National Film Registry Cinematographers
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- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) - a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste - took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine's infamous dog-crap eating scene.
Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray (1988), and although his movies nowadays might now appear cleaned up and professional, they retain Waters' playfulness, and reflect his lifelong obsessions.Pink Flamingos (1972) - 2021- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers. He was born in Spain but moved to Cuba by age 18 to join his exiled anti-Franco father. In Havana, he founded a cineclub and wrote film reviews. Then, he went on to study in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale. He directed six shorts in Cuba and two in New York. After the 1959 Cuban revolution, he returned and made several documentaries for the Castro-regime. But after two of his shorts (Gente en la playa (1960) and La Tumba Francesca) had been banned, he moved to Paris. There he became the favourite cameraman of Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut. In 1978, he started his impressive Hollywood-career. In his later years, he co-directed two documentaries about the human rights situation in Cuba: Improper Conduct (1984) (about the persecution of gay people) and Nadie escuchaba (1987). He shot several prestigious commercials for Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein. Nestor Almendros died of cancer.Days of Heaven (1978) - 2007- Cinematographer
- Director
- Actor
Michael Ballhaus was a German cinematographer. He worked on many American films, including Baby It's You (1983), Old Enough (1984), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006).
Ballhaus was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, for Broadcast News (1987), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), and Gangs of New York (2002), but never won.
His son Florian Ballhaus is also a cinematographer who worked on Flightplan (2005) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
Ballhaus died on 11 April 2017, at the age of 81.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Adrian Biddle was born on 20 July 1952 in Woolwich, London, England, UK. He was a cinematographer, known for V for Vendetta (2005), Thelma & Louise (1991) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). He was married to Mo. He died on 7 December 2005 in London, England, UK.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
Jan de Bont was one of 17 children born into a Roman Catholic Dutch family in Eindhoven on 22 October 1943. Credited with being creative and having a good mentality for camera techniques, he became a popular cinematographer. He worked on a huge number of films before finding himself on the production of Speed (1994), his first film as a director. He has resided in Los Angeles since 1968.
The film was a success and took him onto the next set for Twister (1996), which he also directed. But then the total flops started coming his way: firstly, Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), which he wrote and directed but without the company of Keanu Reeves. He also directed the star-packed The Haunting (1999) but that also failed at the box office. Later, he directed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003). He is still active in cinema.Die Hard (1988) - 2017- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
Tom DiCillo is an American director, cinematographer, writer and (sometimes) actor born in Camp Le Jeune, North Carolina, and who studied film at New York University. During his early career he began working with director Jim Jarmusch as a cinematographer on films that include Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Coffee and Cigarettes (1986). He also worked with Howard Brookner on the documentary Burroughs (1983), which featured the William S. Burroughs. His experience as cinematographer proved invaluable and he was soon writing and directing his own films.
Notable directorial projects from Tom include Johnny Suede (1991), Living in Oblivion (1995), The Real Blonde (1997), and When You're Strange (2009).
He is a good friend of Steve Buscemi and is thanked in Trees Lounge (1996), Steve's directorial debut.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, distant German and very remote Portuguese. The age-old story goes that the small town of his birth was won by John's grandfather in a poker game. John's father was the equally magnanimous character actor Walter Huston, and his mother, Rhea Gore, was a newspaperwoman who traveled around the country looking for stories. The only child of the couple, John began performing on stage with his vaudevillian father at age 3. Upon his parents' divorce at age 7, the young boy would take turns traveling around the vaudeville circuit with his father and the country with his mother on reporting excursions. A frail and sickly child, he was once placed in a sanitarium due to both an enlarged heart and kidney ailment. Making a miraculous recovery, he quit school at age 14 to become a full-fledged boxer and eventually won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California, winning 22 of 25 bouts. His trademark broken nose was the result of that robust activity.
John married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and also took his first professional stage bow with a leading role off-Broadway entitled "The Triumph of the Egg." He made his Broadway debut that same year with "Ruint" on April 7, 1925, and followed that with another Broadway show "Adam Solitaire" the following November. John soon grew restless with the confines of both his marriage and acting and abandoned both, taking a sojourn to Mexico where he became an officer in the cavalry and expert horseman while writing plays on the sly. Trying to control his wanderlust urges, he subsequently returned to America and attempted newspaper and magazine reporting work in New York by submitting short stories. He was even hired at one point by mogul Samuel Goldwyn Jr. as a screenwriter, but again he grew restless. During this time he also appeared unbilled in a few obligatory films. By 1932 John was on the move again and left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching. The promising artist became a homeless beggar during one harrowing point.
Returning again to America in 1933, he played the title role in a production of "Abraham Lincoln," only a few years after father Walter portrayed the part on film for D.W. Griffith. John made a new resolve to hone in on his obvious writing skills and began collaborating on a few scripts for Warner Brothers. He also married again. Warners was so impressed with his talents that he was signed on as both screenwriter and director for the Dashiell Hammett mystery yarn The Maltese Falcon (1941). The movie classic made a superstar out of Humphrey Bogart and is considered by critics and audiences alike--- 65 years after the fact--- to be the greatest detective film ever made. In the meantime John wrote/staged a couple of Broadway plays, and in the aftermath of his mammoth screen success directed bad-girl 'Bette Davis (I)' and good girl Olivia de Havilland in the film melodrama In This Our Life (1942), and three of his "Falcon" stars (Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet) in the romantic war picture Across the Pacific (1942). During WWII John served as a Signal Corps lieutenant and went on to helm a number of film documentaries for the U.S. government including the controversial Let There Be Light (1980), which father Walter narrated. The end of WWII also saw the end of his second marriage. He married third wife Evelyn Keyes, of "Gone With the Wind" fame, in 1946 but it too lasted a relatively short time. That same year the impulsive and always unpredictable Huston directed Jean-Paul Sartre's experimental play "No Exit" on Broadway. The show was a box-office bust (running less than a month) but nevertheless earned the New York Drama Critics Award as "best foreign play."
Hollywood glory came to him again in association with Bogart and Warner Brothers'. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), a classic tale of gold, greed and man's inhumanity to man set in Mexico, won John Oscars for both director and screenplay and his father nabbed the "Best Supporting Actor" trophy. John can be glimpsed at the beginning of the movie in a cameo playing a tourist, but he wouldn't act again on film for a decade and a half. With the momentum in his favor, John hung around in Hollywood this time to write and/or direct some of the finest American cinema made including Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen (1951) (both with Bogart), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Moulin Rouge (1952). Later films, including Moby Dick (1956), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits (1961), Freud (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964) and The Bible in the Beginning... (1966) were, for the most part, well-regarded but certainly not close to the level of his earlier revered work. He also experimented behind-the-camera with color effects and approached topics that most others would not even broach, including homosexuality and psychoanalysis.
An ardent supporter of human rights, he, along with director William Wyler and others, dared to form the Committee for the First Amendment in 1947, which strove to undermine the House Un-American Activities Committee. Disgusted by the Hollywood blacklisting that was killing the careers of many talented folk, he moved to St. Clerans in Ireland and became a citizen there along with his fourth wife, ballet dancer Enrica (Ricki) Soma. The couple had two children, including daughter Anjelica Huston who went on to have an enviable Hollywood career of her own. Huston and wife Ricki split after a son (director Danny Huston) was born to another actress in 1962. They did not divorce, however, and remained estranged until her sudden death in 1969 in a car accident. John subsequently adopted his late wife's child from another union. The ever-impulsive Huston would move yet again to Mexico where he married (1972) and divorced (1977) his fifth and final wife, Celeste Shane.
Huston returned to acting auspiciously with a major role in Otto Preminger's epic film The Cardinal (1963) for which Huston received an Oscar nomination at age 57. From that time forward, he would be glimpsed here and there in a number of colorful, baggy-eyed character roles in both good and bad (some positively abysmal) films that, at the very least, helped finance his passion projects. The former list included outstanding roles in Chinatown (1974) and The Wind and the Lion (1975), while the latter comprised of hammy parts in such awful drek as Candy (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970).
Directing daughter Angelica in her inauspicious movie debut, the thoroughly mediocre A Walk with Love and Death (1969), John made up for it 15 years later by directing her to Oscar glory in the mob tale Prizzi's Honor (1985). In the 1970s Huston resurged as a director of quality films with Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Wise Blood (1979). He ended his career on a high note with Under the Volcano (1984), the afore-mentioned Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987). His only certifiable misfire during that era was the elephantine musical version of Annie (1982), though it later became somewhat of a cult favorite among children.
Huston lived the macho, outdoors life, unencumbered by convention or restrictions, and is often compared in style or flamboyancy to an Ernest Hemingway or Orson Welles. He was, in fact, the source of inspiration for Clint Eastwood in the helming of the film White Hunter Black Heart (1990) which chronicled the making of "The African Queen." Illness robbed Huston of a good portion of his twilight years with chronic emphysema the main culprit. As always, however, he continued to work tirelessly while hooked up to an oxygen machine if need be. At the end, the living legend was shooting an acting cameo in the film Mr. North (1988) for his son Danny, making his directorial bow at the time. John became seriously ill with pneumonia and died while on location at the age of 81. This maverick of a man's man who was once called "the eccentric's eccentric" by Paul Newman, left an incredibly rich legacy of work to be enjoyed by film lovers for centuries to come.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Janusz Kaminski is a Polish cinematographer and film director. He has established a partnership with Steven Spielberg, working as a cinematographer on his movies since 1993. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
His other film's as an cinematographer includes Amistad (1997), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), The BFG (2016), and Ready Player One (2018).- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Robert Anthony Rodriguez was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, USA, to Rebecca (Villegas), a nurse, and Cecilio G. Rodríguez, a salesman. His family is of Mexican descent.
Of all the people to be amazed by the images of John Carpenter's 1981 sci-fi parable, Escape from New York (1981), none were as captivated as the 12-year-old Rodriguez, who sat with his friends in a crowded cinema. Many people watch films and arrogantly proclaim "I can do that." This young man said something different: "I WILL do that. I'm gonna make movies." That day was the catalyst of his dream career. Born and raised in Texas, Robert was the middle child of a family that would include 10 children. While many a child would easily succumb to a Jan Brady sense of being lost in the shuffle, Robert always stood out as a very creative and very active young man. An artist by nature, he was very rarely seen sans pencil-in-hand doodling some abstract (yet astounding) dramatic feature on a piece of paper. His mother, not a fan of the "dreary" cinema of the 1970s, instills a sense of cinema in her children by taking them on weekly trips to San Antonio's famed Olmos Theatre movie house and treats them to a healthy dose of Hollywood's "Golden Age" wonders, from Sergio Leone to the silent classic of Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
In a short amount of time, young Robert finds the family's old Super-8 film camera and makes his first films. The genres are unlimited: action, sci-fi, horror, drama, stop-motion animation. He uses props from around the house, settings from around town, and makes use of the largest cast and crew at his disposal: his family. At the end of the decade, his father, a salesman, brings home the latest home-made technological wonder: a VCR, and with it (as a gift from the manufacturer) a video camera. With this new equipment at his disposal, he makes movies his entire life. He screens the movies for friends, all of whom desperately want to star in the next one. He gains a reputation in the neighborhood as "the kid who makes movies". Rather than handing in term papers, he is allowed to hand in "term movies" because, as he himself explains, "[the teachers] knew I'd put more effort into a movie than I ever would into an essay." He starts his own comic strip, "Los Hooligans". His movies win every local film competition and festival. When low academic grades threaten to keep him out of UT Austin's renowned film department, he proves his worth the only way he knows how: he makes a movie. Three, in fact: trilogy of short movies called "Austin Stories" starring his siblings. It beats the entries of the school's top students and allows Robert to enter the program. After being accepted into the film department, Robert takes $400 of his own money to make his "biggest" film yet: a 16mm short comedy/fantasy called Bedhead (1991).
Pouring every idea and camera trick he knew into the short, it went on to win multiple awards. After meeting and marrying fellow Austin resident Elizabeth Avellan, Robert comes up with a crazy idea: he will sell his body to science in order to finance his first feature-length picture (a Mexican action adventure about a guitarist with no name looking for work but getting caught up in a shoot-'em-up adventure) that he will sell to the Spanish video market and use as an entry point to a lucrative Hollywood career. With his "guinea pig" money he raises a mere $7,000 and creates El Mariachi (1992). But rather than lingering in obscurity, the film finds its way to the Sundance film festival where it becomes an instant favorite, wins Robert a distribution deal with Columbia Pictures and turns him into an icon among would-be film-makers the world over. Not one to rest on his laurels, he immediately helms the straight-to-cable movie Roadracers (1994) and contributes a segment to the anthology comedy Four Rooms (1995) (his will be the most lauded segment).
His first "genuine" studio effort would soon have people referring to him as "John Woo from south-of-the-border". It is the "Mariachi" remake/sequel Desperado (1995). More lavish and action-packed than its own predecessor, the movie--while not a blockbuster hit--does decent business and launches the American film careers of Antonio Banderas as the guitarist-turned-gunslinger and Salma Hayek as his love interest (the two would star in several of his movies from then on). It also furthers the director's reputation of working on low budgets to create big results. In the year when movies like Batman Forever (1995) and GoldenEye (1995) were pushing budgets past the $100 million mark, Rodriguez brought in "Desperado" for just under $7 million. The film also featured a cameo by fellow indie film wunderkind, Quentin Tarantino. It would be the beginning of a long friendship between the two sprinkled with numerous collaborations. Most notable the Tarantino-penned vampire schlock-fest From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). The kitschy flick (about a pair of criminal brothers on the run from the Texas Rangers, only to find themselves in a vamp-infested Mexican bar) became an instant cult favorite and launched the lucrative film career of ER (1994) star George Clooney.
After a two-year break from directing (primarily to spend with his family, but also developing story ideas and declining Hollywood offers) he returned to "Dusk till Dawn" territory with the teen sci-fi/horror movie The Faculty (1998), written by Scream (1996) writer, Kevin Williamson. Although it's developed a small following of its own, it would prove to be Robert's least-successful film. Critics and fans alike took issue with the pedestrian script, the off-kilter casting and the flick's blatant over-commercialization (due to a marketing deal with clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger). After another three-year break, Rodriguez returned to make his most successful (and most unexpected) movie yet, based on his own segment from Four Rooms (1995). After a string of bloody, adult-oriented action fare, no one anticipated him to write and direct the colorful and creative Spy Kids (2001), a movie about a pair of prepubescent Latino sibs who discover that their lame parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are actually two of the world's greatest secret agents. The film was hit among both audiences and critics alike.
After quitting the Writers' Guild of America and being introduced to digital filmmaking by George Lucas, Robert immediately applied the creative, flexible (and cost-effective) technology to every one of his movies from then on, starting with an immediate sequel to his family friendly hit: Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) which was THEN immediately followed by the trilogy-capper Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003). The latter would prove to be the most financially-lucrative of the series and employ the long-banished movie gimmick of 3-D with eye-popping results. Later the same year Rodriguez career came full circle when he completed the final entry of the story that made brought him to prominence: "El Mariachi". The last chapter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), would be his most direct homage to the Sergio Leone westerns he grew up on. With a cast boasting Antonio Banderas (returning as the gunslinging guitarist), Johnny Depp (as a corrupt CIA agent attempting to manipulate him), Salma Hayek, Mickey Rourke, Willem Dafoe and Eva Mendes, the film delivered even more of the Mexican shoot-'em-up spectacle than both of the previous films combined.
Now given his choice of movies to do next, Robert sought out famed comic book writer/artist Frank Miller, a man who had been very vocal of never letting his works be adapted for the screen. Even so, he was wholeheartedly convinced and elated when Rodriguez presented him with a plan to turn Miller's signature work into the film Sin City (2005). A collection of noir-ish tales set in a fictional, crime-ridden slum, the movie boasted the largest cast Rodriguez had worked with to that date. Saying he didn't want to mere "adapt" Miller's comics but "translate" them, Rodriguez' insistence that Miller co-direct the movie lead to Robert's resignation from the Director's Guild of America (and his subsequent dismissal from the film John Carter (2012) as a result). Many critics cited that Sin City was created as a pure film noir piece to adapt Miller's comics onto the screen. Co-directing with Frank Miller and bringing in Quentin Tarantino to guest-direct a scene allowed Rodriguez to again shock Hollywood with his talent.
