Maurice Prather

Maurice William Prather (September 6, 1926 - January 9, 2001) was an American motion picture and still photographer and film director. He was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Maurice J. Prather, a mechanic, cabinet maker, and woodworker, and Zora M. Prather, both of them born in Missouri. Young Maurice Jr. also had a younger sister, Laura Jo, some two years his junior.

The Prather family was living in Kansas City, Missouri, by 1930, where Maurice Jr.'s father found work at a local business called Greenwood's. By the time he was in his senior year of high school, Maurice Jr. had become interested in photography and had an after-school job as an assistant cameraman and laboratory technician at the Calvin Company in Kansas City, the largest production company for industrial films in the world. Upon turning 18 in 1944, Prather did not join the armed forces as most American young people were during those wartime days (Prather may have suffered from a physical problem which prevented him from serving in the armed forces). Instead, he found work as a photographer of wartime airplanes for North American Aviation in Kansas City. In 1945, he became an engineering photographer for Trans World Airlines (TWA), who for many years had a hub in Kansas City. Still living with his parents in Kansas City, Prather then returned to the Calvin Company as an assistant cameraman for industrial films once again. This was the longest Prather held onto a job during these early days in Kansas City---two years (1946-1948). For some reason, he decided to abandon photography altogether for a one-year stint as a schedule clerk at a Sears-Roebuck department store in Kansas City. In 1949, he decided to get a college education and so enrolled in the journalism program at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

While at KU, Prather got a part-time job at the local Centron Corporation film studio, working as a photographer once again on educational and industrial short films. Prather's college activities included writing for the University Daily Kansan newspaper at KU and writing and photographing with several other students a "highlight book" of the 1951-52 season of the KU Jayhawks basketball team. Prather completed his journalism degree in June, 1953, and immediately went to work full-time at Centron. Prather put in nearly ten years at Centron, making over one hundred educational and industrial films, many of them prize-winners. Other than motion picture and still photography, he did sound recording on films and after a while began to direct films. It was while at Centron that Prather met his wife, Rozanne, whom he married in the late 1950s. He also first became acquainted with director Herk Harvey.

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