after he returned to New York the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped, and the girls remembered the “suspicious” looking man who had asked them the directions to the Lindbergh home. A description of DeSiena was sent to the New York police. A photograph of a man looking very much like DeSiena was found in the Rogues Gallery and DeSiena went to the police headquarters for questioning. It was with some difficulty that he, and Louis Cass, his sound technician, were cleared of all suspicion in connection with the kidnapers.

His trip with the Prince of Wales was pleasant, but more or less uneventful, though successful. He also toured America with the King and Queen of the Belgians and heard the mayor’s wife make her much quoted remark when Queen Elizabeth commented on the magnificence of the Woolworth Building: “You sure said a mouthful, Queen.”

Among the big celebrities DeSiena has known intimately is the Goddess of Liberty in the New York harbor. Someone had the idea of giving the lady a scrubbing and DeSiena thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of the event. It was a cold and windy day; some of the workmen were lowering a bucket of wash water; DeSiena was dangling like an ear ring from the goddess’ left ear when the rope attached to the pail of water became entangled with the rope attached to DeSiena and a gust of wind gave DeSiena the bath intended for the goddess. Every parade up Broadway has had in it, close to the car of the chief guest, DeSiena and his camera. He is well known to the Broadway welcome fans who call out their recognition as he passes in the parade. “There he is, the short guy”; “he always sweats that way,” or, “yeh, he’s always there – got something to do with the parade, I guess.”

DeSiena has the essential requirements of a good cameraman – a nose for news and the ability to get the picture. His stuff is free of frills, just good, plain, solid pictures – the sort you want to see of an event of national importance. He has met a lot of people, seen lots of places, and had a good time while building his career as one of the world’s first newsreel cameramen.