In late 2007, Rodriguez again teamed up with his friend Tarantino to create the double feature Grindhouse (2007). Rodriguez's offering, Planet Terror (2007), was a film made to be "hardcore, extreme, sex-fueled, action-packed." Rodriguez flirts with his passion to make a showy film exploiting all of his experience to make an extremely entertaining thrill ride. The film is encompassed around Cherry (Rose McGowan), a reluctant go-go dancer who is found wanting when she meets her ex-lover El Wray (played by Freddy Rodríguez) who turns up at a local BBQ grill. They then, after a turn of events, find themselves fending off brain-eating zombies whilst trying to flee to Mexico (here we go off to Mexico again). Apart from directing, Rodriguez also involves himself in camera work, editing and composing music for his movies' sound tracks (he composed Planet Terror's main theme). He also shoots a lot of his own action scenes to get a direct idea from his eye as the director into the film. In El Mariachi (1992), Rodriguez spent hours in front of a pay-to-use, computer editing his film. This allowed him to capture the ideal footage exactly as he wanted it. Away from the filming aspect of Hollywood, Rodriguez is an expert chef who cooks gourmet meals for the cast and crew. Rodriguez is also known for his ability to turn a low-budgeted film with a small crew into an example of film mastery. El mariachi was "the movie made on seven grand" and still managed to rank as one of Rodriguez' best films (receiving a rating of 92% on the Rotten Tomatoes film review site).
Because Rodriguez is involved so deeply in his films, he is able to capture what he wants first time, which saves both time and money. Rodriguez's films share some similar threads and ideas, whilst also having differences. In El Mariachi (1992), he uses a hand-held camera. He made this decision for several reasons. First, he couldn't afford a tripod and secondly, he wanted to make the audience more aware of the action. In the action sequences he is given more mobility with a hand-held camera and also allows for distortion of the unprofessional action sequences (because the cost of all special effects in the film totaled $600). However, in Sin City (2005) and Planet Terror (2007), the budget was much greater, and Rodriguez could afford to spend more on special affects (especially since both films were filmed predominately with green screen) and, thus, there was no need to cover for error.
Playing by his own rules or not at all, Robert Rodriguez has redefined what a filmmaker can or cannot do. Shunning Hollywood's ridiculously high budgets, multi-picture deals and the two most powerful unions for the sake of maintaining creative freedom are decisions that would (and have) cost many directors their careers. Rodriguez has turned these into his strengths, creating some of the most imaginative works the big-screen has ever seen.El Mariachi (1992) - 2011- Producer
- Writer
- Director
George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; by all indications, though, he was very successful. The director of the groundbreaking "Living Dead" films was born February 4, 1940 ,in New York City to Ann (Dvorsky) and Jorge Romero. His father was born in Spain and raised in Cuba, and his mother was Lithuanian. He grew up in New York until attending the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
After graduation he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and his friends formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly $10,000 apiece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time: Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black-and-white on a budget of just over $100,000, Romero's vision, combined with a solid script written by him and his "Image" co-founder John A. Russo (along with what was then considered an excess of gore), enabled the film to earn back far more than what it cost; it became a cult classic by the early 1970s and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States in 1999. Romero's next films were a little more low-key but less successful, including The Affair (1971), The Crazies (1973), Season of the Witch (1972) (where he met future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1977). Though not as acclaimed as "Night of the Living Dead" or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues--usually horror-related--at the microscopic level. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around, Romero's favorite city of Pittsburgh.
In 1978 he returned to the zombie genre with the one film of his that would top the success of "Night of the Living Dead"--Dawn of the Dead (1978). He managed to divorce the franchise from Image Ten, which screwed up the copyright on the original and allowed the film to enter into public domain, with the result that Romero and his original investors were not entitled to any profits from the film's video releases. Shot in the Monroeville (PA) Mall during late-night hours, the film told the tale of four people who escape a zombie outbreak and lock themselves up inside what they think is paradise before the solitude makes them victims of their own, and a biker gang's, greed. Made on a budget of just $1.5 million, the film earned over $40 million worldwide and was named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2003. It also marked Romero's first work with brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini. After 1978, Romero and Savini teamed up many times. The success of "Dawn of the Dead" led to bigger budgets and better casts for the filmmaker. First was Knightriders (1981), where he first worked with an up-and-coming Ed Harris. Then came perhaps his most Hollywood-like film, Creepshow (1982), which marked the first--but not the last--time Romero adapted a work by famed horror novelist Stephen King. With many major stars and big-studio distribution, it was a moderate success and spawned a sequel, which was also written by Romero.
The decline of Romero's career came in the late 1980s. His last widely-released film was the next "Dead" film, Day of the Dead (1985). Derided by critics, it did not take in much at the box office, either. His latest two efforts were The Dark Half (1993) (another Stephen King adaptation) and Bruiser (2000). Even the Romero-penned/Tom Savini-directed remake of Romero's first film, Night of the Living Dead (1990), was a box-office failure. Pigeon-holed solely as a horror director and with his latest films no longer achieving the success of his earlier "Dead" films, Romero has not worked much since, much to the chagrin of his following. In 2005, 19 years after "Day of the Dead", with major-studio distribution he returned to his most famous series and horror sub-genre it created with Land of the Dead (2005), a further exploration of the destruction of modern society by the undead, that received generally positive reviews. He directed two more "Dead" films, Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009).
George died on July 16, 2017, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was 77.- Producer
- Director
- Cinematographer
Barry Sonnenfeld was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from New York University Film School in 1978. He started work as director of photography on the Oscar-nominated In Our Water (1982). Then Joel Coen and Ethan Coen hired him for Blood Simple (1984). This film began his collaboration with the Coen Bros., who used him for their next two pictures, Raising Arizona (1987) and Miller's Crossing (1990). He also worked with Danny DeVito on his Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Rob Reiner on When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and Misery (1990). Sonnenfeld got his first work as a director from Orion Pictures on The Addams Family (1991), a box-office success released in November 1991 followed by its sequel, Addams Family Values (1993). He received critical acclaim for his fourth directorial effort, Get Shorty (1995). Produced by Jersey Films and based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film won a Golden Globe for best male performance. In 1996 Steven Spielberg asked him to direct Men in Black (1997). Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, the movie was a critical and financial smash. Producer Jon Peters then asked Sonnenfeld to direct Wild Wild West (1999), an adaptation of an old TV series. He also directed the comedy Big Trouble (2002), after which he made his most successful film sequel, Men in Black II (2002).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Kenneth Anger grew up in Hollywood and started out as a child actor, but his interest in filmmaking was evident at an early age: he made his first film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941) , at age 14.
Anger developed into one of the pioneers of the American underground film movement. His gritty, violent, often homosexual-themed films were too strong for American audiences of the time, and many of his productions were filmed in Europe, mainly France.
However, Anger is best known for authoring the landmark "Hollywood Babylon" book series, which detailed a far seamier side of the Hollywood film industry than most people were aware.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
At age 17, Samuel Fuller was the youngest reporter ever to be in charge of the events section of the New York Journal. After having participated in the European battle theater in World War II, he directed some minor action productions for which he mostly wrote the scripts himself and which he also produced (e.g. The Baron of Arizona (1950)). His masterpiece was Pickup on South Street (1953) for 20th Century Fox, but at the end of the 1950s, he regained his independence from the production company and filmed many other movies of note, including the controversial White Dog (1982).V-E +1 (1945) - 2014- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Master cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose career stretched from silent pictures through the mid-'70s, was born Wong Tung Jim in Canton (now Guangzhou), China, on August 28, 1899, the son of Wong How. His father emigrated to America the year James was born, settling in Pasco, Washington, where he worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Wong How eventually went into business for himself in Pasco, opening a general store, which he made a success, despite the bigotry of the locals.
When he was five years old, Wong Tung Jim joined his father in the US. His childhood was unhappy due to the discrimination he faced, which manifested itself in racist taunting by the neighborhood children. To get the kids to play with him, Jimmie often resorted to bribing them with candy from his father's store. When Jimmie, as he was known to his friends and later to his co-workers in the movie industry, was about 12 years old he bought a Kodak Brownie camera from a drugstore. Though his father was an old-fashioned Chinese, suspicious about having his picture taken and opposed to his new hobby, Jimmie went ahead and photographed his brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, when the photos were developed, the heads of his siblings had been cut off, as the Brownie lacked a viewfinder.
His childhood dream was to be a prizefighter, and as a teenager he moved to Oregon to fight. However, his interest soon waned, and he moved to Los Angeles, where he got a job as an assistant to a commercial photographer. His duties included making deliveries, but he was fired when he developed some passport photos for a friend in the firm's darkroom. Reduced to making a living as a busboy at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he journeyed down to Chinatown on Sundays to watch movies being shot there.
Jimmie Howe made the acquaintance of a cameraman on one of the location shoots, who suggested he give the movies a try. He got hired by the Jesse Lasky Studios' photography department at the princely sum of $10 per week, but the man in charge thought he was too little to lug equipment around, so he assigned Jimmie custodial work. Thus the future Academy Award-wining cinematographer James Wong Howe's first job in Hollywood was picking up scraps of nitrate stock from the cutting-room floor (more important than it sounds, as nitrate fires in editing rooms were not uncommon). The job allowed him to familiarize himself with movie cameras, lighting equipment and the movie film-development process.
His was a genuine Horatio Alger "Up From His Bootstraps" narrative, as by 1917 he had graduated from editing room assistant to working as a slate boy on Cecil B. DeMille's pictures. The promotion came when DeMille needed all his camera assistants to man multiple cameras on a film. This left no one to hold the chalkboard identifying each scene as a header as the take is shot on film, so Jimmie was drafted and given the title "fourth assistant cameraman. He endeared himself to DeMille when the director and his production crew were unable to get a canary to sing for a close-up. The fourth assistant cameraman lodged a piece of chewing gum in the bird's beak, and as it moved its beak to try to dislodge the gum, it looked like the canary was singing. DeMille promptly gave Jimmie a 50% raise.
In 1919 he was being prepared for his future profession of cameraman. "I held the slate on Male and Female (1919)", he told George C. Pratt in an interview published 60 years later, "and when Mr. DeMille rehearsed a scene, I had to crank a little counter . . . and I would have to grind 16 frames per second. And when he stopped, I would have to give him the footage. He wanted to know how long the scene ran. So besides writing the slate numbers down and keeping a report, I had to turn this crank. That was the beginning of learning how to turn 16 frames".
Because of the problem with early orthochromatic film registering blue eyes on screen, Howe was soon promoted to operating cameraman at Paramount (the new name for the Lasky Studio), where his talents were noted. A long-time photography buff, Jimmie Howe enjoyed taking still pictures and made extra money photographing the stars. One of his clients was professional "sweet young thing" Mary Miles Minter, of the William Desmond Taylor shooting scandal, who praised Jimmie's photographs because they made her pale blue eyes, which did not register well on film, look dark. When she asked him if he could replicate the effect on motion picture film, he told her he could, and she offered him a job as her cameraman.
Howe did not know how he'd made Minter's eyes look dark, but he soon realized that the reflection of a piece of black velvet at the studio that had been tacked up near his still camera had cast a shadow in her eyes, causing them to register darkly. Promoted to Minter's cameraman, he fashioned a frame of black velvet through which the camera's lens could protrude; filming Minter's close-ups with the device darkened her eyes, just as she desired. The studio was abuzz with the news that Minter had acquired a mysterious Chinese cameraman who made her blue eyes register on film. Since other blue-eyed actors had the same problem, they began to demand that Jimmie shoot them, and a cinematography star was born.
Jimmie Howe was soon advanced beyond operating cameraman to lighting cameraman (called "director of photography" in Hollywood) on Minter's Drums of Fate (1923), and he served as director of photography on The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1923) the next year. As a lighting cameraman he was much in demand, and started to freelance. Notable silent pictures on which he served as the director of photography include Paramount's Mantrap (1926), starring "It Girl" Clara Bow, and MGM's Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), starring silent superstar John Gilbert opposite Joan Crawford.
The cinematography on "Mantrap" was his breakthrough as a star lighting cameraman, in which his lighting added enormously to bringing out Clara Bow's sex appeal. He bathed Bow in a soft glow, surrounding the flapper with shimmering natural light, transforming her into a seemingly three-dimensional sex goddess. Even at this early a stage in his career, Howe had developed a solid aesthetic approach to film, based on inventive, expressive lighting. The film solidified his reputation as a master in the careful handling of female subjects, a rep that would get him his last job a half-century later, on Barbra Streisand's Funny Lady (1975).
Jimmie Howe journeyed back to China at the end of the decade to shoot location backgrounds for a movie about China he planned to make as a director. Though the movie was never made, the footage was later used in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932). When he returned to the US, Hollywood was in the midst of a technological upheaval as sound pictures were finishing off the silent movie, which had matured into a medium of expression now being hailed as "The Seventh Art." The silent film, in a generation, had matured into a set art form with its own techniques of craftsmanship, and pictures like 7th Heaven (1927) and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) generally were thought to be examples of the "photoplay" reaching perfection as a medium. This mature medium now was violently overthrown by the revolutionary upstart, Sound. The talkies had arrived.
The Hollywood Howe returned to was in a panic. All the wisdom about making motion pictures had been jettisoned by nervous studio heads, and the new Hollywood dogma held that only cameramen with experience in sound cinematography could shoot the new talking pictures, thus freezing out many cameramen who had recently been seen as master craftsmen in the silent cinema. Director William K. Howard, who was in pre-production with his film Transatlantic (1931), wanted Jimmie Howe's expertise. Having just acquired some new lenses with $700 of his own money, Howe shot some tests for the film, which impressed the studio enough to gave Howard permission to hire Jimmie to shoot it.
Once again, his career thrived and he was much in demand. He earned the sobriquet "Low-Key Howe" for his low-contrast lighting of interiors, exerting aesthetic control over the dark spots of a frame in the way that a great musician "played" the silences between notes. In 1933 he gave up freelancing and started working in-house at MGM, where he won a reputation for efficiency. He shot The Thin Man (1934) in 18 days and Manhattan Melodrama (1934) in 28 days. It was at MGM that he became credited as "James Wong Howe". Howe's original screen credit was "James Howe" or "Jimmie Howe", but during his early years at MGM "Wong" was added to his name by the front office, "for exotic flair", and his salary reached $500 a week. After shooting 15 pictures for MGM, he moved over to Warner Bros. for Algiers (1938), garnering him his first Academy Award nomination. Studio boss Jack L. Warner was so thrilled by Howe's work with Hedy Lamarr that he signed Jimmie to a seven-year contract. James Wong Howe shot 26 movies at Warners through 1947, and four others on loanout to other studios.
A master at the use of shadow, Howe was one of the first DPs to use deep-focus cinematography, photography in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus. His camerawork typically was unobtrusive, but could be quite spectacular when the narrative called for it. In the context of the studio-bound production of the time, Wong Howe's lighting sense is impressive given his use of location shooting. Citic James Agee called him one of "the few men who use this country for background as it ought to be used in films." Wong Howe used backgrounds to elucidate the psychology of the film's characters and their psychology, such as in Pursued (1947), where the austere desert landscape serves to highlight the tortured psyche of Robert Mitchum's character.
Wong Howe was famed for his innovations, including putting a cameraman with a hand-held camera on roller skates inside a boxing ring for Body and Soul (1947) to draw the audience into the ring. He strapped cameras to the actors' waists in The Brave Bulls (1951) to give a closer and tighter perspective on bullfighting, a sport in which fractions of an inch can mean the difference between life and death. He was hailed for his revolutionary work with tracking and distortion in Seconds (1966), in which he used a 9mm "fish-eye" lens to suggest mental instability.
