Leon Shamroy
Leon Shamroy | |
---|---|
Born | New York City, U.S. | July 16, 1901
Died | July 7, 1974 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | (aged 72)
Occupation | Cinematographer |
Title | A.S.C. President (1947–48) |
Spouses | Rosamond Marcus
(m. 1925; div. 1937)Audrey Mason
(m. 1938; div. 1948) |
Children | 4 |
Awards | Best Cinematography: Cleopatra (1963) Leave Her to Heaven (1945) Wilson (1944) The Black Swan (1942) |
Leon Shamroy,
Early life and career
In 1889, Shamroy's Russian father, family name Shamroyevsky, came to the United States to visit his brother, a revolutionary who had fled the homeland and become a physician in the U.S. Shamroy's father liked the United States and decided to stay. After he settled, he took a degree in chemistry at Columbia University and later opened a drugstore.
Shamroy was educated at Cooper Union (1918), City College of New York (1919–20), and Columbia University (where he studied mechanical engineering). A product of a practical-minded family, young Leon often worked after school in one of his uncle's offices as a junior draftsman. Eventually he became an engineer himself, but left the field owing to inadequate remuneration. Some of his family migrated to California and became affiliated with D. W. Griffith. In 1920, he joined them at the Fox lab to help with the laboratory work and went on to spend thirteen years as a struggling technician.
His career in cinema began with experimental film shot on speculation and with the most rudimentary equipment. He became a cameraman in the 1920s when he filmed many of Charles Hutchinson's popular action films for Pathé. His first experimental film, The Last Moment (1928), was a collaboration with the Hungarian director Paul Fejos. It was the first silent film made without explanatory titles and was voted honor film of 1928 by the National Board of Review. Another film, Blindfold (In the Fog) attracted the attention of Hollywood, some of whom described Shamroy's camerawork as "worth its weight in gold."
Around this time, Shamroy went to Mexico where he worked for
Shamroy's next engagement was with an ethnological project in Asia that turned into something of a nightmare. He and the crew were terrified when a fourth-class passenger on the ship they were sailing on, the
Hollywood
B. P. Schulberg of Paramount spotted his work and signed him up in 1932. At the time, Shamroy was broke, for he had squandered what little money he had on "poor starving girls and on whiskey." John M. Stahl, for whom Shamroy later shot Leave Her to Heaven (1945) saw his film, The Last Moment, and, though highly impressed, thought Shamroy was "too artistic."[3]
Shamroy left Paramount with B. P. Schulberg's fall from grace. Soon thereafter, David O. Selznick sent for him to make a test for Janet Gaynor. However, to his dismay, Shamroy discovered that tests were being done of her by other cameramen to see which one they liked best. Karl Struss was one of the others; he took 12 hours to Shamroy's twenty minutes. Shamroy was hired to do the picture, The Young in Heart (1938).
With his talent and abilities now recognized, Shamroy landed a job through
In 1946, he shot Marilyn Monroe's first screen test. On her screen test, he recalled: "I thought, this girl will be another Harlow. Her natural beauty plus her inferiority complex gave her a look of mystery. I got a cold chill. This girl had something I hadn't seen since silent pictures. She had kind of a fantastic beauty like Gloria Swanson, and she got sex on a piece of film like Jean Harlow. Every frame of the test radiated sex. She didn't need a sound track, she was creating effects visually. She was showing us she could sell emotions in pictures."[4]
Later career
During the 1950s, Shamroy filmed most of Fox's big pictures. Of all his films, he was most proud of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). Despite the title, almost all of Snows was shot in the studio. A few establishing shots of the real mountain were undertaken by Charles G. Clarke.
Shamroy once noted: "The obtrusive camera is like a chattering person—something we can do without. It's okay for the camera to join the conversation, so to speak, but it must never dominate. It must never distract from the story. The real art of cinematography lies in the camera's ability to match the varied moods of players and story, or the pace of the scene."[citation needed]
Shamroy was notable for being gruff and short-tempered, regularly clashing with directors Rouben Mamoulian, John M. Stahl, and Otto Preminger. He was also known for being a perfectionist, something that Fritz Lang and Henry Fonda found irritating during filming of You Only Live Once.[6] He once claimed that Lee Garmes "will never see the day that he's as good as I am and that goes for anybody in the motion picture business", implying that he saw himself as better than any other cinematographer.[7]
Shamroy died in 1974 at the age of 72.
