Best Cinematography, 1942

Awards presented March 4, 1943

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

• Charles Clarke, Moontide 
• Stanley Cortez, The Magnificent Ambersons 
• Edward Cronjager, The Pied Piper 
• James Wong Howe, Kings Row 
• Rudolph Maté, The Pride of the Yankees 
• John Mescall, Take a Letter, Darling 
• Arthur Miller, This Above All 
• Joseph Ruttenberg, Mrs. Miniver    
• Leon Shamroy, Ten Gentlemen From West Point 
• Ted Tezlaff, The Talk of the Town 

(Color) 

• Edward Cronjager, William V. Skall, To the Shores of Tripoli  
• W. Howard Greene, Jungle Book 
• Milton Krasner, William V. Skall, W. Howard Greene, Arabian Nights  
• Victor Milner, William V. Skall, Reap the Wild Wind 
• Sol Polito, Captains of the Clouds 
• Leon Shamroy, The Black Swan    

And the Oscar went to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

Joseph Ruttenberg, Mrs. Miniver.  

The Academy was smitten with Mrs. Miniver, and although Ruttenberg's cinematography for it strikes no one today as exceptionally innovative, the Oscar took its place among what would eventually be four, all of them won during his long tenure at MGM. 

(Color) 

Leon Shamroy, The Black Swan. 

Leon Shamroy

 A fairly routine swashbuckler from a novel by Rafael Sabatini, who was kind of a master in the genre. Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara star -- O'Hara in particular was a favorite of color cinematographers because of her bright red hair. This was the first of Shamroy's four wins -- a record tied only by his fellow 1942 cinematography winner, Joseph Ruttenberg. He also has the tie for most nominations -- eighteen -- with Charles B. Lang. A graduate of Columbia in mechanical engineering, Shamroy came west in 1920 and became a technician in the laboratory at Fox. He began experimenting with making movies, and in 1932 signed with Paramount. He moved to 20th Century-Fox in 1938 and spent the remainder of his career there, pioneering the studio's use of color and later its development of the wide-screen process Cinemascope.

Maureen O'Hara and Tyrone Power in The Black Swan 

... when it should have gone to ... 

(Black-and-White) 

Stanley Cortez, The Magnificent Ambersons. 

Orson Welles and Stanley Cortez

Stanley Cortez was called Stanislaus Krantz when he was born in New York City, but in Hollywood he changed his name after his actor brother, Jacob Krantz, became a "Latin lover" movie star as Ricardo Cortez. He began as a set designer for still photographers including Edward Steichen, worked as a newsreel cameraman, and served as an assistant to such eminent cinematographers as Karl Struss, Charles Rosher, Lee Garmes, and Arthur Miller before becoming a director of photography on B-pictures at Universal. Ambersons was, in fact, his first major assignment, and he found himself following in the footsteps of Citizen Kane's cinematographer, Gregg Toland. Cortez proved equal to the task, helped along by Orson Welles's newly acquired expertise, especially in Toland's specialty, deep focus. He shared his second Oscar nomination with his mentor Lee Garmes, for Since You Went Away. They were hired after producer David O. Selznick fired the original cinematographer, George Barnes, for not photographing Claudette Colbert to his satisfaction. But Cortez's greatest work as a cinematographer, apart from The Magnificent Ambersons, is probably on The Night of the Hunter, another of those great movies inexplicably ignored by the Academy.  

Cortez's use of light and shadow is essential to the look of The Magnificent Ambersons