James Wong Howe became the most famous cameraman in the world in the 1930s, and he bought a Duesenberg, one of the most prestigious and expensive automobiles in the world. His driving his "Doozy" around Hollywood made for an incongruous sight, as Chinese typically were gardeners and houseboys in prewar America, a deeply racist time. During World War II anti-Asian bigotry intensified, despite the fact that China was an ally of the United States in its war with Japan. Mistaken for a Japanese (despite their having been relocated to concentration camps away from the Pacific Coast), he wore a button that declared "I am Chinese." His close friend James Cagney also wore the same button, out of solidarity with his friend.
Wong Howe was involved in a long-term relationship with the writer Sanora Babb, who was a Caucasian. Anti-miscegenation laws on the books in California until 1948 forbade Caucasians from marrying Chinese, and the couple could not legally marry until 1949, after the laws had been repealed. In September of 1949 they finally tied the knot, and Sanora Babb Wong Howe later told a family member that they had to hunt for three days for a sympathetic judge who would marry them.
Wong Howe eventually bought a Chinese restaurant located near the Ventura Freeway, which he managed with Sanora. When a photographer from a San Fernando Valley newspaper came to take a picture of the eatery, Howe counseled that he should put a wide-angle lens on his camera so he wouldn't have to stand so close to the freeway to get the shot. "I'll take the picture," the photographer unknowingly snapped at one of the master cinematographers of the world, "you just mind your goddamned noodles!"
Perhaps due to the sting of racism, the hypocrisy of a country fighting the Nazis and their eugenics policies that itself allowed the proscription of racial intermarriage, which kept him from legally marrying the woman he loved, or perhaps because of the Red-baiting that consumed Hollywood after the War, James Wong Howe's professional reputation began to decline in the late 1940s. Losing his reputation for efficiency, he was branded "difficult to work with," and producers began to fear his on-set temper tantrums. Though Wong Howe was never blacklisted, he came under the scrutiny of the House Un-American Activities Committee for his propensity for working with "Reds", "Pinks" and "fellow-travelers" such as John Garfield. Though he was never hauled in front of HUAC, Wong Howe's good friend Cagney had been a noted liberal in the 1930s. James Wong Howe felt the chill cast over the industry by McCarthyism.
In 1953 Wong Howe was given the opportunity to direct a feature film for the first time, being hired to helm a biography of Harlem Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein, Go Man Go (1954). The film, which was brought in at 21 days on a $130,000 budget, did nothing to enhance his reputation. Howe managed to pull out of his career doldrums, and after McCarthyism crested in 1954 he won his first Oscar for the B+W cinematography of The Rose Tattoo (1955), in which the shadows created by Howe's cinematography reveal the protagonist Serafina's emotional turmoil as much as the words of Tennessee Williams. He directed one more picture, the undistinguished Invisible Avenger (1958), a B-movie in which The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, investigated the murder of a New Orleans bandleader, before returning to his true vocation, the motion picture camera.
By the mid-'50s Howe had made it back to the top of the profession. In 1957 he did some of his most brilliant work on Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a textbook primer on the richness of B+W cinematography. Ironically, he was not Oscar-nominated for his work on the film, but was nominated the following year for his color work on The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and won his second Oscar for the B+W photography of Hud (1963). Once again Wong Howe used a landscape, the barren and lonely West Texas plains, to highlight the psychological state of the film's protagonist, the amoral and go-it-alone title character played by Paul Newman.
One of Wong Howe's favorite assignments in his career was the five-month shoot under the once-blacklisted Martin Ritt on The Molly Maguires (1970), a tale of labor strife, which was shot on location in the Pennsylvania coal fields. His health started to fail after the shoot, and he was forced into retirement, requiring frequent hospitalization in the final years of his life. Reportedly he had to turn down the offer to shoot The Godfather (1972), as he was not healthy enough to undertake the assignment. Gordon Willis got the job instead.
When Funny Lady (1975) producer Ray Stark fired Vilmos Zsigmond as the director of photography of his Funny Girl (1968) sequel, he hired Howe due to his faith that the great lighting cameraman who had done wonders with Mary Miles Minter, Clara Bow, and Hedy Lamarr could glamorize his star, Barbra Streisand. Howe took over the shoot, but his health gave out after a short time and he collapsed on the set. Oscar-winner Ernest Laszlo, then-president of the American Society of Cinematographers, filled in until Howe returned from the hospital and finished the shoot. He received his last Oscar nomination for his work on the film. It marked the end of a remarkable career in motion pictures that spanned almost 60 years.
By the time of his retirement, he had long been acknowledged as a master of his art, one of the greatest lighting cameramen of all time, credited with shooting over 130 pictures in Hollywood and England. He worked with many of the greatest and most important directors in cinema history, from Allan Dwan in the silent era to Sidney Lumet in the 1960s. He created three production companies during his professional career, an untopped career in which he racked up ten Academy Award nominations in both B+W white and color (including notoriously difficult Technicolor), in formats ranging from the Academy ratio to CinemaScope, all of which he mastered. An even greater honor than his two Oscar wins came his way. In 1949, when he was chosen to shoot test footage for the proposed comeback of the great Greta Garbo in the proposed movie "La Duchesse de Langeais," such was his reputation.
Sanora Babb Wong Howe wrote after his death, "My husband loved his work. He spent all his adult life from age 17 to 75, a year before his death, in the motion picture industry. When he died at 77, courageous in illness as in health, he was still thinking of new ways to make pictures. He was critical of poor quality in any area of film, but quick to see and appreciate the good. His mature style was realistic, never naturalistic. If the story demanded, his work could be harsh and have a documentary quality, but that quality was strictly Wong Howe. If the story allowed, his style was poetic realism, for he was a poet of the camera. This was a part of his nature, his impulse toward the beautiful, but it did not prevent his flexibility in dealing with all aspects of reality."
His greatest asset to film may have been his adaptability, the many ways in which he could vary his aesthetic in service of a story. Howe initially fought the notoriously gimmicky John Frankenheimer over his desire to use a fish-eye lens for "Seconds." Subsequently, Howe used the lens masterfully to convey the psychological torment of the protagonist, locked in a beyond-Kafkaesque nightmare that simply relying on sets and lighting couldn't bring across. He had made it work by adapting his aesthetic to the needs of the story and its characters, in service to his director.
Howe's work was given retrospectives at the 2002 Seattle International Film Festival, and in San Francisco in 2004, a rare honor for a cinematographer. It was testimony to his continuing reputation, more than a quarter century after his death, as one of the greatest and most innovative lighting cameramen the world of cinema has ever known.
Perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed on James Wong Howe is that this master craftsman, a genius of lighting, refutes the auteur theory, which holds that the director solely is "author" of a film. No one could reasonably make that claim on any picture on which Howe was the director of photography.Peter Pan (1924) - 2000
The Power and the Glory (1933) - 2014
The Thin Man (1934) - 1997
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) - 1991
Fantasia (1940)(live-action segments) - 1990
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) - 1993
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) - 1993
Hud (1963) - 2018
Seconds (1966) - 2015- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Actor
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Almost universally considered one of the greatest cinematographers of all time, Jack Cardiff was also a notable director. He described his childhood as very happy and his parents as quite loving. They performed in music hall as comedians, so he grew up with the fun that came with their theatrical life in pantomime and vaudeville. His father once worked with Charles Chaplin. His parents did occasional film appearances, and young Jack appeared in some of their films, such as My Son, My Son (1918), at the age of four. He had the lead in Billy's Rose (1922) with his parents playing his character's parents in the film. Jack was a production runner, or what he would call a "general gopher", for The Informer (1929) in which his father appeared. For one scene he was asked by the first assistant cameraman to "follow focus", which he said was his first real brush with photography of any kind, but he claimed that it was the lure of travel that led to him joining a camera department making films in a studio. He had, however, become impressed with the use of light and color in paintings by the age of seven or eight, and described how he watched art directors in theaters painting backdrops setting lights. His friend Ted Moore was also a camera assistant in this period when both worked in a camera department run by Freddie Young, who would also become a legendary cinematographer. He worked for Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of The Skin Game (1931).
By 1936 Cardiff had risen to being a camera operator at Denham Studios when the Technicolor Company hired him on the basis of what he told them in interview about the use of light by master painters. This led to his operating camera for the first Technicolor film shot in Britain, Wings of the Morning (1937). He finally was offered the full position of director of photography by Michael Powell for A Matter of Life and Death (1946), ironically working in B&W for the first time in some sequences. His next assignment was on Black Narcissus (1947), where he acknowledged the influence of painters Vermeer and Caravaggio and their use of shadow. He won the Academy Award for best color cinematography for this film. Jack certainly got to travel when it was decided to shoot The African Queen (1951) on location in the Congo. Errol Flynn offered Jack the chance to direct The Story of William Tell (1953) that would star Flynn. It would have been the second film made in CinemaScope had it been completed, but the production ran out of money part way through filming in Switzerland.
It has been said that Marilyn Monroe requested that Jack photograph The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Although he had already directed some small productions, he had a critical breakthrough with Sons and Lovers (1960). He continued directing other films through the 1960s, including the commercial hit Dark of the Sun (1968), but for the most part returned to working for other directors as a very sought-after cinematographer in the 1970s and beyond. He continued to work into the new century, almost until his death. He was made an OBE in 2000 and received a lifetime achievement award at the 73rd Academy Awards.The African Queen (1951) - 1994- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Henri Alekan was born on 10 February 1909 in Paris, France. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Wings of Desire (1987), Roman Holiday (1953) and Beauty and the Beast (1946). He was married to Nadia Starcevic. He died on 15 June 2001 in Auxerre, Yonne, France.Roman Holiday (1953) - 1999- Cinematographer
- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
John A. Alonzo was born on 12 June 1934 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Chinatown (1974), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Star Trek: Generations (1994). He was married to Suzanne L. Heltzel and Jan Murray. He died on 13 March 2001 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.Harold and Maude (1971) - 1997
Sounder (1972) - 2021
Wattstax (1973) - 2020
Chinatown (1974) - 1991
Norma Rae (1979) - 2011- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Art Department
Italian-born Nicholas Musuraca's first job in the film business was as a chauffeur to early pioneering producer/director J. Stuart Blackton. Having a knack for photography, he worked behind the cameras in a variety of jobs before finally becoming a cinematographer (or, as they were called in those days, "lighting cameraman"). Musuraca spent most of his career at RKO Pictures, where he became known as a master of lighting--he was once admiringly described by a fellow cameraman as "a painter with light"--and was largely responsible for the gritty, moody camerawork that became that studio's signature. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on I Remember Mama (1948). After leaving RKO in the late '50s he worked for a short period at Warner Bros., but then joined Desilu Studios and spent the remainder of his career in television.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Fred Murphy was born in 1942 in New York, USA. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Metro (1997), Stir of Echoes (1999) and Secret Window (2004).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Charles Van Enger was born on 29 August 1890 in Port Jervis, New York, USA. He was a cinematographer and assistant director, known for Frisco Sal (1945), Lucky Devils (1941) and The Last of the Mohicans (1920). He was married to Gwendolyn Evans. He died on 4 July 1980 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Coming from a show-business family (his brother Joseph De Grasse was a director and his uncle Sam De Grasse was an actor), De Grasse entered the business as an assistant cameraman while still a high school student, and showed such promise that he was made a full-time cinematographer by age 21. He shot many silent pictures, mostly low-budget action films. When sound films arrived De Grasse went back to being a camera operator - apparently his own idea - but by the mid-'30s he was again a cinematographer, and photographed many of RKO's more prominent films.The House I Live In (1945) - 2007- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Sound Department
Jim Denault is a cinematographer known for his work in feature films and television. He is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the American Society of Cinematographers. He received a BFA in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology.- Cinematographer
- Writer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Brian Capener was born in Ithaca, New York, USA. He is known for Smoke Signals (1998), The Ice Runner (1992) and Nora's Christmas Gift (1989).Smoke Signals (1998) - 2018- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Freddie Young was a British cinematographer. He is best known for his work on David Lean's films Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Ryan's Daughter (1970), all three of which won him Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.
Young was an cinematographer on 130 films, including Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939), 49th Parallel (1941), Ivanhoe (1952), Lust for Life (1956), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Lord Jim (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971).
He was also the first British cinematographer to film in CinemaScope.
Young died from natural causes in 1998 at the age of 96.
In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Young among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - 1991- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Wally Pfister is an American cinematographer and film director, who is best known for his work with Christopher Nolan. He is also known for his work on director F. Gary Gray's The Italian Job (2003) and Bennett Miller's Moneyball (2011).
He made his directorial debut with the film Transcendence (2014), starring Johnny Depp.
His first collaboration with Nolan was on the neo-noir thriller Memento (2000). The success of this collaboration resulted in Pfister taking over as director of photography for Nolan's subsequent films: Insomnia (2002), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), which he partially shot with IMAX cameras, and Inception, which was shot partially in 5-perf 65 mm. He is the only cinematographer that has worked with director Christopher Nolan between Memento and Dark Knight Rises.
Pfister won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Inception (2010).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
David Klein was born in December 1972. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for The Mandalorian (2019), The Book of Boba Fett (2021) and Deadwood: The Movie (2019). He has been married to Marnie Shelton since 24 November 2001.Clerks (1994) - 2019- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Among the foremost technical innovators in his field, a charter member of the American Society of Cinematographers, English-born Charles Rosher had initially aimed for a diplomatic career. Fortunately, he chose a different career option and attended lessons in photography at the London Polytechnic in Regent Street. He must have been a keen student, for he found himself apprenticed to noted portrait photographers David Blount and Howard Farmer, soon afterward becoming assistant to Richard Neville Speaight (1875-1938), the official Royal photographer. Having learned the art of still photography, Rosher departed England for the United States sometime in late 1908, equipped with a Williamson camera.
In 1910, Rosher found his first job in the fledgling film industry through a connection forged with an English compatriot, the pioneer producer David Horsley: as principal cameraman for Horsley's East Coast-based Centaur Film Company (which made Rosher Hollywood's first ever full-time cinematographer). Centaur was renamed Nestor Studios upon its permanent relocation to California in 1911, setting up at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. Essentially all of Rosher's early work consisted of one and two reelers, invariably made for Nestor's chief director, Al Christie. Some were comedies, many were 'quota quickie' westerns, such as The Indian Raiders (1912), for which Nestor imported genuine Indians from New Mexico.
In 1913, Rosher accompanied directors Raoul Walsh and Christy Cabanne on his famous expedition to Mexico to shoot the feature film The Life of General Villa (1914). The rebel leader Pancho Villa had agreed to grant exclusive rights to filming of his battles against the Federales by the Mutual Film Corporation, in exchange for a fee of $25,000 and 20% of all revenues from the picture. There were a number of hazards experienced by Rosher during this adventure, including capture by enemy forces, and at times coercive interference from Villa, who fancied himself as a filmmaker.
Upon his return to the other side of the border, Rosher had a brief spell with Universal (which had absorbed Nestor), followed by two years with the Lasky Feature Play Company (which later became Paramount). He then worked at United Artists from 1919 to 1928, becoming the favourite cinematographer of the company's biggest asset, Mary Pickford, lighting her in such a way that her true age never interfered with the image of the ingénue she persisted in portraying on screen. During this period, Rosher also developed his own unique visual style, which married artistry with technical know-how. He was much acclaimed for the sharpness and clarity of his photography, for the effects he achieved by combining natural and artificial light, photographing people against reflecting surfaces (glass, water), double exposure effects, split screen techniques, and so on. Rosher also patented several inventions, including a system for developing black & white film, ABC Pyro (A=pyro,B=sulfite,C=carbonate).