Family
He was married three times and had four children. On November 1, 1925, he married Rosamond Marcus, who gave birth to his son, Paul Shamroy (August 24, 1926 - May 12, 1969). They divorced in February 1937. He then married Audrey Mason, daughter of E. Mason Hopper, on February 2, 1938. They had two children: Patricia Mason and Timothy Cullinan. Their marriage ended in a divorce on April 23, 1948. From May 12, 1953, until his death, he was married to movie actress Mary Anderson. He and Anderson had one son, Anderson Alexander Shamroy, who died July 1, 1956, at the age of two months.
Academy Awards
Year | Title | Result |
---|---|---|
1938 | The Young in Heart | Nominated |
1940 | Down Argentine Way | Nominated |
1942 | Ten Gentlemen from West Point | Nominated |
1942 | The Black Swan | Won |
1944 | Wilson | Won |
1945 | Leave Her to Heaven | Won |
1949 | Prince of Foxes | Nominated |
1951 | David and Bathsheba | Nominated |
1952 | The Snows of Kilimanjaro | Nominated |
1953 | The Robe | Nominated |
1954 | The Egyptian | Nominated |
1955 | Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing | Nominated |
1956 | The King and I | Nominated |
1958 | South Pacific | Nominated |
1959 | Porgy and Bess | Nominated |
1963 | Cleopatra | Won |
1963 | The Cardinal | Nominated |
1965 | The Agony and the Ecstasy | Nominated |
Additional films
- Pirates of the Sky (1926)
- The Trunk Mystery (1926)
- Tongues of Scandal (1927)
- Hidden Aces (1927)
- Bitter Sweets (1928)
- The Tell-Tale Heart (1928)[8]
- Out with the Tide (1928)
- Alma de Gaucho (1930)
- Women Men Marry (1931)
- Stowaway (1932)
- Her Bodyguard (1933)
- Jennie Gerhardt (1933)
- Good Dame (1934)
- Thirty-Day Princess (1934)
- Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
- She Married Her Boss (1935)
- Accent on Youth (1935)
- Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935)
- Soak the Rich (1936)
- You Only Live Once (1937)
- Made for Each Other (1939)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
- The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)
- Little Old New York (1940)
- Lillian Russell (1940)
- Four Sons (1940)
- Tin Pan Alley (1940)
- The Great American Broadcast (1941)
- That Night in Rio (1941)
- Moon Over Miami (1941)
- Roxie Hart (1942)
- Crash Dive (1943)
- Stormy Weather (1943)
- Claudia (1943)
- Buffalo Bill (1944)
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
- The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)
- That Lady in Ermine (1948)
- Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)
- King of the Khyber Rifles (1953)
- Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955)
- The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
- Desk Set (1957)
- John Goldfarb, Please Come Home(1965)
- Do Not Disturb (1965)
- Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
- Caprice (also appeared in)(1967)
- Planet of the Apes (1968)
Other notable events
- Directory of photography with Schulberg Productions, 1933–37
- Director of photography with Selznick International 1938
- Director of Cinematography with 20th Century Fox1933–
- President of the Academy Award Winners School of Photography, Incorporated, 1946
- Film Daily Critics Award 1949, 53, 54, 55
- Motion Picture Association of America(chairman of the photography committee research division 1946–1950)
- Society of Motion Picture EngineersClub
References
- ^ Lightman, Herb A (August 1974). "A.S.C Mourns the Passing of Leon Shamroy". American Cinematographer. 55 (8).
- ISBN 978-0824057640.
- ISBN 978-0253138217.
- ISBN 9780446198189.
- ISBN 978-0253138217.
- ISBN 9780806509716.
- ISBN 9781771431262.
- ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.
Sources
- International Photographer Magazine, 1997
- Who's Who in America1960–1961
External links
- Leon Shamroy at IMDb
- Leon Shamroy at Find a Grave