Leon Shamroy
| Leon Shamroy | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 16, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | July 7, 1974 (aged 72) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Cinematographer |
| Title | A.S.C. President (1947-48) |
| Spouse(s) | Rosamond Marcus (1925–1937; divorced; 1 child) Audrey Mason (1938–1948; divorced; 2 children) Mary Anderson (1953-1974; his death; 1 child) |
| Awards |
Cleopatra (1963) Leave Her to Heaven (1945) Wilson (1944) The Black Swan (1942) |
Leon Shamroy, A.S.C. (July 16, 1901 – July 7, 1974) was an American film cinematographer. He and Charles Lang share the record for most number of Academy Award nominations for Cinematography. During his five-decade career, he gained eighteen nominations with four wins.
In 1889, Shamroy's Russian father 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 (1919–1920), and Columbia University (where he studied mechanical engineering). A product of a practical-minded family, after school young Leon often worked 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 the 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."
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