In 1929 Rosher became co-recipient (with Karl Struss) of the first-ever Oscar for cinematography bestowed by the Academy, for a film made at Fox: Sunrise (1927) - still regarded today as one of the finest examples of 1920's filmmaking. With its many scenes bathed in light or twilight, it has also been likened to a cinematic French impressionism. Rosher himself recalled this as one of the most difficult assignments of his career, particularly in terms of lighting such tricky scenes as the moonlit, fog-bound swamp, necessitating a very mobile camera. "Sunrise", inevitably, ended up winning the top award for 'unique and artistic production'. Two years later, after a falling out with Pickford during filming of Coquette (1929) , Rosher went his own way. He was never out of a job for long, working variously for RKO (1932-33), MGM (1930,1934) and Warner Brothers (1937-41).
Though he had made his reputation with black & white photography, Rosher easily adapted to the medium of colour. He enjoyed a major resurgence in the second half of his career, shooting some of the most sumptuous technicolor musicals (Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Show Boat (1951)) and dramas (The Yearling (1946),Scaramouche (1952)) during his tenure at MGM, which lasted from 1942 to 1954. He won his second Oscar for "Yearling" and became the only ever recipient of a fellowship by the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Rosher retired in 1955, except for occasional lectures and guest appearances at film festivals. He settled down on a 1,600-acre plantation he had acquired at Port Antonio on Jamaica, formerly owned by Errol Flynn. He died in 1974 in Portugal, after a fall, at the respectable age of 88.Sunrise (1927) - 1989- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
László Kovács was born on May 14, 1933 in Cece, Hungary. He is known for his work on Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Ghostbusters (1984) and Copycat (1995). He won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 2002. He was married to Audrey. He died on July 22, 2007 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Gabriel Figueroa was born on 24 April 1907 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He was a cinematographer, known for The Pearl (1947), The Young and the Damned (1950) and Maria Candelaria (1944). He died on 27 April 1997 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.The Pearl (1947) - 2002- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Adam Greenberg was born on 11 April 1937 in Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland. He is a cinematographer, known for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Ghost (1990) and The Terminator (1984).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Donald E. Thorin was born on 12 October 1934 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He was a cinematographer and assistant director, known for Thief (1981), Tango & Cash (1989) and Lock Up (1989). He died on 9 February 2016 in Tucson, Arizona, USA.Purple Rain (1984) - 2019- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler was adjudged one of the ten most influential cinematographers in movie history, according to an International Cinematographers Guild survey of its membership. He won his Oscars in both black & white and color, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976) (1976). He also shot part of Days of Heaven (1978) (1978), for which credited director of photography Nestor Almendros -- won a Best Cinematography Oscar that Wexler initially felt should have been jointly shared by both. Later he admitted he was just finishing the work of Almendros and when Bert Schneider offer him more credit in the Criterion Dvd release of the film, he turned down the offer. In 1993, Wexler was awarded a Lifetime Achivement award by the cinematographer's guild, the American Society of Cinematographers. He received five Oscar nominations for his cinematography, in total, plus one Emmy Award in a career that has spanned six decades.
In addition to his masterful cinematography, Wexler directed the seminal late Sixties film Medium Cool (1969) and has directed and/or shot many documentaries that display his progressive political views. He was the subject of a 2004 documentary shot by his son Mark Wexler, Tell Them Who You Are (2004).America America (1963) - 2001
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) - 2013
In the Heat of the Night (1967) - 2002
Medium Cool (1969) - 2003
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) - 1993
Matewan (1987) - 2023- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
John Alcott, the Oscar-winning cinematographer best known for his collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, was born in 1931, in Isleworth, England, the son of movie executive Arthur Alcott, who would become the production controller at Gainsborough Studios during the 1940s.
Alcott began his film career as a clapper boy, the lowest member of a camera crew. By the early 1960s he had worked his way up to focus puller, the #3 position on a camera crew after the lighting cameraman and camera operator. As a focus puller Alcott was responsible for measuring the distances between the camera and the subject being shot, which is critical during traveling shots, and more vitally, he was tasked with adjusting the lens when the camera is following a subject.
By the mid-'60s Alcott was a member of the camera team of master cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, working on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When Unsworth had to leave the project during its two-year-long shoot to meet other commitments, Alcott was elevated to lighting cameraman by Kubrick. Thus began a collaboration that would reach its zenith a decade later with Barry Lyndon (1975). His association with Kubrick propelled him to the top of his craft, in terms of both style and in pushing the technical aspects of the discipline.
Alcott preferred lighting that appeared natural and did not draw attention to itself. His ideas meshed perfectly with those of Kubrick, and the two developed their ideas about "natural" lighting in two landmark films, A Clockwork Orange (1971) and "Barry Lyndon", which incorporated scenes shot entirely by candlelight. The idea of using candlelight solely for illumination was discussed by Alcott and Kubrick after the wrap of "2001" for Kubrick's planned film about the life of Napoleon, but there wasn't a fast-enough lens in existence then.
After a search, Kubrick located three unique 50mm f/0.7 still-camera camera lenses designed by the Zeiss Corporation for use by NASA in its Apollo moon-landing program in order to shoot still pictures in the low light levels of outer space. The lens was 2 f stops faster than the fastest movie camera lens made at the time.
Kubrick tasked Cinema Products Corp. to adapt a standard 35mm non-reflexed Mitchell BNC movie camera so that the camera could accept the lens. The camera was outfitted with a side viewfinder from one of the old Technicolor three-strip cameras that used mirrors rather than prisms (like a modern camera) to show what it "sees", the mirrors providing a much brighter image than did a prism-based single-lens reflex system, which could not obtain enough light to register an image. There was no real problem with parallax, as the viewfinder was mounted close to the lens.
Cinema Products also created two special lenses by mating a 70mm projection lens with the remaining 0.7 Zeiss 50mm lenses. This battery of three lenses allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot the indoor scenes using nothing but candlelight. It was a formidable task, as the lenses could not be focused by eye. Metal shields also had to be installed above the sets, which were filmed in actual castles and manor houses in Ireland and England, to keep the heat and smoke from the candles from damaging the ceilings. Fortitously, the shields also reflected the candlelight back into the scene (this approach was later used successfully by lighting cameraman Alwin H. Küchler on the western The Claim (2000), which shot its saloon interiors in very low light). The candles had to be constantly replaced to keep continuity during the scenes, and shooting was hampered by the fact that many of the manor houses were open to the public and the crew had to wait until the intervals between tours to film a scene.
Alcott told "American Cinematographer" in a December 1975 interview that the ultra-fast lens had no depth of field at all. This necessitated the scaling of the lens by doing hand tests. Alcott's focus puller, Douglas Milsome (who would succeed him as Kubrick's cinematographer), used a closed-circuit video camera at a 90-degree angle to the film camera to keep track of the distances to maintain focus. A grid was placed over the TV screen and, by taping the various actors' positions in the set, the distances could be transferred to the TV grid to allow the actors a limited scope of movement during the scene, while keeping in focus.
Alcott won an Academy Award for his work on "Barry Lyndon", which is considered one of the most visually beautiful movies ever made. (Three of Alcott's movies were ranked in the top 20 of "Best Shot" movies in the period after 1950-97 by the American Society of Cinematographers: "2001" at #3, "Barry Lyndon" at #16, and "A Clockwork Orange", for which he won the British Academy Award, at #19.) Alcott realized Kubrick's vision by evoking the paintings of Corot, Gainsborough, and Watteau, creating gorgeous tableaux. It was the aesthetic opposite of the cubism evoked by "A Clockwork Orange",
While shooting what would turn out to be his last film for Kubrick, The Shining (1980), Alcott lit the hotel sets with "practicals" (sources of lighting that are visible on screen as part of the set, such as lighting fixtures). As on "Barry Lyndon", Alcott supplemented the lighting with illumination coming into the set from outside the windows, though the "windows" on "The Shining" were part of a set. The high temperatures (110 degrees Fahrenheit) caused by the 700,000 watts of illumination outside the set's "windows" Alcott used to create the high white effect favored by Kubrick caused the set to burn down.
Alcott, who shot films and TV commercials for other directors in the UK, moved to the US in 1981 in order to obtain more steady work than was possible in the ailing British film industry. His non-Kubrick projects as a cinematographer included three films with director Stuart Cooper and two with Roger Spottiswoode. Alcott could not shoot Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), which commenced shooting in 1985 and -- like any Kubrick shoot -- would involved a substantial commitment of time, as Alcott was committed to other projects (Kubrick hired Douglas Milsome, who had been Alcott's focus puller on "Barry Lyndon" and "The Shining", to shoot "Jacket"). His non-Kubrick oeuvre was eccentric, and included the Canadian slasher film My Bloody Valentine (1981), but he was able to bring his outstanding visual quality to such movies as Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), The Beastmaster (1982), Under Fire (1983) and Hugh Hudson's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984).
Alcott suffered a massive heart attack and died on July 28, 1986, in Cannes, France. At the time of his death he was considered one of the film industry's great artist-technicians, someone who through his ability to push back the boundaries of what was technically possible, linked technology to aesthetic needs and contributed to the development of cinema as an art form. His last film, No Way Out (1987), was dedicated to his memory. The British Society of Cinematographers named one of its awards the "BSC John Alcott ARRI Award" in his honor to commemorate his role as a lighting cameraman in the development of film as an art form.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Beginning his Hollywood career in 1914 - after several years experience as a cameraman in France, starting with Zigomar, roi des voleurs (1911) - French-born Lucien Andriot was one of the most prolific of American cinematographers. A competent craftsman, he photographed some top-quality features, but most of his career was spent on "B" pictures and lower-level "A" films. He turned to television in the 1950s and stayed there until his retirement in 1966.- Cinematographer
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Renowned cinematographer Joseph August began his film career not as a cameraman but as a wrangler--he was born and raised in Colorado--at Inceville, the studio begun by pioneering producer/director Thomas H. Ince. He soon switched careers, becoming an assistant to cinematographer Ray C. Smallwood. He shot his first film, Lure of the Violin (1913), in 1912. His reputation became such that only three years later he was picked as "official" cameraman for western star William S. Hart, shooting more than 40 of Hart's westerns. When Hart retired August went to Fox, where he worked with director John Ford, who appreciated August's expertise at outdoor photography. August was also known for his affinity for and facility with low-key lighting, a technique he initially developed out of necessity, since the types of lighting units that could light up a set were expensive, extremely hot and not particularly efficient when August first started out as a cameraman.
He and Ford developed both a professional and personal relationship, and during World War II August joined Ford in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the modern-day CIA. Both Ford and August were wounded while shooting combat for the documentary The Battle of Midway (1942).
In addition to his other accomplishments, August was also a founding member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).The Italian (1915) - 1991
Civilization (1915) - 1991
Hell's Hinges (1916) - 1999
Twentieth Century (1934) - 1994
The Informer (1935) - 2011
Gunga Din (1939) - 2018
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) - 1999
Melody Ranch (1940) - 2002- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
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Lucien Ballard, the cinematographer best known for his collaboration with director Sam Peckinpah on such films as The Wild Bunch (1969), was born in Miami, Oklahoma. Ballard became a wanderer after dropping out of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oklahoma, journeying to China in search of opportunity. When he returned to the United States after not finding any, Ballard gained employment in the lumber business, working in a mill sawing trees and surveying land.
Near the end of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties, Ballard visited a woman friend who worked as a script clerk at Paramount, and that was the connection that brought him into show business. He was hired by Paramount as a manual laborer loading trucks and worked his way onto a camera crew, starting as a camera assistant. He eventually served a five year apprenticeship, during which he moved his way up the hierarchy to camera operator, the member of the camera crew second-in-seniority to the cinematographer (or lighting cameraman, also known as the director of photography) that actually operates the camera, working with directors Victor Milner, Charles Rosher, and others. He also became experienced as as a film editor at Paramount. Ballard eventually was assigned to the cinematography unit assigned to director Josef von Sternberg, who used him as a camera operator and later as a lighting cameraman. (It was on the set of Von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) that Ballard first worked with Henry Hathaway, then an assistant director but who later, as a director, used Ballard extensively.)
Von Sternberg, who oversaw and constructed the visuals on his early films, was credited as cinematographer for The Devil Is a Woman (1935). Though Ballard did not receive credit as a lighting cameraman on the film, this is usually credited (despite the non-credit) as his first film as a director of photographer (a more honored title for a lighting cameraman; just as "Written By" is a privilege for screenwriters to be credited with, so is "Director of Photography" for the cinematographer). Indeed, Ballard and Von Sternberg jointly were cited by the 1935 Venice Film Festival award for "Best Cinematography" for The Devil Is a Woman (1935), though officially, Ballard received his first credit for cinematography on B.P. Schulberg's production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1935), which also was directed by Von Sternberg.
Ballard and Von Sternbereg collaborated once more on the musical The King Steps Out (1936), but parted ways after falling out, likely over control of the visuals. Ballard moved over to Columbia in 1935, where he worked as a director of photography for five years, primely for the B-movie unit on their less-prestigious low-budgeted "B-pictures" and on two-reel shorts. After quitting Columbia in 1940, he went to work for Howard Hughes on the eccentric multi-millionaire's attempted-smut fest, The Outlaw (1943). Hughes wanted to show off the twin assets of Jane Russell, which -- for his taste -- required innovative camera angles of her cleavage, one of the then-wonders of the then (natural) world. Ballard shot test scenes for the flick and worked as an assistant on the first-unit crew of the great cinematographer Gregg Toland and as the lighting cameraman on the second unit. Though the film was shot in 1940 and 1941, due to Hughes' perfectionism and censorship troubles, the film, though completed and screened in 1943, was be distributed until after World War II, in 1946.
After Hughes, Ballard shot two pictures for R.K.O., and then moved on to 20th Century Fox for the war period (1941-45). It was at Fox, working on A-pictures, that Ballard first established his reputation, as a master of motion pictures shot on studio sets. On the set of the 1944 movie The Lodger (1944), Ballard met actress Merle Oberon, whom he married in 1945. After Oberon sustained facial scarring after a near-fatal automobile accident, Ballard invented a key light to be mounted by the side of the camera. The light, nicknamed the "Obie" after his wife, directed light onto the subject's face to wash out blemishes and wrinkles so they would not be caught on film. Ballard and Oberon divorced in 1949.
After the war, Ballard spent two years at Universal and another two years at R.K.O. (working again for Hughes, who now owned the studio), before returning to 20th Century Fox for a six-year stint. Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck had committed the studio to turning out pictures shot in the widescreen CinemaScope process and in Technicolor. The widescreen anamorphic process based on the the "hypergonar" lens called "Anamorphoscope" that 20th Century-Fox bought and redubbed "CinemaScope" had actually been invented by the Frenchman 'Henri Chrétien' in the late 1920s.
It was at Fox that Ballard gained his renowned experience in shooting both widescreen and color, particularly with his Westerns, establishing his reputation as a first-rate D.P. anew in these "new" media. His mastery of the wide-screen was fully evident when he shot +The Wild Bunch), a film in which he completely used the widescreen frame. (By the mid-1970s, due to the insistence of television, most widescreen films were shot by bunching the main action in a center frame approximating the Academy aperture of 4:3, thus obviating the expense of creating "pan and scan" movies for TV-broadcast. This eventually led to faux widescreen, when the industry jettisoned the entire use of the frame, which was squeezed onto the negative, and merely masked a camera, producing a simulation of widescreen without the need for squeezing that did not use the full frame. Thus, a film could be shown theatrically by masking a screen at the theater, and the unmasked film could be shown on TV in the 4:3 aspect. However, men like Ballard and Freddie Young were masters of the "true" widescreen.)
