James Pergola, who worked on Gentle Ben, Caddyshack and Major League before serving as a cinematographer on the first eight seasons of Baywatch, has died. He was 93.
Pergola died of natural causes in hospice care on Feb. 23 in Naples, Florida, his wife of 63 years, Virginia Pergola, told The Hollywood Reporter.
His feature credits as a director of photography included Dom DeLuise’s Hot Stuff (1979), Jerry Lewis’ Hardly Working (1980), Nobody’s Perfekt (1981), the Amy Madigan-starring Love Child (1982), Smokey and the Bandit 3 (1983), What Comes Around (1985) and Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988).
The respected Pergola shot 145 episodes of the David Hasselhoff-starring Baywatch from its start on NBC in 1989 and through its years as a syndication juggernaut until his retirement in 1998. He was also a producer on the show about lifeguards for seven seasons, starting with season two.
“Jim had a lot of experience working on films shooting on and under the water … he was perfect for Baywatch and brought a calm presence to the hectic shoot days on the water,” veteran underwater cinematographer Pete Romano told the American Society of Cinematographers. “I always enjoyed working with him; he wasn’t one to micromanage.”
James Charles Pergola was born in New York City on Nov. 1, 1932. He was not yet 5 when his father, camera operator James V. Pergola, was among the 19 people killed when a United Airlines Mainliner crashed in the Uinta Mountains in Utah in October 1937, the worst U.S. airplane disaster at the time.
His dad, who was on assignment for Pathé News, had covered serious news stories like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932 and the Cuban revolution of 1933 and more frivolous events like an Esther Williams aqua ballet in Miami Beach.
“I humbly attempted to follow in my father’s footsteps, but I could never fill them,” Pergola wrote in 2009. “He was truly a great man.”
His mother, Eleanor, took him to Miami after his dad’s death, and he graduated from Miami Senior High School.
After serving with the U.S. Marine Corps, Pergola in 1955 landed a job with Fox Movietone in New York — his father also had worked there — as an assistant cameraman on CinemaScope short subjects and travelogues.
He returned to Miami and manned a camera on such films as Safe at Home! (1962), starring Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and William Frawley, and Birds Do It (1966), starring Soupy Sales, while also finding work on the TV series Flipper and Gentle Ben, both produced by Ivan Tors.
Later, he was a camera operator on Robert Clouse’s Darker Than Amber (1970), John Milius’ Dillinger (1973) and Bob Fosse’s Lenny (1974).
Pergola graduated to cinematographer on the 1974-75 CBC series Salty, co-created by Ricou Browning of Creature of the Black Lagoon and Flipper fame, and his first feature as a D.P. was Thunder and Lightning (1977), filmed in Naples and starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.
He was an additional photographer on Caddyshack (1980) and a second-unit cinematographer on Paul Newman’s Harry & Son (1984) and David S. Ward’s Major League (1989).
In the 1990s, Pergola also shot the Baywatch telefilms Forbidden Paradise and White Thunder at Glacier Bay and the spinoff Baywatch Nights and worked on the Hulk Hogan-starring Thunder in Paradise.
In addition to his wife, survivors include his daughters, Mary, Susan and Holly, and his granddaughters, Dylan, Katerina, Juliet, Greta, Scarlett, Willow and Roxy.
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