The nominees were ...
(Black-and-White)
If the test of a cinematographer's skill is the production of images that linger in the memory, then Edeson's work on this film certainly passes the test. Of course, there are other reasons why we remember Casablanca as fondly as we do, but this site is devoted to honoring what has lasted, and not what caught the Academy's fancy at a given time. Edeson was nominated three times and never won. In fact, he wasn't even producer Hal Wallis's first choice to shoot the film; James Wong Howe was. But as the saying goes, You must remember this:
- Arthur Edeson, Casablanca
- Tony Gaudio, Corvette K-225
- James Wong Howe, The North Star
- James Wong Howe, Elmer Dyer, Charles Marshall, Air Force
- Charles Lang, So Proudly We Hail!
- Rudolph Maté, Sahara
- Arthur Miller, The Song of Bernadette
- Joseph Ruttenberg, Madame Curie
- John Seitz, Five Graves to Cairo
- Harry Stradling, The Human Comedy
(Color)
- Charles G. Clarke, Allen Davey, Hello, Frisco, Hello
- Edward Cronjager, Heaven Can Wait
- George Folsey, Thousands Cheer
- Hal Mohr, W. Howard Greene, Phantom of the Opera
- Ray Rennahan, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Leonard Smith, Lassie Come Home
... when they should have been ...
(Black-and-White)
- Arthur Edeson, Casablanca
- James Wong Howe, Elmer Dyer, Charles Marshall, Air Force
- Charles Lang, So Proudly We Hail!
- Rudolph Maté, Sahara
- Arthur Miller, The Song of Bernadette
- Ronald Neame, In Which We Serve
- Joseph Ruttenberg, Madame Curie
- John Seitz, Five Graves to Cairo
- Ted Tetzlaff, The More the Merrier
- Joseph Valentine, Shadow of a Doubt
(Color)
- Charles G. Clarke, Allen Davey, Hello, Frisco, Hello
- Edward Cronjager, The Gang's All Here
- Edward Cronjager, Heaven Can Wait
- Hal Mohr, W. Howard Greene, Phantom of the Opera
- Ray Rennahan, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Leonard Smith, Lassie Come Home
And the Oscar went to ...
(Black-and-White)
This long, sentimental, ponderously reverent religious fable was a big hit but hasn't stood up well with the passage of time. Still, it's a must-see for those interested in Hollywood's treatment of religion (Linda Darnell as the Virgin Mary!) and as a demonstration of the technical resources available to a big studio going all out on a prestige project. One of those resources was Miller's cinematography, which won him the second of his three Oscars.
(Color)
Gaston Leroux's old chestnut about the disfigured composer who lurks in the vaults of the Paris Opéra achieved film fame with the Lon Chaney version in 1925, which is still better than the many, many remakes. This is the one with Claude Rains menacing Susanna Foster and Nelson Eddy, and high-camp operatic pastiches based on themes from Tchaikovsky and Chopin. Midwar economies had made many studios cut back on color productions, but Universal went all out for this one. Still, despite the contributions of Mohr and Greene, it's the studio's black-and-white horror films we remember. This is the second Oscar for Mohr, whose first was the only write-in winner in Oscar history, for A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is Greene's only competitive Oscar, but he had received two honorary awards for his pioneering color work on A Star Is Born and The Garden of Allah.
... when it should have gone to ...
(Black-and-White)
 |
| Arthur Edeson |
If the test of a cinematographer's skill is the production of images that linger in the memory, then Edeson's work on this film certainly passes the test. Of course, there are other reasons why we remember Casablanca as fondly as we do, but this site is devoted to honoring what has lasted, and not what caught the Academy's fancy at a given time. Edeson was nominated three times and never won. In fact, he wasn't even producer Hal Wallis's first choice to shoot the film; James Wong Howe was. But as the saying goes, You must remember this: 
(Color)
 |
| The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat |
 |
| Edward Cronjager |
The Gang's All Here is a well-nigh indescribable musical, whose nugatory plot -- something about the romantic rivalry of Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda over serviceman James Ellison -- isn't worth going into. All you really need to know is that it was directed by Busby Berkeley and that the musical numbers have all the mad inventiveness of the ones he staged for Warner Bros. in the 1930s with the addition of some of the most lurid Technicolor ever committed to celluloid. The highlight is Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," with chorus girls handling fruit in ways that make you sure the censors had never read Freud. Cronjager was nominated for Heaven Can Wait, a delightful film in its own right, but certainly more conservative in its use of color than this movie, and he would probably be appalled to be remembered for The Gang's All Here instead. He was nominated seven times, but never won.
