Best Cinematography, 1941

Awards presented February 26, 1942

The nominees were ... 
(Black-and-White) 

• Edward Cronjager, Sun Valley Serenade 
• Karl Freund, The Chocolate Soldier  
• Charles Lang, Sundown 
• Rudolph Maté, That Hamilton Woman 
• Arthur Miller, How Green Was My Valley 
• Sol Polito, Sergeant York 
• Joseph Ruttenberg, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
• Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane 
• Leo Tover, Hold Back the Dawn 
• Joseph Walker, Here Comes Mr. Jordan 

(Color) 

• Wilfred M. Cline, Karl Struss, William Snyder, Aloma of the South Seas  
• Karl Freund, W. Howard Greene, Blossoms in the Dust 
• Bert Glennon, Dive Bomber 
• Harry Hallenberger, Ray Rennahan, Louisiana Purchase 
• Ernest Palmer, Ray Rennahan, Blood and Sand 
• William V. Skall, Leonard Smith, Billy the Kid  

... when they should have been ... 

(Black-and-White) 

• Arthur Edeson, The Maltese Falcon  
• Charles Lang, Sundown 
• Rudolph Maté, That Hamilton Woman 
• Arthur Miller, How Green Was My Valley 
• Sol Polito, Sergeant York 
• Joseph Ruttenberg, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
• Harry Stradling, Suspicion 
• Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane 
• Leo Tover, Hold Back the Dawn 
• Joseph Walker, Here Comes Mr. Jordan 

(Color) 

• Wilfred M. Cline, Karl Struss, William Snyder, Aloma of the South Seas  
• Karl Freund, W. Howard Greene, Blossoms in the Dust 
• Bert Glennon, Dive Bomber 
• Harry Hallenberger, Ray Rennahan, Louisiana Purchase 
• Ernest Palmer, Ray Rennahan, Blood and Sand 
• William V. Skall, Leonard Smith, Billy the Kid 

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

Arthur Miller, How Green Was My Valley. 

Miller was an industry pioneer who began as a bit player and camera assistant while he was still in his teens, and worked as a photographer on the 1914 serial The Perils of Pauline. This was the first of his three Oscars, all of which he won for his work at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s. How Green Was My Valley was beautifully filmed, and Miller would certainly have deserved his win for it if it weren't for the breakthrough cinematography of Gregg Toland on Citizen Kane. 

(Color) 

Ernest Palmer, Ray Rennahan, Blood and Sand. 

A remake of the 1922 melodrama starring Rudolph Valentino, about a bullfighter (Tyrone Power) under the spell of two women, played by Rita Hayworth and Linda Darnell. Director Rouben Mamoulian worked with Palmer and Rennahan in an attempt to capture the look of Spanish painting. Goya or Velazquez it isn't, but much of it is quite handsome. Unfortunately, the story is dated and dull. 

Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand

Linda Darnell and Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand

 

Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand 

... when it should have gone to ... 

Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane. 

Welles lines up a shot as Toland waits

 As a novice filmmaker, Orson Welles found in Toland both a teacher and a willing experimenter. The visual richness, the dramatic lighting, the deep-focus compositions are all Toland achievements that Welles used in in a fresh and inventive way. Toland won only one Oscar, for Wuthering Heights, out of a total of six nominations. He had begun his career as an apprentice to George Barnes, and at the time of his death in 1948, from a heart attack at the age of forty-four, he was the highest-paid director of photography in Hollywood.

Orson Welles in the foreground, Joseph Cotten in the middle ground, and Everett Sloane in the distance

Dramatic back-lighting in one of Citizen Kane's more expressionistic scenes

Agnes Moorehead as Kane's mother signs his fate as the boy plays with a sled outside

The elderly Kane in Xanadu's hall of mirrors