Edward Bernds(1905-2000)
- Director
- Sound Department
- Writer
Edward Bernds was born in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois. While in his
junior year in Lake View High School, he and several friends formed a
small radio club and obtained amateur licenses. In the early '20s there
was considerable prestige for an amateur operator (a "ham") to have
commercial radio licenses, and Bernds was in a good position to get
into broadcasting when he graduated in 1923, a year when radio stations
began popping up all over Chicago. He found employment--at age 20--as
chief operator at Chicago's WENR. When talking pictures burst onto the
scene in the late '20s, Bernds and broadcast operators like him
relocated to Hollywood to work as sound technicians in "the talkies".
After a brief stint at United Artists, Bernds quit and went to work at
Columbia, where he worked as sound man on many of
Frank Capra's '30s classics. He later
graduated to directing two-reel shorts and then features.
