Richard M. Rawlings Jr, a second-generation cinematographer with four career Emmy noms whose credits range from the original Charlie’s Angels to L.A. Law, Gilmore Girls and Desperate Housewives, has died. He was 82.
The American Society of Cinematographers confirmed the news but did not provide details about cause, place or date of death.
During his 30-year lensing career, Rawlings Jr won an ASC Award in 1988 for the CBS Western series Paradise, for which he also scored an Emmy nomination. His three other Emmy noms came for ABC’s Ohara in 1988, NBC’s Reasonable Doubts in 1993 and the CBS telepic Big Dreams & Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story in 1995. He also was honored with the ASC’s Television Career Achievement Award in 2014.
Born on Oct. 9, 1943, in Los Angeles, Rawlings Jr was the son of Richard L. Rawlings, who also had a long career as a TV cinematographer including multiple seasons of Dynasty and Gilligan’s Island. The younger Rawlings got his showbiz start as a messenger at Warner Bros for three years before getting into camera work. He later assisted his father on shows including Gilligan’s Island.
The elder Rawlings was working on the classic 1970s crime drama Charlie’s Angels when its executive producer Aaron Spelling reassigned him to work on his then-new primetime soap Dynasty. That became the younger Rawlings’ big break, as he took the cinematography reins halfway through the third season of Charlie’s Angels in 1978 — hot off being a Top 5 series in all of primetime. He would stay in that role until the show wrapped in 1981.
From there, Rawlings Jr would work on dozens of primetime TV series the 1982-85, including ABC action show Matt Houston, ABC’s Stingray, NBC’s Marlee Matlin-led legal drama Reasonable Doubts and NBC’s Emmy-winning L.A. Law. He went on to lens such 2000s hits as Boston Public, Gilmore Girls and Desperate Housewives. Rawlings Jr also worked on a handful of TV movies, and his final credit was a 2008 episode of Boston Public.
Rawlings Jr talked about his craft in a 1995 interview with ASC’s magazine American Cinematographer. “I’ll walk onto a set that I’ve never seen before, and my original ideas change about where the lights will go and about the feeling of the scene,” he said. “Then, when I listen to the actors say the words, my ideas may change again. I always wait until the moment and then make my choices. I’m also not a technical person [in terms of] using formula to determine lighting; I don’t know how to do that. Outside, I guess the exposure and then use a meter; inside, I know exactly how much light there is because I shoot by eye. I know what 20 foot candles looks like.”
Information on survivors was incomplete.
