Leon Shamroy, A.S.C. (July 16, 1901 – July 7, 1974) was an American film cinematographer known for his work in 20th Century Fox motion pictures shot in Technicolor. He and Charles Lang share the record for most Oscar nominations for Cinematography. During his half-century career, he gained 18 nominations with 4 wins, sharing the record for wins with Joseph Ruttenberg.
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 Robert Flaherty on a film called Acoma, the Sky City, a story about an ancient Indian tribe. Unfortunately, the footage was destroyed when the warehouse in which it was stored went up in flames. Flaherty wanted to form a new company and invited Shamroy's participation, but after paying his $10 union fee Shamroy only had $15 left to his name. Instead, he made a two-reel documentary film based on an Indian legend. It was never released. Shamroy's next employment was at Columbia with Harry Cohn. It lasted five days; Cohn wasn't ready for artistic people yet. After his brief stint at Columbia, Shamroy worked for Jack Cummings, Louis B. Mayer's nephew, on a series of MGM parodies of the famous screen epics, starring dogs. In one of the films, So Quiet on the Canine Front, the dogs were so realistic that when they were shot down the Humane Society was enraged.
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 Empress of Canada, ran amok and stabbed thirty people to death two days out of Yokohama. Years later, while working on a picture called Crash Dive (1943), he learned that the star, Tyrone Power, had experienced the same shipboard horror. Somehow, Shamroy managed to survive the ordeal with his camera and 100,000 feet of film intact. He traveled throughout Japan in 1930 and shot a lot of contraband footage. He left for China where, again, he shot secret footage before continuing on to Manila. He made films in places as far distant as the Dutch East Indies, Bali, Samarai, and Batavia. During World War II, he gave his material over to the War Department in Washington, D.C., which used it to determine bombing targets.
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."