His old friend Henry Hathaway, now a major director, used Ballard extensively in the early 1950s. They collaborated on Diplomatic Courier (1952), O. Henry's Full House (1952), and Prince Valiant (1954) in that decade, though by 1956, Ballard was sufficiently established to go freelance. This meant their next collaborations did not come until the 1960s: The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Nevada Smith (1966), and True Grit (1969). Ballard was also able to establish a long-time collaboration -- and friendship -- with director Budd Boetticher, shooting the director's The Magnificent Matador (1955), The Killer Is Loose (1956) (1956), the pilot episode for the television show Maverick (1957), and the Randolph Scott Buchanan Rides Alone (1958). In 1959, he shot The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), Boetticher's last film before the quixotic director pursued his monumental cinema biography of the Mexican matador Carlos Arruza, a decade-long labor of love. Boetticher later told of how when the "Legs Diamond" producer saw the flat look Ballard had created for the film, after discussions with Boetticher, to recreate an authentic look and feel of the 1920s by mimicking the cinematography of that era, the producer criticized Ballard's footage. Not understanding what they were after, he complained to Boetticher, "I thought you said Ballard was a good cameraman!"
In addition to much of the bull-fighting footage contained in the docudrama Arruza (1972), Ballard shot Boetticher's last feature film, A Time for Dying (1969). As a favor to his friend, Ballard also shot Boetticher's documentary about his horse farm, My Kingdom for... (1995), after having retired seven years before.
One collaboration that didn't stick was with Stanley Kubrick, who was 20 years Ballard's junior, though their joint effort produced a memorable look and atmosphere for Kubricks's breakthrough work, the seminal crime drama The Killing (1956). (This film was the true inspiration for the time-shifts favored by '90s cinema wunderkind 'Quentin Tarrantino' .) The experienced and respected Ballard returned to his Black + Whites roots as the cinematographer on The Killing (1956), but Kubrick always experienced friction with his directors of photography as he, a very talented photographer, essentially considered himself his own D.P.
The relationship that Ballard is most famous for was with Sam Peckinpah. They first worked together on the 'Brian Keith' TV series _The Westerner (1960)_ , which had been created by Peckinpah but only lasted half-a-season, and then on the classic 'Randolph Scott' -Joel McCrea Western Ride the High Country (1962). However, it was their next collaboration, The Wild Bunch (1969), that elevated Peckinpah into the pantheon of great directors and made Ballard well-known outside the small circle of professional cinematographers and cult cineastes. Ballard also shot The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), The Getaway (1972), and Junior Bonner (1972) for Peckinpah, becoming a principle collaborator with the emotionally troubled and producer-plagued director during the period of his greatness.
Surprisingly, though he worked as director of photography on almost 130 films during his career as a lighting cameraman from 1935 to 1978, Lucien Ballard was nominated just once for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, in 1964 for for his Black + White work on The Caretakers (1963). The oversight is inexplicable, particularly as there were two awards for cinematography (B+W and color) during the bulk of his career. In 1970, he was honored by the National Society of Film Critics with its "Best Cinematography" for his great widescreen work on Peckinpah's epic masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969), which somehow failed to generate an Oscar nomination. (The American Society of Cinematographers was a tightly controlled clan that provided the bulk of the voters for the Oscar nominations. The Oscar voters also inexplicably blackballed the great Gordon Willis during his career.)
Lucien Ballard died near his Rancho Mirage, California, home in a car accident on October 1, 1988. He was 80 years old.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Joseph Biroc was destined to become one of the most versatile cinematographers in Hollywood, working on films of almost every genre. He started as a lab assistant in 1918, based at Paragon Studio, located in America's first 'film capital', Ft.Lee, New Jersey. From there, he moved on to the Paramount facility in Long Island as a camera assistant, and, by 1927, found himself in Hollywood. Under contract to RKO, he took on a number of jobs as second cameraman, frequently uncredited. One of his first A-grade features was the western Cimarron (1931), assisting Edward Cronjager. Serving his apprenticeship under George J. Folsey, Biroc became a fully-fledged lighting cameraman in 1940, but World War II put his career on hold.
During the war years, Biroc advanced to the rank of captain with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was afforded the unique distinction of being the first American cameraman to film the liberation of Paris in 1944. After the war, he worked with Joseph Walker as co-director of photography on the perennial Christmas favourite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). During the 1950's, Biroc tackled a variety of subjects, ranging from the tough film noir Cry Danger (1951) to the sci-fi cult classic Red Planet Mars (1952). He also filmed the first ever movie shot in 3-D, Bwana Devil (1952). A turning point in his career came when he met the idiosyncratic director Robert Aldrich, while shooting an episode of the TV series China Smith (1952). This led to a productive collaboration, encompassing sixteen motion pictures. The most memorable of these include the brilliantly atmospheric thriller Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), (Biroc used candles, shadows and silhouettes to effectively convey mystery and impending danger); and the sun-drenched all-star character study, The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
Another fruitful collaboration was with producer Irwin Allen, who hired Biroc to head the Action Unit (with Fred J. Koenekamp leading the First Unit) for the filming of his 14 million dollar disaster epic, The Towering Inferno (1974), undertaken on eight of 20th Century Fox's biggest sound stages. In charge of shooting the most dramatic (and dangerous) scenes , Biroc worked with legendary special effects men A.D. Flowers and L.B. Abbott (who was persuaded to come out of retirement for this project). Biroc employed eight cameras in tandem, covering as many angles and positions as possible, zoom lenses used to conveying a sense of movement where physical space was restrictive. Timing was also of critical importance: the LA Fire Department overseeing the security aspects of the propane-fed pyrotechnics, limited periods where the fire was at its most intense to no more than 20 to 30 seconds. Scenes had to be shot within this limited time frame. As destroyed sets were rebuilt or repaired, there were delays with continuity, sometimes over several weeks. As Biroc later remarked "it wasn't only a question of everyone and everything having to be in the right place after that long an interval of time, it was also a matter of our being able to pick up on the look and mood created by Fred's unit" (American Cinematographer, Feb. 1975). For his work on 'Towering Inferno', Biroc became - deservedly- co-recipient (with Koenekamp) of the 1974 Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
For the remainder of the decade, Biroc did some of his best work for the small screen. He imbued a sense of realism (and was accordingly nominated for an Emmy) to one of the best political mini-series ever filmed, the gripping Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), a fictionalisation of Watergate and the Nixon administration. In stark thematic contrast, he worked with Mel Brooks on the seminal comedy western Blazing Saddles (1974), and with Jim Abrahams and David Zucker on the equally hilarious airborne farce Airplane! (1980). With an impressive 159 credits as cinematographer to his name, Biroc retired in 1986 and was two years later awarded the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award.- Cinematographer
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G.W. Bitzer was born on 21 April 1872 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, USA. He was a cinematographer and director, known for The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919) and Logging in Maine (1906). He was married to Ethel Boddy. He died on 29 April 1944 in Hollywood, California, USA.
Rip Van Winkle (1896) - 1995
President McKinley Inauguration Footage (1901) - 2000
Westinghouse Works (1904) - 1998
New York Subway (1905) - 2017
Lady Helen's Escapade (1909) - 2004
A Corner in Wheat (1909) - 1994
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) - 2016
The Birth of a Nation (1915) - 1992
Intolerance (1916) - 1989
Broken Blossoms (1919) - 1996- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
American cinematographer, originally from Germany. At fourteen, Bode came to the United States, where he was schooled at the University of Vermont. An avid photographer, he taught combat photography and made training films while serving with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Following his military service, he made a brief foray into acting in the New York theatre, then studied directing as a graduate student at the Yale Drama School. He began landing commercial cinematography jobs in the early Seventies, graduating to independent features in 1974. A second-unit job shooting the Philadelphia Museum of Art-steps sequence in _Rocky (1976)_ led to his first studio feature, Saturday Night Fever (1977). Thereafter he was in great demand for A-features. He shot several films for director Jonathan Kaplan. He also filmed several television adaptations of Broadway plays, winning an Emmy nomination for Annie (1999). He taught cinematography at the Los Angeles Film School. Though Bode was a non-smoker, he contracted lung cancer and died at 59 in 2001.- Cinematographer
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Russell Carpenter was born on 9 December 1950 in Van Nuys, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and producer, known for Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Titanic (1997) and Ant-Man (2015).Titanic (1997) - 2017- Cinematographer
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- Producer
William H. Clothier was born on 21 February 1903 in Decatur, Illinois, USA. He was a cinematographer and producer, known for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Alamo (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). He was married to Carmen Clothier. He died on 7 January 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
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Stanley Cortez was born Samuel Krantz in New York City, New York, the son of Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses/Morris Krantz, Austrian Jewish immigrants. His famous actor brother, born Jacob Krantz, changed his name to Ricardo Cortez in order to acquire a more suitably romantic Hollywood image. Stanley changed his name accordingly. After studies at New York University he embarked on a photographic career, first as assistant to noted portrait photographers Streichan and Bachrach (he designed many of their lavish background sets), then as camera assistant for Pathé Revue and for various Manhattan-based film companies. Grabbing the chance to join Gloria Swanson Productions, Stanley then spent a lengthy apprenticeship in the 1920s and early 1930s learning the intricacies of his craft from such established Hollywood cinematographers as Lee Garmes and Hal Mohr. After moving from studio to studio, either as a camera assistant or shooting screen tests, he was signed to a seven-year contract by Universal in 1936, albeit consigned to its "B" unit. His first film as full director of photography was Four Days Wonder (1936). During World War II, he was assigned to the Army Pictorial Service of the Signals Corps.
Much of his subsequent career was spent on fairly routine and undistinguished second features and it was not until he started working for charismatic filmmakers like Orson Welles and David O. Selznick that he was able to fully develop some of his experimental techniques. One of his low-budget outings, a gothic old-dark-house horror/comedy entitled The Black Cat (1941), rather impressed the genial Mr. Welles who promptly hired him for The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). This was the first of two Cortez films generally regarded as visual masterpieces, with beautiful lighting effects, clever angles and lingering close-ups. Of particular note are the staircase scene and the famous long shot -- via hand-held camera -- of the abandoned mansion. Despite critical plaudits, "Ambersons" was a financial disaster for RKO (it cost $1,1 million and lost $624,000 at the box office) and Cortez was partly blamed for costly delays and extravagant scenes, some 40-50 minutes of which were cut by direct orders from studio boss George Schaefer without consulting either Welles or Cortez. The latter ended up being indirectly censured by receiving lesser assignments. What remained of "Ambersons" has become more appreciated as a sublime visual experience with the passing of time.
The second outstanding Cortez contribution was the chillingly dark, haunting thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955)--a brilliant allegory of good versus evil masterminded by Charles Laughton in his sole directorial effort. Cortez's lighting and use of irises are reminiscent of German expressionist cinema, or, at least, the work of Karl Struss and Charles Rosher on Sunrise (1927). Among many indelible images are the flowing hair of drowned Shelley Winters in the underwater current and the lights flickering across the water in what is an almost surreal nightly landscape.
A third Cortez effort deserving of mention is the superior psychological drama The Three Faces of Eve (1957), his differential lighting for the face of schizophrenic Eve White (Joanne Woodward) effectively contrasting the multiple personalities within her psyche. Sadly, by the end of the decade Cortez's career went into a decline. It continued that way through the 1960s, the quality of his assignments fluctuating wildly between the occasional "A" picture (The Bridge at Remagen (1969)) and Z-grade turkeys like The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - 1991
Let There Be Light (1946) - 2010
The Night of the Hunter (1955) - 1992
Shock Corridor (1963) - 1996- Cinematographer
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- Actor
Jordan Cronenweth was born on 20 February 1935 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Blade Runner (1982), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Altered States (1980). He was married to Carolyn June Ervin. He died on 29 November 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Edward Cronjager was born on 21 March 1904 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Heaven Can Wait (1943), Home in Indiana (1944) and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953). He was married to Yvette Bogdadly Bentley, Betty Douglas, Kay Sutton and Muriel Finley. He died on 15 June 1960 in Hollywood, California, USA.The Gang's All Here (1943) - 2014- Cinematographer
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Floyd Delafield Crosby was born in 1899 to Fredrick Van Schoonhoven Crosby (1860-1920) and Julia Floyd Delafield (1874-1952). Floyd had one sibling, Katherine Van Rensselaer (Gregory). Floyd married Aliph Van Cortland Whitehead in 1940 and they had two children, Floyd Delafield Crosby (Ethan) in 1936 and David Crosby in 1940. Floyd and Aliph were divorced in 1960 and Floyd married Betty Cormack the same year. During World War II Crosby shot training films for pilots learning air routes and landing patterns all over the world (these films are vary difficult to find today and do not carry credits). Crosby left the military as a major in 1946. He enjoyed working on Hollywood "B" movies and shot many of them in the 1950s and 1960s, often for director Roger Corman. In the late 1960s he retired to live with his wife Betty in Ojai, CA. He passed away in 1986. More information about Floyd and his relationship with his family is available in his son David's autobiography "Long Time Gone".Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) - 1994
The River (1938) - 1990
High Noon (1952) - 1989
House of Usher (1960) - 2005- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Multiple award-winning cinematographer Dean Cundey, ASC, CSC who was nominated for an Oscar for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and took home the BAFTA for the same film, has a career spanning decades with awards and nominations including a Primetime Emmy (2023 "The Mandalorian") a Daytime Emmy (2001 "The Face: Jesus in Art"), a Chicago Film Critics Association award ("Apollo 13"), to American Society of Cinematographers awards ("Apollo 13," "Hook"). His prolific career also includes a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC and a President's Award from the SOC, and he's still not done shooting. Born in Alhambra, California, Cundey spent his childhood building miniature sets and reading "American Cinematographer." Following graduation from UCLA film school, where he was taught by James Wong Howe, ASC, Cundey's first job on set was as a makeup artist on Roger Corman's "Gas!" or "It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It." Cundey's first assignment as a director of photography was on the revenge film "The No Mercy Man." He continued with other horror and exploitation movies, then began a collaboration with director John Carpenter on five films for which he received accolades: "Halloween," "The Fog," "Escape from New York," "The Thing" and "Big Trouble in Little China." Cundey transitioned into a collaboration with Robert Zemeckis on impressive features such as "Romancing the Stone," all three "Back to the Future" films, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Death Becomes Her." Not content to settle for that, he also dabbled in directing with his debut on "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves" and was also the second-unit director on "Deep Rising" and "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties." .Halloween (1978) - 2006
Back to the Future (1985) - 2007
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) - 2016
Jurassic Park (1993) - 2018
Apollo 13 (1995) - 2023- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Writer
Allen Daviau was born on 14 June 1942 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was a cinematographer and writer, known for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Empire of the Sun (1987) and Bugsy (1991). He died on 15 April 2020 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.- Cinematographer
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- Writer
Educated at the University of Arkansas, Clyde De Vinna entered the film business almost at its beginnings, and became a cinematographer in 1915. He was behind the camera on dozens of films for many different studios, but did much work for independent producer Thomas H. Ince and MGM. De Vinna didn't care for studio-shot pictures, and preferred films that were to be shot on location, where he did much of his best work.Civilization (1915) - 1999
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) - 1997
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) - 2003- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Roger Deakins is an English cinematographer best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve.
He is a member of both the American and British Society of Cinematographers.
Deakins' first feature film in America as cinematographer was Mountains of the Moon (1990). He began his collaboration with the Coen brothers in 1991 on the film Barton Fink. He received his first major award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding achievement in cinematography for the internationally praised major motion picture The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
He is also known for his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Skyfall (2012), Sicario (2015), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
Deakins also worked as one of the visual consultants for Pixar's animated feature WALL-E.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best cinematographer for his work in Blade Runner 2049.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Tonino Delli Colli was born on 20 November 1922 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for The Name of the Rose (1986), Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Bitter Moon (1992). He was married to Alexandra Delli Colli. He died on 16 August 2005 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Peter Deming was born in Beirut, Lebanon. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for Mulholland Drive (2001), The Menu (2022) and The Continental (2023).House Party (1990) - 2022- Cinematographer
- Director
- Producer
Born in France to British parents, William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson stayed in that country until age 19, when he, his mother and sisters (their father had died sometime before) returned to Great Britain. Once there, Dickson--in an early indication of his lifelong fascination with science and mechanics--began a correspondence with Thomas A. Edison in the US, asking for employment, but was turned down. Eventually Dickson's family moved to the US, and several years afterward Dickson actually did land a job with Edison, and soon proved to be a trusted and valuable associate. He worked closely with Edison on the development of both the phonograph and, closer to Dickson's heart, the motion picture (it was Dickson who eventually decided that motion picture film should be 35mm wide; he also developed the emulsion process used in the film).
