Hollywood’s “Golden Age:” 1925 -1965
Eighty one cinematographers are listed, from David Abel to Harry J. Wild.
($ Nominated for at least one Acadamy Award in Best Cinematography.)
(*/**/***/**** Winner of One/Two/Three/Four Oscar (s) for Best Cinematography.)
With two categories – black-and-white and color – in the Oscar race from 1939 to 1966, with an average of 10 nominations per year, most of the top Hollywood cinematographers received at least one Oscar nomination. Of the eighty-one listed, only five (David Abel, Ellwood Bredell, J. Roy Hunt, Syd Hickox, and Charles Lawton Jr). were never nominated by their peers.
David Abel RKO | Mark Sandrich| Responsible with Production Designers Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark for the sumptuous art deco look of the Astaire- Rogers musicals | Top Hat| The Awful Truth | Never nominated by his peers.
John Alton* Worked mostly at MGM | Film Noir Specialist | Low-budget B movies | Oscar for spectacular use of color in An American in Paris.
Arthur Arling* Shared an Oscar for The Yearling | Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me and Pillow Talk.
Joseph H. August$ Mostly worked at RKO |RIP before releasing his masterpiece Portrait of Jeannie, for which he received the first posthumous Oscar nomination in the Best Cinematography category. |Total of 3 posthumous nominations in this category | Others in 1969 (Harry Stradling for Hello Dolly) and 2002 (the only posthumous win for Conrad Hall).
Lucien Ballard$ Photographed his then-wife Merle Oberon in The Lodger | Invented The Obie to disguise facial scaring after Oberon was involved in a car accident |Sam Peckinpah’s favorite cinematographer| Ride the High Country | The Wild Bunch.
George Barnes* His sole Oscar was for Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first Hollywood movie and Selznick’s second Best Picture in a row after his triumph with GWTW | Rebecca is rated by many as the apogee of black and white filmmaking | Married seven times, including to actress Joan Blondel who he photographed in three of her Warner Bros movies| Reputation allowed him to freelance through most of his career| Between 1918 and the year of his death in 1953, at age 60, he photographed 142 documented motion pictures.
Joseph Biroc* It’s a Wonderful Life ( With Joseph Walker) | Favorite of Director Robert Aldrich | Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte | Oscar| The Towering Inferno.
Ellwood Bredell Photographed The Killers at MGM |Never nominated by his peers.
Norbert Brodine$ His best work was at TCF | Henry Hathaway | Kiss of Death.
Robert Burks* Hitchcock’s cinematographer from 1951 to 1963 | Strangers on a Train | Vertigo | North by Northwest |Oscar for To Catch a Thief.
Charles G. Clarke$ TCF| Carousel | The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
Wilfrid H. Cline$ Freelance color specialist | Oscar-nominated for Alona of the South Seas | Technical assistant on numerous color films in the late thirties and early forties, including GWTW, but did not receive screen credit |Warner Bros. in the fifties | Doris Day | Calamity Jane |Television in the sixties | Seventy-seven episodes of “The Big Valley” from 1965 to 1969.
Stanley Cortez$ Orson Welles |The Magnificent Ambersons | Selznick| Since You Went Away | Brother of actor Ricardo Cortez.
Edward Cronjager$. Heaven Can Wait | Ernest Lubitch | TCF | Remains the youngest nominee at age 27.
Floyd Crosby* High Noon|Fred Zinnemann|Oscar for Tabu | Father of singer David Crosby | Remains the youngest winner at age 31.
William Daniels* MGM and then Universal | Garbo’s favorite cinematographer |Favorite of Lubitsch |Ninotchka | The Shop Around the Corner | The Naked City.
Allen Davey$ Freelance Color Specialist. Special award by the Academy for Sweethearts.
Robert De Grasse$ RKO| Val Lewton | The Body Snatcher | Robert Wise | Claire Trevor| Born to Kill.
Arthur Edeson$ The man who photographed The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca| Spent most of his career at Warner Bros.
Daniel L. Fapp* Paramount in the late forties, then freelanced | Oscar for the original West Side Story (1961) |The Great Escape| John Sturges.
George Folsey$ Has the most nominations without winning (13) |His entire career was at MGM | Vincente Minnelli| Judy Garland |Meet Me in Saint Louis |The Clock | Nobody captured the essence of Judy Garland as he did | Although New York City is used as a third character in The Clock, the entire film was filmed on the MGM backlot.
Ellsworth Fredericks$ | Freelance cinematographer | From the mid-fifties to the late sixties |Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) |Sayonara | The Best Man.
