Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)Born on Dec 7, 1924, in Upland, CA. While attending high school in Glendale, CA, he worked afternoons as an assistant at the Los County Museum of Natural History. It was on his 17th birthday, during a museum collecting trip to California's Channel Islands, that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The museum party was marooned on Santa Rosa Island as all west coast ports were immediately closed following the attack.
Couffer was drafted into the army in June 1943, a few months before high school graduation. Half of his military service was spent developing a seemingly nutty, but surprisingly valid, secret weapon which would have bombed Japan with bats carrying incendiary bombs. Jack has written of this bizarre scheme in his book Bat Bomb: World War II's Other Secret Weapon. The remainder of his military duty was as crew on high speed PT type air-sea rescue boats.
For a couple of years after the war, he worked as a commercial fisherman and paid crew on yachts. In December 1947 he married Joan Burger. (They separated in 1975.) Shortly thereafter, he enrolled at University of Southern California in one of the first university curricula to offer a degree in cinema arts. He collaborated with two fellow students in a class project that won awards and was sold to TV. High with this success, the partners formed a production company and became entrepreneurs while still university students.
Couffer started out with Disney in the mid-1950s shooting and directing several of the True Life Adventure series. Credits from that period include segments of the "Disneyland" TV series and SECRETS OF LIFE (1956). Couffer then moved to feature films for a period with RUNNING TARGET (1956), EDGE OF FURY (1958) and THE SAVAGE EYE (1960). Then he moved back to Disney's Buena Vista unit for such films as NIKKI, WILD DOG OF THE NORTH (1961), THE LEGEND OF LOBO (1962), THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY (1963) and THE LEGEND OF THE BOY AND THE EAGLE (1967). Then Couffer became associated with the folks who made 1966's BORN FREE. He worked in the UK and shot and/or directed RING OF BRIGHT WATER (1969), LIVING FREE (1972) and THE DARWIN ADVENTURE (also 1972). His aerial cinematography for JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL set a new standard.
Later in his career, Couffer was back at Buena Vista to produce NEVER CRY WOLF (1983). He could pick and choose his projects, and he worked on such diverse films as OUT OF AFRICA (1985, 2nd unit director), THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR (1988, 2nd unit cinematographer) and THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS (1996, director of photography, Kenja unit).
Couffer's filming travels first took him to Kenya in 1972 where he fell in love with the country and a lady at the same time. Marchesa Sieuwke Bisleti was his companion until her death in February, 2005. He now shares his life with retired actress Jean Allison (Toorvald) who was the ingénue in EDGE OF FURY (1958), the first feature film he shot. He continues to spend half of each year in Kenya and half in California.
Nominated for Cinematography 1973: JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
1 nomination