If behind every great inventor there is someone to make sure the ideas become marketable products, then Polaroid Corp. owes much of its success to William J. McCune Jr.

He helped turn the instant-photography invention of the company's founder, the late Edwin Land, into cameras and film by developing manufacturing processes and launching film-production factories. McCune also had to corral -- or try to -- some of Land's grander schemes, which seemed marked for failure. For example: Polavision, Land's messianic quest for an instant moving-picture system during the dawn of the video era, which led to Land's decline in influence nearly a decade ago.

Today, after 52 years on the job, McCune's career comes to a close when he steps down as chairman at the company's annual meeting at Wellesley College. Although he hasn't been actively involved in the company for years, McCune's departure effectively ends the Land era.

Last week McCune reflected on his career with Land, the hurly burly years of instant photography, and the company's future.

McCune, at 76, is a picture of good health. An avid bicyclist he still pedals through the Swiss Alps near his second home in Zermatt. An automotive engineer by training, he drives Porsches and enjoys silversmithing at his home in Lincoln. He also plays the piano; he took up the oboe at 40.

Soon, he will be a great-grandfather. The child no doubt will hear how grandpa McCune foiled a kidnapping attempt in 1976 near his Cambridge office by fighting off the attacker by taking away his shotgun.

But when McCune, who turned down a General Motors job in Germany to join the 2-year old company, talks of Polaroid, the conversation invariably turns to Land, who died in March.

The story begins in 1944, when Land wanted to stop making missile guidance systems for the Navy and turn to developing an instant camera. McCune's role was to design the camera and package the film. Land, he says, was extraordinarily brilliant and hard working. But Land, the genius and showman, was never a realist.

"Land was over-optimistic on how things would get done and how much they would cost," he says. "If he had really understood, in many cases it would be very discouraging before we started."

That's where McCune came in. McCune -- the chief technologist -- converted Land's ideas into tangible products. He harnessed teams of engineers to design products, negotiated agreements with the likes of Eastman Kodak to make the early negative films and controlled the manufacturing process.

But those different roles led to clashes.

In describing the differences between Land and McCune, Peter Wensberg, in his 1987 book, "Land's Polaroid," wrote that McCune had to work out the tough compromises necessary to meet cost and time constraints.

"Both men possessed muscular minds and athletic egos," wrote Wensberg, a former Polaroid vice president. "Each was certain he could play the other's role. When Bill {McCune} returned from his twice-yearly visits to Switzerland . . . , he sometimes discovered that Land had been spending time with his, McCune's, camera design team."

The gulf between the two men was so great that McCune even once considered quitting after Land kept him out of the early development of the SX-70 model camera in the late 1960s. "He really didn't want me to be involved in the early design work," he says.

McCune didn't resign, however. According to an oral history McCune taped for Polaroid's archives last summer, he figured: "Oh, the heck with that, what else would I do?"

Still, McCune was often able to convince Land to do the right thing. For instance, when it came to Eastman Kodak's entry into the instant-camera and -film market, McCune says Land was naive, never believing the photographic giant would become a competitor. Kodak had for many years been producing traditional film, after all.

McCune finally convinced Land that Kodak might enter the market and McCune got the green light to build a film factory -- a project led by I. MacAllister Booth, who became president and, as of today, chairman.

Nonetheless, McCune couldn't always save Land from disastrous decisions. Take the development of the Swinger camera, a $20 model that made wallet-sized black-and-white snapshots (the camera's advertising featured a bikini-clad Ali MacGraw, helping to launch her career).

The Swinger, pushed by Polaroid's marketing department to broaden the instant-camera market, did not produce very good pictures. "I was concerned that it would give our kind of photography a bad name and in some ways it did, but Land wanted it," McCune says.

A decade after Swinger, McCune became president in 1975, after he urged Land not to appoint former-Nestle executive Thomas Wyman. He says Wyman lacked technical background and did not have a good rapport within the company. "Wyman was getting restless and pushing for the presidency, so the question came up of whether I would work for him and I said no because I believed that I was better for that job and I had a better understanding of the company," says McCune.

Finally, Land's determination to make the final call caught up with him, over the objections of McCune.

Land's swan song was the ill-fated Polavision (he called it a "living image system,") a color motion-picture system that made 2 1/2-minute films in self-developing cassettes. It was introduced in 1978 during the birth of the home video era. The product eventually forced Polaroid to write off a whopping $89 million and led to Land's resignation as chairman in 1981.

"We had a long series of discussions about Polavision," recalls McCune. Land "was usually so perceptive, but in this case he simply didn't want to face it. He was at a stage when he was much more difficult to talk to and he didn't want to listen. {Polavision} became a personal thing. There was no way of stopping him."

The 1980s were not kind to Polaroid, which was trying to reinvent itself by shifting away from a dependence on consumer photography, a market in steady decline. In addition to fending off a takeover thrust by California-based Shamrock Holdings Inc., controlled by Roy E. Disney, Polaroid was forced to make wholesale changes, including firing thousands of workers.

But Wall Street analysts contend McCune didn't go far enough after the Polavision fiasco. They say he was at best a transition leader, trying to keep the best of the company's corporate culture while turning over most responsibilities to Booth, who has been running the company for nearly a decade. McCune, however, receives high marks for steering the company into electronic imaging and creating more opportunities for women and minorities. He also gets high praise for grooming a successor.

Says Polaroid director Frank S. Jones: "I think McCune treated Mac Booth a lot kinder than Land treated him."

PHOTO; CAPTION:GLOBE STAFF PHOTO/JANET KNOTT / William J. McCune Jr.: His departure after 52 years effectively ends the Land era.

Boston Globe Newspaper

Document bstngb0020011109dn57008y7