Karl Freund* German cinematographer | MGM | Oscar | The Good Earth| Shot all of the I Love Lucy episodes and, in doing so, pioneered the multi-camera set-up for television | Transitioned to director| Mad Love.
Lee Garmes* The original cinematographer on GWTW| Fired by Selznick and replaced by Ernest Haller | Many of the scenes that Garmes shot, such as the railroad yard sequence, remain in the finished product| Freelanced |Hitchcock|The Paradine Case|Duel in the Sun | Marlene Dietrich | Joseph von Sternberg |Oscar| Shanghai Express |Nightmare Alley with Edmund Goulding.
Tony Gaudio* Mostly worked at Warner Bros | Captain Blood | Michael Curtiz |The Letter | William Wyler.
Bert Glennon$ Walter Wanger |John Ford |Stagecoach.
W. Howard Greene* Freelance Color Specialist | The Garden of Allah | A Star is Born (1937) | The Phantom of the Opera.
Loyal Griggs* Freelanced |George Steven’s | Oscar | Shane | DeMille | The Ten Commandments.
Burnett Guffey** Mostly worked at Columbia | From Here to Eternity |Bonnie and Clyde.
Ernest Haller* The photographer of GWTW replacing Lee Garmes |Mostly at Warner Bros | Bette Davis’ favorite cinematographer | Whatever Happened to Baby Jane | Rebel Without a Cause
Russell Harlen$ Howard Hawks favorite cinematographer | Freelanced | Specialized in Westerns|Red River | Rio Bravo| Equally proficient in other genres| To Kill a Mockingbird| The Great Race.
Winton C. Hoch*** Favorite of John Ford | She Wore a Yellow Ribbon |The Quiet Man.
J. Roy Hunt RKO | Crossfire| Never nominated by his peers.
Syd Hickox Warner Bros from its inception until his retirement |Came into his own in the forties with three classics by Howard Hawks and one by Raoul Walsh | To Have and to Have Not | The Big Sleep | Dark Passage | White Heat| Never nominated by his peers.
James Wong Howe** Originally at Warner Bros |Then freelanced | The only Asian American of any note during Hollywood’s heyday | An astonishing achievement |His work on the boxing movie Body and Soul liberated the camera in a pre-Steadicam world | The Rose Tattoo | Hud |Seconds |Martin Ritt | John Frankenheimer | His final movie was Funny Lady.
Harry Jackson$ Still photographer for Warner Bros |Cinematographer at MGM | Oscar Nomination for Mother Wore Tights (Color)| Most famous film was his last: The Bandwagon.
Ray June$: Mostly worked at MGM| Then freelanced | Stanley Donen | Funny Face | Audrey Hepburn.
Boris Kaufman* Kazan’s favorite cinematographer| On the Waterfront in monochrome | Splendor in the Grass in color.
Milton Krasner* RKO to TCF |All About Eve | Mankiewicz | The arrangement of his ultra-stellar cast in ” Eve” is the essence of mise-en-scene and has led to the publication of thousands of still photographs, most of which have entered our collective conscience.
Joseph LaShelle* Mostly worked at TCF| Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb in Laura | Otto Preminger | Billy Wilder | The Apartment.
Charles Lang* Ties with Leon Shamroy for the most nominations 18 | Mostly at Paramount| Freelanced | Billy Wilder | Sabrina | Some Like it Hot |Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice | Mazursky.
Charles “Buddy” Lawton, Jr. Columbia |Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai | 3:10 to Yuma |A Raisin in the Sun | Never nominated by his peers.
Ernest Lazlo* Robert Aldrich| Kiss Me Deadly | The Big Knife | Stanley Kramer| Judgement at Nuremberg | Ship of Fools.
Sam Leavitt* Otto Preminger |Anatomy of a Murder| Stanley Kramer| The Defiant Ones | Oscar | Cukor | A Star is Born.
Lionel Lindon* Paramount |Leo McCarey | Freelanced | John Frankenheimer |The Manchurian Candidate | Oscar | Around the World in Eighty Days.
Peverell Marley$ Mostly at TCF |Allan Dwan | Suez | Married to Linda Darnell.
Oliver T. Marsh$ MGM | San Francisco | Nelson Eddie and Jeannette Macdonald | Brother of silent screen star Mae Marsh |Special Oscar for his color cinematography on Sweethearts.
Ted McCord$ Started at Warners in B&W | Johnny Belinda | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre| Freelance and Color | The Sound of Music.
Joe MacDonald$: He primarily worked at TCF| Niagara and Marilyn