In 1889, while Edison was on a trip to Europe, Dickson set up a building in which to conduct his "photographic experiments", the forerunner of the first motion picture studio. In 1890 he and his chief mechanical assistant, Eugène Lauste, showed the results of their experiments, produced on a cylindrical system called the Kinetoscope: a short film called Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890), featuring one of his assistants. Improvements on this system continued, and in 1891 patents were filed on an improved camera called the Kinetograph. Edison's plans to exhibit the new system at the Chicago World Exposition necessitated not only the production of many new machines but also films that could be shown on them, and the result was the building of a film studio at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, NJ, which was nicknamed "The Black Maria" because it was constructed of wood covered with tar-paper, resembling the police wagons of that era which were known by that nickname.
However, even with Dickson's perfecting of a new version of the Kinetograph camera, not enough films were completed to be shown at Edison's planned exhibition. Dickson, however, did manage to persuade many stage and vaudeville stars to appear in films shot at the West Orange studio, and in the following years the studio was a beehive of activity, with some of the biggest names of the era making short films there. However, friction between Dickson and an executive appointed to oversee Edison's businesses soon broke into open conflict, resulting in Dickson's angrily leaving Edison's employ in 1895. He then joined forces with two businessmen in the development of a way to exhibit films differently than Edison's peepshow-style Kinetoscope. The system eventually developed into what was called the Mutoscope, and the camera that was developed to take pictures for the Mutoscope was called the Biograph. This in turn developed into a filming and projection system that retained the Biograph name.
In 1896 Dickson and three partners began the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. (often referred to as just "Biograph", and generally considered to be the first major American motion picture studio) to produce and distribute films. Dickson produced and directed many of Biograph's early films, but by the turn of the century he had taken over management of the company's European branch, headquartered in England. He died there in 1935.Newark Athlete (1891) - 2010- Cinematographer
- Special Effects
- Camera and Electrical Department
Edwin B. DuPar was born on 24 November 1885 in Plum Creek, Nebraska, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Giant (1956), The Roaring Twenties (1939) and All Through the Night (1942). He died on 4 June 1961 in Hollywood, California, USA.Clash of the Wolves (1925) - 2004- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Special Effects
Frederick Elmes was born on 4 November 1946 in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, USA. He is a cinematographer, known for The Dead Don't Die (2019), The Night Of (2016) and Paterson (2016).Eraserhead (1977) - 2004- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
American cinematographer who spent the bulk of his career at Paramount (1923-1959). After two years apprenticed in the studio lab, Fapp first worked the movie camera as an assistant in 1925. By 1941, he had graduated to full director of photography at the behest of cinematographer, turned director, Ted Tetzlaff. Fapp joined the American Society of Cinematographers that same year. Though he was generally confined to shooting B-grade material, he was allowed to shine whenever bigger budgeted productions came his way. He did arguably his best work for the director Mitchell Leisen, who, as a former art director and costume designer, had a famously keen eye for visual style.
Fapp excelled shooting Leisen's sumptuous-looking period romance Kitty (1945) (a true example of style trumping content). He was equally effective on another Leisen film, lensing Olivia de Havilland (as she aged in the course of three decades) in the superior tearjerker To Each His Own (1946). Other efforts in contrasting style: the noirish crime flic The Big Clock (1948) in stark, austere black & white; the vivid Technicolor frontier adventure The Far Horizons (1955), its stunning scenery expertly captured in Vista Vision (directed by another former cinematographer, Rudolph Maté); the frantic Billy Wilder farce One, Two, Three (1961); and West Side Story (1961), which finally won Fapp an Oscar (and a Golden Laurel Award) for Best Color Cinematography. After leaving Paramount in 1959, Fapp free-lanced for another decade and retired in 1969.West Side Story (1961) - 1997- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Pioneer cinematographer George Folsey started out in 1914 as an errand boy with the Lasky Feature Play Company in New York. His introduction to camerawork came, when he was asked by cinematographer H. Lyman Broening to assist with post-production (tracking dissolve and fades for intercutting). By the time he was 21, he had worked his way up the ladder to lighting cameraman. During the 1920's, Folsey established a reputation for fluidity of camera movement and for his use of subtle lighting, rather than the harsher contrasts prevalent in silent pictures up to that time. This proved somewhat more flattering to the stars. Indeed, Alice Brady, leading lady in his first motion picture as fully-fledged cinematographer, His Bridal Night (1919), was so impressed by his work that she wished him to shoot all of her future films.
After a sojourn at Associated First National, Folsey joined Paramount under contract to shoot the Rouben Mamoulian melodrama Applause (1929) and followed this with the first outings of the Marx Brothers: The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). He stayed until 1932 and the following year signed with MGM, remaining there until 1959. His collaboration with the director Vincente Minnelli was particularly fruitful and culminated in the lavish Technicolour musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Many of his films in the 40's and 50's stand out for their striking, lush colours, as, for example, the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956), which owes much of its cult status to the cinematographer. Folsey was a favorite of director Frank Borzage and of star actress Joan Crawford.
George Folsey was nominated for thirteen Oscars, without ever winning a single one. Nonetheless, he did pick up the prestigious 'George Eastman Medal of Honour' in 1957. He was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Cinematographers in March 1988.Applause (1929) - 2006
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) - 1994
Adam's Rib (1949) - 1992
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) - 2004
Forbidden Planet (1956) - 2013- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Director
William A. Fraker was born on 29 September 1923 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Bullitt (1968), WarGames (1983) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He was married to Denise Fraker. He died on 31 May 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Ellsworth Fredericks was born on 2 June 1904 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Sayonara (1957) and Seven Days in May (1964). He died on 16 August 1993 in San Marcos, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Karl Freund, an innovative director of photography responsible for development of the three-camera system used to shoot television situation comedies, was born on January 16, 1890, in the Bohemian city of Koeniginhof, then part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire (now known as Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic). Freund went to work at the age of 15 as a movie projectionist, and by the age of 17, he was a camera operator shooting shot subjects and newsreels. Subsequently, he was employed at Germany's famous UFA Studios during the 1920s, when the German cinema was the most innovative in the world.
At UFA, Freund worked as a cameraman for such illustrious directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. For Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh), screenwriter Carl Mayer worked closely with Freund to develop a scenario that would employ the moving camera that became a hallmark of Weimar German cinema. One of the most beautiful and critically acclaimed silent films, The Last Laugh (1924) is considered the perfect silent by some critics as the images do most of the storytelling, allowing for a minimal amount of inter-titles. The collaborative genius of Murnau, Mayer, and Freund meant that the images communicated the integral part of the narrative, visualizing and elucidating the protagonist's psyche. Freund filmed a drunk scene with the camera secured on his chest, with a battery pack on his back for balance, enabling him to stumble about and produce vertiginous shots suggesting intoxication.
Director Ewald André Dupont gave credit for the innovative camera work on his masterpiece Variety (1925) (aka Variety) to Freund, praising his ingenuity in an article published in The New York Times. Freund was one of the cameramen and the co-writer (with Carl Mayer and director Walter Ruttmann) on Berlin: Symphony of Metropolis (1927) (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City), an artistic documentary that used a hidden camera to capture the people of the city going about their daily lives. Always technically innovative, Freund developed a high-speed film stock to aid his shooting in low-light situations. This film also is hailed as a classic. Other classic German films that Freund shot were The Golem (1920) (aka The Golem) and Lang's Metropolis (1927).
Now possessing an international reputation, Freund emigrated to the U.S. in 1929, where he was employed by the Technicolor Co. to help perfect its color process. Subsequently, he was hired as a cinematographer and director by Universal Studios, where he cut his teeth, uncredited, as a cinematographer on the great anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Universal's first Oscar winner as Best Picture.
Universal's bread and butter in the early 1930s were its horror films, and Freund was involved in the production of several classics. Among his Universal assignments, Freund shot Dracula (1931) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), and directed The Mummy (1932). The Mummy (1932) was Freund's first directorial effort, and co-star Zita Johann, who disliked Freund, claimed he was incompetent, which is unfair, seeing as how the film is now considered a classic of its genre. The film uses the undead sorcerer Imhotep's pool with which he can impose his will over the living by spreading some tana leaves on the water, as a visual metaphor for the subconscious. The film is arresting visually due to Freund's cinematic eye that created a sense of "otherness." The film is infused with a dream-like state that seems rooted in the subconscious mind. Freund's other directorial efforts at Universal proved less satisfying.
Moving to MGM, Freund directed just one more motion picture, Mad Love (1935) (aka The Hands of Orlac) a horror classic that utilized the expressionism of his UFA apprenticeship. With the great lighting cameraman Gregg Toland as his director of photography, the collaboration of Freund and Toland created a European sensibility unique for a Hollywood horror film. The compositions of the shots featured arch shapes and utilized the expressive shadows of the best of the European avant-garde films of the 1920s.
But MGM wanted Freund for his genius at camera work. He shot the rooftop numbers for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), another Best Picture Oscar winner, and worked with William H. Daniels, Garbo's favorite cameraman, on "Camille" (1936). He shot Greta Garbo's Conquest (1937) solo, though he never worked with Garbo again. That same year, he was the director of photography on The Good Earth (1937), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Other major MGM pictures he shot were Pride and Prejudice (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Tortilla Flat (1942), and A Guy Named Joe (1943). He also worked for other studios, shooting Golden Boy (1939) for Columbia. In 1942, he pulled off a rare double: he was nominated for Best Cinematography in both the black and white and color categories, for The Chocolate Soldier (1941) and Blossoms in the Dust (1941), respectively.
One of the last films he shot for MGM was Two Smart People (1946), starring Lucille Ball. In 1947, he moved on to Warner Bros, where he shot the classic Key Largo (1948) for John Huston. His last film as a director of photography was Michael Curtiz' Montana (1950), which starred Gary Cooper.
Always the technical innovator, Freund founded the Photo Research Corp. in 1944, a laboratory for the development of new cinematographic techniques and equipment. His technical work culminated in his receipt of a Class II Technical Award in 1955 from the Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences for the design of a direct-reading light meter. That same year, he had the honor of representing his adopted country at the International Conference on Illumination in Zurich, Switzerland.
It was perhaps inevitable that the technical and innovation-minded Freund would get to work for a brand new visual medium, television. Lucille Ball, whom he had photographed when she was a contract player at MGM, became his boss when he was hired as the director of photography at Desilu Productions, owned by Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz. Desilu hired the great Freund as its owners were determined to shoot the show I Love Lucy (1951) on film rather than produce the show live, as was standard in the early 1950s. Most shows were shot live, while a film of the program was simultaneously shot from a monitor, a process that created a "kinescope." The kinescope would be shown in other time zones on the network's affiliates. Desilu's owners disliked the quality of kinescopes, and needed Freund to come up with a solution to their problem of how to maintain the intimacy of a live show on film.
Freund agreed that the show should be shot on film rather than live, as film enabled thorough planning and allowed for cutting, which was impossible with live TV. Freud knew that film would allow Desilu to eliminate the fluffs which were a staple of early television, and would allow the producers to re-shoot scenes to improve the show, if needed.
I Love Lucy (1951) had to be filmed before an audience to retain the immediacy of a live TV show, which meant that the traditional, time-consuming methods of studio production with one camera would not work. Freund decided to shoot I Love Lucy (1951) with three 35mm Mitchell BNC cameras, one of each to simultaneously shoot long shots, medium shots and close-ups. Thus, the editor would have adequate coverage to create the 22 minutes of footage needed for a half-hour commercial network show.
The then-innovative, now-standard technique of simultaneously shooting a situation comedy with three 35mm cameras cut the production time needed to produce a 22-minute program to one-hour. The cameras were mounted on dollies, with the center camera outfitted with a 40mm wide-angle lens, and the side cameras outfitted with 3- and 4-inch lenses. The resulting shots were edited on a Movieola. A script girl in a booth overlooking the stage cued the camera operators. Due to extensive rehearsal time before the show was shot live, the camera operators had floor marks to guide them, but Freund's system was enabled by the script girl overseeing their actions via a 2-way intercom. The system made the shooting, breaking-down, and setting-up process for the next scenes on the three sets of the I Love Lucy (1951) stage very economical in terms of time, averaging one and one-half minutes between shots.
Freund worked out the lighting during the rehearsal period. Almost all of the lighting was overhead, except for portable fill lights mounted above the matte box on each camera. In Freund's system, there were no lighting changes during shooting, other than the use of a dimming board. Since the lighting was mounted overhead on catwalks, power cables were kept off the floor, which facilitated the dollying that was essential for making the system work fluidly.
Freund's solution to the problem of shooting a show on film economically was to make lighting as uniform as possible, taking advantage of adding highlights whenever possible, since a comedy show required high-key illumination. Due to the high contrast of the tubes in the image pickup systems at the television stations, contrast was a potential problem, as any contrast in the film would be exaggerated upon transmission of the film. To keep the film contrast to what Freund called a "fine medium," the sets were painted in various shades of gray. Props and costumes also were gray to promote a uniformity of color and tone that would not defeat Freund's carefully devised illumination scheme.
In a typical workweek, the I Love Lucy (1951) company engaged in pre-production planning and rehearsals on Monday through Thursday. I Love Lucy (1951) was filmed before a live audience at 8:00 o'clock PM on Friday evenings, and Freund's camera crew worked only on that Friday and the preceding Thursday. Freund, however, attended the Wednesday afternoon rehearsal of the cast to study the movements of the players around the sets, noting the blocking and their entrances and exits, in order to plan his lighting and camera work. Thursday morning at 8:00 o'clock AM, Freund and the gaffers would begin lighting the sets, which typically would be done by noon, the time the camera crew was required to report on set to be briefed on camera movements. Then, Freund would rehearse the camera action in order to make necessary changes in the lighting and the dollying of the cameras.
It was during the Thursday full-crew rehearsal that the cues for the dimmer operator were set, and the floor was marked to indicate the cameras' positions for various shots. For each shot, the focus was pre-measured and noted for each camera position with chalk marks on the stage floor. Another rehearsal was held at 4:30 PM with the full production crew. Though a full-dress rehearsal was held at 7:30 PM, with the attendance of the full crew, the cameras were not brought onto the set. The director would take the opportunity to discuss the plan of the show and solicit input from the cast and crew on how to tighten the show and improve its pacing.
The next call for the entire company was at 1:00 PM on Friday to discuss any major changes that were discussed the previous night. After this meeting, the cameras would be brought out onto the stage, and at 4:30 PM, there would be a final dress rehearsal during which Freund would check his lighting and make any required changes.
After a dinner break, the cast and production crew would hold a "talk through" of the show to solicit further suggestions and solve any remaining problems. At 8:00 PM, the cast and production crew were ready to start filming the show before a live audience. Before shooting, one of the cast or a member of the company had briefed the audience on the filming procedure, emphasizing the need for the audience's reactions to be spontaneous and natural.
Shooting was over in about an hour due to the rapid set-ups and break-downs of the crew, which shot the show in chronological order. Due to the thorough planning and rehearsals, retakes were seldom necessary. Camera operators in Freund's system had to make each take the right way the first time, every time, to keep the system working smoothly, and they did. An average of 7,500 feet of film was shot for each show at a cost that was significantly less than a comparable major studio production.
Freund also served as the cinematographer on the TV series Our Miss Brooks (1952), which was shot at Desilu Studios, and Desilu's own December Bride (1954). It was no accident that Desilu productions turned to Karl Freund to realize their dream of creating a high-quality show on film. Freund had the broadest experience of any cameraman of his stature, starting in silent pictures, and then excelling in both B&W and color in the sound era. With his penchant for technical innovation, he was the ideal man to develop solutions for filming a television show. Freund met the challenge of creating high quality filmed images in a young medium still handicapped by its primitive technology.
