(USA) Imero Ovidio Fiorentino, master of lighting, dead at 85

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Imero Ovidio Fiorentino, who was born in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn on July 12, 1928, died on October 1 at 85. He was a recognized master of lighting who “orchestrated the play of luminescence and shadow on television shows as a lighting director”. He made drinks sparkle, desserts shimmer and Richard M. Nixon look less shadowy — all with meticulous tricks of the light,” says Margalit Fox on The New York Times. Newsweek described him, in 1969, “the Picasso of spots and strobes.”

As The NY Times declares, “at ABC, where he began his career, he lighted some of the best-known programs on early television, establishing a look that endures to this day… Dispensing with the lurid fluorescent lights that were a staple of early television, he navigated a world of incandescence and the striking shadows it cast, mitigating double chins and balding pates with the skill of a surgeon…  Over time, Mr. Fiorentino illuminated some of the biggest names to grace the small screen: Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby, Hal Holbrook in the 1967 television version of his one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” and, in a memorable Schick commercial from 1968, Joe Namath parting company with his mustache.

He illuminated pavilions at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center, live concerts by Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand and, for TV in 1964, the first heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) and Sonny Liston. He was widely credited with transforming television lighting from engineering into art”.

Ms. Fox adds that “Mr. Fiorentino’s achievements are noteworthy in that, theater trained, he had never planned on a career in television. They are still more noteworthy in that he had the use of only one eye… His career nearly ended before it began. Several months before graduating from high school, he found what he thought was an empty shell casing in the street. Wanting to make it into a key chain, he took a soldering iron to it. It was a live round. Shrapnel from the explosion pierced his right eye, blinding it. He despaired of being able to work in lighting”.

Mr. Fiorentino’s first marriage, to Carole Hamer, ended in divorce. He is survived by a daughter from that marriage, the Rev. Linda Crabbs, and a grandson.  He is also survived by his second wife, the former Angela Linsell, who confirmed her husband’s death, at their home in Manhattan, from complications following surgery.