Freund became the dean of cinematographers in a new medium, with Desilu's I Love Lucy (1951) and its other shows recognized as the gold standard for TV production. His work ensured the fortunes of Desilu Productions, and the personal fortunes of Desilu owners Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, as he provided them with quality films of each show that could be easily syndicated into perpetuity, whereas the live shows filmed secondarily off of flickering TV monitors as kinescopes could not.
After retiring as a cinematographer, Freund continued his research at the Photo Research Corp. He died on May 3, 1969.Dracula (1931) - 2000- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Tak Fujimoto was born on 12 July 1939 in San Diego, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Sixth Sense (1999) and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).- Cinematographer
- Director
- Producer
One of the most innovative of pioneer cameramen, Lee Garmes started his career on the East Coast with the New York Motion Picture Company, but was soon persuaded by the director Thomas H. Ince to join him in Hollywood. Garmes quickly climbed his way up the ladder, from painter's assistant to prop boy (future director Henry Hathaway shared the same duties at 'Inceville'), to camera assistant. He struck up a singularly fruitful collaboration with director Malcolm St. Clair, with whom he worked on one- and two-reel shorts. Many of these early comedies were shot on a shoe-string budget and necessitated clever improvisation, especially in the usage of lead-sheet reflectors (re-directing sunlight) which substituted for proper lighting. Garmes also introduced incandescent tungsten filament Mazda lights as a significant cost-saving venture. In 1925, now as a fully-fledged director of photography, Garmes went over to Paramount, first under contract from 1925 to 1926. He perfected his craft at First National and Warner Brothers (1927-1930), before returning to Paramount and making a significant contribution to some of the most outstanding black-and-white films made by the studio during the early and mid-1930's. His most recognizable trademark was to naturally light his sets from a northward orientation.
Said to have been influenced by the paintings of Rembrandt, Garmes showed a great flair in the use of chiaroscuro, light and shade, which enhanced the expressionistic European look of darkly exotic ventures like Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932). Both pictures were directed by Josef von Sternberg and starred one of Paramount's most bankable assets, Marlene Dietrich, flatteringly photographed by Garmes with subdued lighting amid swirling, misty backgrounds. "Shanghai Express" led to an Academy Award and established Garmes as one of the top cinematographers in the business. His career suffered a setback, however, when he was replaced by David O. Selznick months into shooting Gone with the Wind (1939) (Selznick objected to the Garmes technique of soft lighting, preferring the harsher 'picture postcard' colours). Though the first hour of GWTW was almost entirely shot by Garmes (most of it directed by George Cukor, who was also fired), he was not credited for his efforts.
Lee Garmes imbued many more seminal films of the 1940's and 50's with his own particular style, creating the romantic moods of Lydia (1941), the exotic splendour of Alexander Korda's technicolor The Jungle Book (1942) and the semi-documentary realism of William Wyler's Detective Story (1951). He became one of few cinematographers to be given additional responsibilities in directing and production and in 1972 became one of the first advocates for the use of videotape in filmmaking. Garmes was twice recipient of the Eastman Kodak Award. He served as present of the American Society of Cinematographers from 1960 to 1961.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Merritt B. Gerstad was born on 5 July 1900 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Merritt B. was a cinematographer, known for A Night at the Opera (1935), The Ice Flood (1926) and The Unknown (1927). Merritt B. died on 1 March 1974 in Laguna Beach, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Writer
Alfred Gilks was born on 29 December 1891 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a cinematographer and writer, known for An American in Paris (1951), The Searchers (1956) and Midshipman Jack (1933). He died on 6 September 1970 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Director
Jack N. Green was born on 18 November 1946 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Unforgiven (1992), The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Twister (1996).Unforgiven (1992) - 2004- Cinematographer
- Visual Effects
- Camera and Electrical Department
Loyal Griggs entered the film industry in the mid-1920s, directly out of high school, as an assistant in the special effects department of Paramount. He was a cameraman for nearly 30 years before graduating to director of photography, and he proved his worth by winning an Academy Award for cinematography for Shane (1953), just two years after his elevation to lighting cameraman.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
René Guissart was born on 24 October 1888 in Paris, France. René was a cinematographer and director, known for Sweet Devil (1938), Je te confie ma femme (1933) and Les soeurs Hortensia (1935). René died on 19 May 1960 in Monaco.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Writer
Born in Tahiti, the son of writer James Norman Hall, author of "Mutiny on the Bounty," Conrad Hall studied filmmaking at USC. He and two classmates formed a production company and sold a project to a local television station. Hall's company branched out into making industrial films and TV commercials. They were hired to shoot location footage for several feature films, including's Disney's The Living Desert (1953). In the early 1960s, Hall was hired as a camera assistant on several features and worked his way up to camera operator. He received his first cinematographer credit in 1965. Hall won acclaim for his rich and complex compositions, especially for In Cold Blood (1967) and won an Academy Award for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). He won two more Oscars, for American Beauty (1999), in 2000, and Road to Perdition (2002).Cool Hand Luke (1967) - 2005
In Cold Blood (1967) - 2008
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - 2003- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Distinguished American cinematographer Ernest Haller started in the industry in 1914 as an actor with Biograph after leaving his first job as a bank clerk. Within one year he discovered his true calling: being on the other side of the camera. By 1920, he had become a full director of photography and would go on to handle prestigious pictures , such as the Samuel Goldwyn-produced Stella Dallas (1925). In 1926, Haller signed with First National and was still there when the studio was absorbed by Warner Brothers in 1930. Despite prolific output, it took him several years to create a reputation, however his breakthrough eventually came with the lavishly produced period drama Jezebel (1938), starring Bette Davis.For this, he received the first of five Academy Award nominations.
It was his work on 'Jezebel' which ultimately prompted David O. Selznick to replace Lee Garmes (with whom he had creative disagreements) with Haller as principal cinematographer for his Technicolour masterpiece, Gone with the Wind (1939). Haller also shot Vivien Leigh's famous first screen test for the role of Scarlett O'Hara. Though his previous work had been almost exclusively in black-and-white, the gamble paid off handsomely, with Haller winning an Academy Award (alongside Ray Rennahan) for Best Colour Cinematography.
Following 'GWTW' , Haller shot some of the best films made at Warner Brothers during the 1940's, his work perfectly suited to the gritty studio look of its product. He was particularly effective with the strong female stars of the company, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis (shooting 14 of her pictures), meticulously balancing make-up and lighting to bringing out their best features. He created an almost expressionistic mood for films like Mildred Pierce (1945) (for which he received another Oscar nomination) and Humoresque (1946). For the remainder of his career, Haller remained at Warners. Even after his contract expired in 1951, he was recalled for special assignments such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), shot in CinemaScope, and the psychological drama What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), reuniting him once more with Davis and Crawford, albeit this time concerned with photographing them in a decidedly unglamorous fashion. He freelanced during the remainder of the 1960's and was semi-retired when asked by James Goldstone to step in as director of photography for the second pilot of Star Trek (1966), "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Ernest Haller was killed in a car crash in October 1970, aged 74.The Emperor Jones (1933) - 1999
Jezebel (1938) - 2009
Gone with the Wind (1939) - 1989
Mildred Pierce (1945) - 1996
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - 1990
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - 2021
Lilies of the Field (1963) - 2020- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Born Russell September 16, 1903 in Los Angeles, California to Frank and Bertha Harlan, who hailed from Iowa and Missouri. Russell was raised in Los Angeles along with his younger brother Richard (b. 1911). His paternal grandmother Sarah J. Harlan also lived with the family.
Harlan started in the film industry as an actor and stuntman, and by the early 1930s was working behind the camera as an assistant. His first work as lead cinematographer was in 1937, when he filmed four "Hopalong Cassidy" westerns for Harry Sherman Productions. Harlan had a career as a cinematographer that spanned some thirty-three years from 1937 to 1970. He was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, including two in 1962 for his work on Hatari! and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Russell was married to Willette Marion Gregg (1914-1963). They had three children together.
Russell Harlan died February 28, 1974 in Newport Beach, California and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.A Walk in the Sun (1945) - 2016
Red River (1948) - 1990
Gun Crazy (1950) - 1998
The Thing from Another World (1951) - 2001
Blackboard Jungle (1955) - 2016
Rio Bravo (1959) - 2014
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - 1995- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Hickox started out as assistant cameraman at the Manhattan Biograph Studios in 1915, followed by two years of wartime photographic work with the U.S. Naval Air Service. He joined First National after 1919, graduating to director of photography by 1927. When Warner Brothers absorbed that company in 1930, he stayed the course for the bulk of his career (until 1954), then worked primarily in television until his retirement in 1971.
Hickox was best known as an action photographer, who excelled shooting the gritty, moody crime films and melodramas, in which Warners tended to corner the market. He collaborated particularly well with another action specialist, the director Raoul Walsh. Hickox had the uncanny ability to make productions, shot on a modest budget, look a lot classier. His best films cover the period from 1942 to 1954. They include the boxing drama Gentleman Jim (1942); the films noir To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and White Heat (1949); and, finally, the sci-fi cult classic Them! (1954).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Jack Hildyard was a British cinematographer. He made several films with David Lean including The Sound Barrier (1952), Hobson's Choice (1954), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
He also work in Another Time, Another Place (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Topaz (1969) and Lion of the Desert (1981).
Hildyard died in 1990 at the age of 82.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Winton C. Hoch was born on 31 July 1905 in Storm Lake, Iowa, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for The Quiet Man (1952), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964) and The Searchers (1956). He died on 20 March 1979 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Victor J. Kemper was born on 14 April 1927 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for The Final Countdown (1980), Clue (1985) and Vacation (1983). He was married to Claire. He died on 27 November 2023 in Sherman Oaks, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Benjamin H. Kline was born on 11 July 1894 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Guard That Girl (1935), The Party's Over (1934) and Troopers Three (1930). He was married to Annette Halprin. He died on 7 January 1974 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Fred J. Koenekamp was born on 11 November 1922 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for The Towering Inferno (1974), Patton (1970) and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984). He died on 31 May 2017 in Bonita Springs, Florida, USA.Patton (1970) - 2003- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Milton Krasner entered the film industry as an assistant cameraman in 1917, and while working at the Vitagraph and Biograph studios in New York City was promoted to camera operator. Graduating to lighting cameraman in 1933, he was assigned mostly second features until the mid-'40s, when his excellence in black-and-white photography was finally recognized. Krasner hit his stride in the 1950s at 20th Century-Fox, where he photographed many of the studio's opulent Technicolor epics (Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), Désirée (1954), The Rains of Ranchipur (1955), among others). He won an Academy Award for Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Trained as an electrical engineer, Joseph LaShelle entered the film industry as a lab assistant with Paramount in 1920 in order to finance entry to Stanford University. Having worked his way up to superintendent of the Paramount printing room after three years, he decided to stay on. By 1925, he was being mentored by the veteran cinematographer Charles G. Clarke under whose auspices he gained valuable experience behind the camera. Subsequently, LaShelle worked as camera operator for Metropolitan Studios, Pathe and Fox in the 1930s, often in collaboration with Arthur C. Miller. In the wake of a decade-long apprenticeship, he was promoted to full director of photography in 1943, from there on gaining a reputation as one of Hollywood's foremost stylists. His chief talent lay in his ability to employ lighting, decor, close-ups and clever camera angles to convey a grainy realistic, natural look, especially vital to the ambience of films noirs.
Another aspect of LaShelle's artistry lay in suggesting a bigger budget than was sometimes in play. This was notably the case with Laura (1944), for which he won his only Oscar. Virtually every scene takes place indoors, without significant exterior footage beyond a few basic studio shots. In the absence of streets and traffic, LaShelle nonetheless succeeded in creating a believable Park Avenue jet-set, replete with elegant apartments and swank restaurants. He did much of his best work under contract at 20th Century Fox (1943-1954) and for expert directors like Martin Ritt (The Long, Hot Summer (1958)), Otto Preminger ("Laura", Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) and Billy Wilder (The Apartment (1960), The Fortune Cookie (1966)). He retired in 1969 and died of natural causes twenty years later, aged 89.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Edward Lachman was born on 31 March 1948 in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Far from Heaven (2002), Carol (2015) and Ken Park (2002).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Ernest Laszlo, the Academy Award-winning cinematographer best known for his creative collaborations with directors Robert Aldrich and Stanley Kramer, was born on April 23, 1898, in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After emigrating to the US, he worked as a camera operator on Wings (1927). He made his debut as a director of photography on The Pace That Kills (1928). Before hooking up with Kramer, his most notable collaboration was with Aldrich, for whom he shot 11 films, including Vera Cruz (1954), the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Big Knife (1955). Other memorable films he shot include Two Years Before the Mast (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Stalag 17 (1953) and Logan's Run (1976). He also shot M (1951), Joseph Losey's remake of M (1931), which was re-envisioned as an urban film noir set in Los Angeles.
After 30 years as a director of photography, Laszlo was honored with his first Oscar nomination in 1961 for shooting Inherit the Wind (1960) for Stanley Kramer. He was subsequently Oscar-nominated for the cinematography on Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Ship of Fools (1965), for which he finally won his Oscar. His final film, The Domino Principle (1977), also was shot for Kramer.
From 1972 to '74 Ernest Laszlo served as the president of the American Society of Cinematographers. He died on January 6, 1984.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Philip H. Lathrop was born on 22 October 1912 in Merced, California, USA. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Earthquake (1974), The Pink Panther (1963) and The Americanization of Emily (1964). He was married to Molly Lathrop and Betty Jo Lathrop. He died on 12 April 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Marcel Le Picard was born on 17 January 1887 in Le Havre, France. Marcel was a cinematographer, known for Voodoo Man (1944), Borrowed Hero (1941) and Miss V from Moscow (1942). Marcel died on 25 May 1952 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
Matthew F. Leonetti was born on 31 July 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and producer, known for Strange Days (1995), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and The Butterfly Effect (2004).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Special Effects
Edward Linden was born on 26 August 1891 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for King Kong (1933), The Secret of Treasure Island (1938) and The Lost City (1935). He died on 15 November 1956 in Hollywood, California, USA.King Kong (1933) - 1991- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Chester A. Lyons was born on 26 May 1885 in Westfield, New York, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Mad Love (1935), The Valley of Silent Men (1922) and Women's Wares (1927). He was married to Katherine. He died on 27 November 1936 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Oliver T. Marsh was born on 30 January 1892 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Oliver T. was a cinematographer, known for Sweethearts (1938), Bitter Sweet (1940) and Maytime (1937). Oliver T. was married to Elizabeth. Oliver T. died on 5 May 1941 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Jack A. Marta was born on 5 March 1903 in Laurin, Montana, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Batman: The Movie (1966), The Name of the Game (1968) and It Could Happen to You (1937). He died on 26 June 1991 in Sheridan, Montana, USA.Under Western Stars (1938) - 2009- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
One of the most respected cinematographers in the industry, Polish-born Rudolph Mate entered the film business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He worked in Hungary as an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda and later worked throughout Europe with noted cameraman Karl Freund. Mate was hired to shoot some second-unit footage for Carl Theodor Dreyer and Erich Pommer, and they were so impressed with his work that they hired him as cinematographer on Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (US title: "The Passion of Joan of Arc"). Mate was soon working on some of Europe's most prestigious films, cementing his reputation as one of the continent's premier cinematographers. Hollywood came calling in 1935, and Mate shot films there for the next 12 years before turning to directing in 1947. Unfortunately, while many of his directorial efforts were visually impressive (especially his sci-fi epic When Worlds Collide (1951)), the films themselves were for the most part undistinguished, with his best work probably being the film-noir classic D.O.A. (1949).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Ted McCord learned his craft "on the job" as a camera assistant at Hobart Bosworth Productions in 1917. His first credited film as full-fledged cinematographer was Sacred and Profane Love (1921), billing himself as "T.D.McCord". During the '20s he worked on a wide variety of subjects, from romantic comedy (Irene (1926)) to westerns (The Code of the Scarlet (1928)) to melodrama (The Crash (1928)). Almost from the outset, his work displayed a mastery of lighting, specifically in his use of deep shadows. He later explained that he had been influenced by the paintings of Rembrandt and by the mentoring of pioneer cinematographers James Van Trees and Gregg Toland.
Between 1924 and 1929, McCord worked at First National which later became a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. In the early '30s, he had brief spells at Universal (shooting several films for cowboy star Ken Maynard), Columbia and RKO-Pathe, before finally settling at Warner Brothers for the bulk of his career (1936-57). During World War II, he served as a captain with the US Army Photographic Unit and was among the first to enter devastated Berlin, filming inside Adolf Hitler's ruined chancellery. After the war, he was given several A-grade projects that enhanced his reputation; among them superior melodramas like Johnny Belinda (1948) and Flamingo Road (1949). He also won critical plaudits for his excellent shooting of John Huston's seminal western epic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). This prompted Elia Kazan to request his services for East of Eden (1955), which was shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
During the '50s and '60s McCord excelled at other Technicolor assignments: most memorable are the rich saturation and sharp detail used for the gripping outdoor western The Hanging Tree (1959), and his Oscar-nominated romantic, soft-focus visuals for The Sound of Music (1965), shot in 65mm Todd-AO wide-screen format.The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - 1990
East of Eden (1955) - 2016
The Sound of Music (1965) - 2001- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Mellor began his career in the photographic labs at Paramount in the mid-20's. By 1934, he had graduated to full-time director of photography, working primarily on the studio's lesser productions. At the same time, he continued to serve his apprenticeship by assisting veteran cinematographer Victor Milner as first camera operator on A-grade features. Mellor left Paramount in 1943, to join the U.S. Army Photographic Unit, shooting documentary wartime footage under the aegis of director George Stevens.
After the war, Mellor found regular work with most of the major studios: United Artists (1946, 1948-49), Universal (1947-48), MGM (1950-54) and 20th Century Fox (1957-62). He acquired a solid reputation for versatility across every genre of filmmaking. He excelled at outdoor and location photography, best exemplified by William A. Wellman's austere black & white pioneering saga Westward the Women (1951), and Anthony Mann's powerful revenge western The Naked Spur (1953). In stark contrast, Mellor (working again with George Stevens), also shot the black & white melodrama A Place in the Sun (1951) (with John F. Seitz), using diffuse lighting and soft focus lenses. The romantic look of the film with its lingering close-ups, contributed to the New York Times (August 29, 1951) reviewing the picture as "a work of beauty, tenderness, power and insight". In the same vein, the Stevens-directed Giant (1956), with its sweeping vistas, and the lush, warm look of Peyton Place (1957), offer nothing like the suitably harsh, barren desert visuals of Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), shot in widescreen Panavision.
Mellor died from a heart attack while filming The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) (Stevens again the director) and was replaced by Loyal Griggs. While the film was not a commercial success, its stylized visuals nonetheless garnered Mellor a posthumous Oscar nomination.Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) - 2010
Road to Morocco (1942) - 1996
George Stevens' World War II Footage (1943-1946) - 2008
A Place in the Sun (1951) - 1991
The Naked Spur (1953) - 1997
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) - 2018
Giant (1956) - 2005- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
John J. Mescall was born on 10 January 1899 in Litchfield, Illinois, USA. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Take a Letter, Darling (1942) and The Black Cat (1934). He died on 10 February 1962 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Cinematographer Russell Metty, a superb craftsman who worked with such top directors as John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Orson Welles, was born in Los Angeles on September 20, 1906. Entering the movie industry as a lab assistant, he apprenticed as an assistant cameraman and graduated to lighting cameraman at RKO Radio Pictures in 1935. Metty's ability to create effects with black-and-white contrast while shooting twilight and night were on display in two films he shot for Welles, The Stranger (1946) and the classic Touch of Evil (1958), the latter showing his mastery of complex crane shots. (Metty shot additional scenes for Welles' second masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), whose lighting cameraman was Stanley Cortez but had the look of Citizen Kane (1941), which was shot by Gregg Toland). At Universal in the 1950s, he enjoyed a productive collaboration with director Douglas Sirk on ten films from 1953-59, including Sirk's masterpieces Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Imitation of Life (1959), a remake of the 1934 classic (Imitation of Life (1934)). However, his collaboration with Kubrick on Spartacus (1960) proved troublesome.
A union cinematographer himself who had been an accomplished professional photographer, Kubrick exerted control over the look of his films. Kubrick gave far less leeway to his directors of photography than did traditional directors, even directors such as Welles and noted bizarre-camera-angle freak Sidney J. Furie (The Appaloosa (1966)), men who were extraordinarily active partners in crafting the look of their films. Kubrick was not deferential to his directors of photography, even to such top cameramen as Lucien Ballard and future Academy Award winners Oswald Morris and Geoffrey Unsworth. Metty and Kubrick clashed over the filming of "Spartacus," as Kubrick--with his extraordinary sense of light and effect--considered himself to be the director of photography on the film.
Ironically, it was "Spartacus" that won Metty his sole Academy Award, for color cinematography (he received his second nomination for the color cinematography on Flower Drum Song (1961)). Metty continued to work on top productions into the 1970s, including The Misfits (1961), That Touch of Mink (1962), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Madigan (1968), and The Omega Man (1971). Metty also worked extensively on television, including Columbo (1971) and The Waltons (1972).
Russell Metty died on April 28, 1978, in Canoga Park, California. He was 71 years old.Bringing Up Baby (1938) - 1990
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) - 2007
Story of G.I. Joe (1945) - 2009
All That Heaven Allows (1955) - 1995
Touch of Evil (1958) - 1993
Imitation of Life (1959) - 2015
Spartacus (1960) - 2017
Flower Drum Song (1961) - 2008- Cinematographer
- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
Pioneering cinematographer Victor Milner acquired his fascination with the celluloid media during the days of the nickelodeon. After working as a lab assistant for a film equipment manufacturer, he joined Pathe Weekly News in the capacity of projectionist and newsreel cameraman. Among other events, he filmed the U.S. occupation of Vera Cruz during the conflict with Mexico in 1914. After moving to California in 1916, Milner was hired by the Balboa Amusement Producing Company (founded in Long Island in 1913), notably working on several westerns starring William S. Hart. He subsequently spent time under contract with Metro, Universal, Paramount (the bulk of his career: 1925-1944) and RKO (1945). A versatile craftsman and a master at creating moods (in his own words, 'painting with light'), he was equally adept at shooting unsentimental black & white films noir (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)), or sprawling, romantic Technicolor adventure (Reap the Wild Wind (1942)). He often worked on the films of legendary director Cecil B. DeMille, winning his only Academy Award (from nine nominations) for the epic Cleopatra (1934).
Milner retired in 1953. He was one of the founding members of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Distinguished pioneering cinematographer who had a career in motion pictures lasting six-decades. As a teenager, Hal built his own camera while still at school and took photos of local interest which he then developed and printed. He sent a number of these pictures to the New York Herald-Tribune and they were deemed good enough to invite interest from Hollywood. After doing some free-lance work he was hired to shoot newsreels for Sol Lesser's company, General Films. In 1915, he began working in Hollywood, first as a film cutter at Universal, eventually graduating to assistant director. During the latter stages of the First World War he worked for the photographic unit of the U.S.Army, and, afterwards, shot documentaries before turning his attention to motion pictures.
In 1921, Hal became a fully-fledged director of photography. Many of his early efforts were low budget productions although he compensated for the lack of expensive sets by embracing elements of the German expressionist movement: symbolism, stylised images, sombre lighting - all designed to create mood and evoke a more profound understanding and emotive reaction to the subject. Having spent almost a year in Paris post-war, Hal had studied European film-making techniques. During the 1920's, he worked closely with noted exponents of expressionism, including the directors Paul Leni and Michael Curtiz. He was an innovator in the use of boom and dolly shots, producing exciting new visual effects.
Significantly, he was director of photography on the first ever all-talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927). Over the years, Hal Mohr acquired a deserved reputation for best serving each director's needs by creating the exact look and mood required for each film. In the 1930's, he was one of the first to employ deep-focus photography in films like Bullets or Ballots (1936) and The Green Pastures (1936). For the Errol Flynn swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935), Hal seamlessly integrated live action shots with 18 foot-long model ships and location footage with back-lot shots. He won the first of two Academy Awards (uncontested, through a 'write-in campaign') for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). His second Academy Award, he shared with W. Howard Greene for his colour photography of Universal's Phantom of the Opera (1943).
In 1957, Hal also won the George Eastman Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Film. Among other representative examples of Hal Mohr's best work in Hollywood one has to include Another Part of the Forest (1948) and The Wild One (1953). He also shot two classic films with Marlene Dietrich: Destry Rides Again (1939) and Rancho Notorious (1952). He was very impressed with the actress, commenting: "She just knows from the heat of the light on her when she is right for the camera" (New York Times,May 12 1974). Hal Mohr served several times as President of the American Society of Cinematographers, 1930-31, 1963-65, 1969-70. He was married to the actress Evelyn Venable for almost forty years. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame bears his name.The Jazz Singer (1927) - 1996
King of Jazz (1930) - 2013
State Fair (1933) - 2014
Destry Rides Again (1939) - 1996- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Ira H. Morgan was born on 2 April 1889 in Fort Ross, California, USA. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Modern Times (1936), Lost in the Stratosphere (1934) and Congo Bill (1948). He was married to Rena Carlton. He died on 10 April 1959 in San Rafael, California, USA.Modern Times (1936) - 1989- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Reginald H. Morris was born on 4 July 1918 in Ruislip, Middlesex, England, UK. Reginald H. was a cinematographer and director, known for A Christmas Story (1983), Superman (1978) and Black Christmas (1974). Reginald H. died on 8 January 2004 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.A Christmas Story (1983) - 2012- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Miroslav Ondrícek was born on 4 November 1934 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a cinematographer, known for Amadeus (1984), Hair (1979) and A League of Their Own (1992). He was married to Eva. He died on 28 March 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Ernest Palmer was born on 6 December 1885 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Blood and Sand (1941), Broken Arrow (1950) and Street Angel (1928). He died on 22 February 1978 in Pacific Palisades, California, USA.7th Heaven (1927) - 1995- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Descended from a wealthy family of landowners in what was then Austria-Hungary, Franz Planer understood the importance of photography as an art form early in his life. He first stood behind the camera as a portrait photographer, working out of Vienna from 1910. He soon branched out, filming newsreels in Paris and, in 1919, joined the growing German film industry as chief cameraman for Emelka (which became Bavaria Studios in 1932), in Munich. During the 1920s and early 1930's, he acquired a reputation for style, having worked as cinematographer for such distinguished directors as F.W. Murnau and Wilhelm Thiele, most of his films being commercially popular entertainments.
Anticipating the "Anschluss" - the forcible annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler - Planer left Austria in 1937 and, using the pseudonym Frank F. Planer, sought work in Hollywood. He joined the American Society of Cinematorgaphers and was signed under contract at Columbia from 1938-45, and, again, from 1949-50 (in between working at Universal from 1947-49), filming in a variety of different genres. At this stage in his career, he often used real-life locations and shot primarily in black-and-white, in almost semi-documentary style. Like other European cinematographers, he was heavily influenced by German expressionism and used chiaroscuro lighting and stark contrasts between light and shade to achieve thematic mood requirements - particularly for films noir, such as Criss Cross (1949) and 711 Ocean Drive (1950). Planer's creative collaboration with director Max Ophüls is frequently cited as among his best work, notably the melancholic romantic drama Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948).
During the 1950s Planer was much in demand and used by many of Hollywood's top directors, including Robert Siodmak, John Huston, Edward Dmytryk and Stanley Kramer. Increasingly comfortable with color photography from 1954, Planer worked on several A-grade productions. He created a particularly realistic feel for The Caine Mutiny (1954) and The Nun's Story (1959) by utilizing sparse, functional interiors. Unusual camera angles/perspectives, tracking shots and objects inserted between camera and subject contributed to the look of the popular Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Planer never won an Academy Award, though he was nominated five times: for Champion (1949), Death of a Salesman (1951), Roman Holiday (1953), The Nun's Story (1959) and The Children's Hour (1961).Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) - 1992
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) - 2022
Roman Holiday (1953) - 1999
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - 2012- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Sol Polito, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer who helped create the distinct visual character of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s, was born Salvador Polito on November 12, 1892, in Palermo, Sicily. While still young he emigrated to the US with his family, which settled in New York City, where he attended public school. He started out as a still photographer, then became a laboratory assistant before becoming an assistant to a movie camera crew. Polito received his formal training in the craft of cinematography during a three-year apprenticeship on a camera crew before graduating to head cameraman, shooting Rip Van Winkle (1914) in 1914.
He worked for a variety of movie companies through the early silent era, including Metro, Triangle, Universal and World. By the time he shot 13 program Westerns starring Harry Carey from 1925 to 1928, he already showed his mastery of black and white, creating crisp images. Polito joined First National Studios in 1927, which was merged with Warner Bros. the following year.
Polito thrived in the studio system that emerged with the vertical integration of the studios in the 1920s. He established himself as a first-rate craftsman who strove to create the finest images by following industry guidelines even as he perfected their application. Warner Bros., under studio boss Jack L. Warner, demanded efficiency from its technicians and would not allow extra shooting to achieve an effect unless the additional expense could be justified by its propensity to make the finished film a success at the box office. Polito became co-chief cinematographer, along with fellow Italian immigrant Tony Gaudio, at Warners.
He worked in a wide variety of genres, and he and Gaudio created what became known as "the Warners look"--a hard, unglamorous image, unsoftened by flattering lighting effects. Influenced by German Expressionism, the Warners "look" crafted by Polito and Gaudio was rooted in chiaroscuro contrasts between light and darkness that also were a metaphor for the world the characters lived in. Polito's cinematography for Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) is extremely expressive and adds to the somber tone created by the director. The Warners look in cinematography anticipated the "film noir" style that emerged in the late 1940s, when filmmakers and audiences, in response to the documentaries of World War II and Italian neo-realist cinema, sought to inject realism into American cinema (Polito was not really involved in postwar film noir, though he shot Anatole Litvak's classic noir Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), giving it a hazy look with an undefined framing that serves as a metaphor for the moral ambivalence and sense of anomie that is at the heart of the film).
When Warners moved to a lusher aesthetic in the 1930s, Polito readily adapted. As one of the studio's chief cinematographers, he often shot Warners' most important pictures. He frequently worked with director Michael Curtiz on the A-list pictures starring Errol Flynn, working in both black-and-white and the difficult Technicolor three-strip dye transfer process. His color cinematography on the blockbuster The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is still hailed as one of the greatest examples of Technicolor shooting. For the studio's #1 star, Bette Davis, he created a more glamorous look. Eschewing the hard contrast between white and black that was part of Warners' famous "look", he created classic romantic fantasies, such as Now, Voyager (1942), which featured soft focus close-ups of Davis. As a cinematographer he was flexible and willing to modify his effects to fit the exigencies of the movie's theme. For his work at Warners, he was nominated three times for the Academy Award, twice for best color cinematography.
After shooting the Errol Flynn vehicle Escape Me Never (1947) and The Voice of the Turtle (1947) , Polito moved on to Paramount to shoot "Sorry, Wrong Number" (1948) for former Warner Bros. producer Hal B. Wallis. He shot only one more film before he retired: Anna Lucasta (1949) at Columbia Pictures.
Sol Polito died on Mary 23, 1960, in Hollywood, California. He was 67 years old.I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) - 1991
42nd Street (1933) - 1998
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) - 2003
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - 1995
Sergeant York (1941) - 2008
Now, Voyager (1942) - 2007