Lee Garmes, A.S.C.

American Society of Cinematographers

The American Society of Cinematographers is an educational, cultural, and professional organization. It is not a labor union, and it is not a guild. Membership is by invitation and is extended only to directors of photography and special effects experts with distinguished credits in the film...

 (May 27, 1898 - August 31, 1978) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

. During his career, he worked with directors Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks

Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...

, Max Ophuls

Max Ophüls

Maximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...

, Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...

, Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

, King Vidor

King Vidor

King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...

, Nicholas Ray

Nicholas Ray

Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....

 and Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway was an American film director and producer. He is best known as a director of Westerns, especially starring John Wayne.-Background:...

, whom he had met as a young man when the two first came to Hollywood in the silent era

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

. He also co-directed two films with legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht: Angels Over Broadway and Actors and Sin.

Biography and career

Born in Peoria, Illinois

Peoria, Illinois

Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...

, Garmes first came to Hollywood in 1916. His first job was as an assistant in the paint department at Thomas H. Ince Studios, but he soon became a camera assistant before graduating to full-time cameraman. His earliest films were comedy shorts, and his career did not fully take off until the introduction of sound

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

.

Garmes was married to film actress Ruth Hall from 1933 until his death in 1978. He is interred in the Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery

Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery

Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery at 1341 GlenwoodRoad in Glendale, California was established in 1884 as Grand View Cemetery.The cemetery was purchased by Len C. Davis in the 1920s, renamed Grand View Memorial Park, and extensively remodeled. A 40 foot entrance arch was added on what is now...

 in Glendale, California

Glendale, California

Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...

.

Garmes was one of the earliest proponents of video technology

Video

Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

, which he advocated as early as 1972. That year, he had been hired by Technicolor

Technicolor

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 to lens the short film Why, which was intended to test whether video was a viable technology for shooting feature films.

According to American Cinematographer magazine, "Although officially unaccredited, Lee Garmes photographed a considerable portion of Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind (film)

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...

. Many consider the famous railroad yard sequence among his finest cinematic efforts."

Awards

Wins

• Academy Awards
  Academy Awards
  An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
  
  : Oscar
  Academy Award for Best Cinematography
  The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
  
  , Best Cinematography, for Shanghai Express; 1933.
• Twice received the Eastman Kodak Award.

Nominations

• Academy Awards: Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Morocco; 1931.
• Academy Awards: Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Since You Went Away; 1945. Shared with: Stanley Cortez
  Stanley Cortez
  Stanley Cortez, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He worked on over seventy films, including Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons , Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter , Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve , and Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor and The...
  
  .
• Academy Awards: Oscar, Best Cinematography, for The Big Fisherman; 1960.

Filmography

• The Hope Chest (1918)
• I'll Ge Him Yet (1919)
• Nugget Nell (1919)
• Out of Luck (1919)
• Fighting Blood (1923)
• The Lighthouse By the Sea (1924)
• The Telephone Girl (1924)
• Find Your Man (1924)
• Keep Smiling (1925)
• Goat Getter (1925)
• The Pacemakers (1925)
• Crack O' Dawn (1925)
• A Social Celebrity
  A Social Celebrity
  A Social Celebrity is a silent comedy drama starring Louise Brooks as a small town manicurist who goes to New York with her boyfriend , a barber who poses as a French count...
  
   (1926)
• The Popular Sin (1926)
• The Palm Beach Girl (1926)
• The Show Off (1926)
• The Carnival Girl (1926)
• The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926)
• The Garden of Allah (1927)
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927)
• The Love Mart (1927)
• Rose of the Golden West (1927)
• Waterfront (1928)
• The Yellow Lily (1928)
• The Barker (1928)
• The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1928)
• His Captive Woman (1929)
• Say It With Songs
  Say It with Songs
  Say It With Songs is a 1929 All-Talking musical drama motion picture which was released by Warner Bros.. The film starred Al Jolson and was a follow-up to his previous film, The Singing Fool .-Production:...
  
   (1929)
• Love and the Devil (1929)
• The Great Divide (1929)
• Disraeli
  Disraeli (film)
  Disraeli is a film that was adapted by Julien Josephson and De Leon Anthony from a play by Louis N. Parker. The film was directed by Alfred E. Green....
  
   (1929)
• Prisoners (1929)
• Morocco
  Morocco (1930 film)
  Morocco is a 1930 film in which a Foreign Legionnaire meets and falls in love with a singer. It was directed by Josef von Sternberg and stars Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich and Adolphe Menjou. The story was adapted by Jules Furthman from the novel Amy Jolly by Benno Vigny...
  
   (1930)
• The Other Tomorrow (1930)
• Lilies of the Field (1930)
• Whoopee!
  Whoopee! (film)
  Whoopee is a 1930 "All-Talking All-Color" musical comedy film photographed in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film closely followed the stage show produced by Florenz Ziegfeld in 1928.-Production:...
  
   (1930)
• Bright Lights (1930)
• Spring is Here (1930)
• Song of the Flame
  Song of the Flame (film)
  Song of the Flame is a musical operetta film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was the first color film to feature a widescreen sequence using a process called Vitascope, the trademark name for Warner Bros.' widescreen process...
  
   (1930)
• City Streets
  City Streets (film)
  City Streets is a 1931 Pre-Code crime film based upon a story written by Dashiell Hammett, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and starring Gary Cooper, Sylvia Sidney, Paul Lukas and Guy Kibbee.-Plot:...
  
   (1931)
• Dishonored
  Dishonored
  Dishonored is a 1931 romantic spy film made by Paramount Pictures. It was co-written , directed and edited by Josef von Sternberg...
  
   (1931)
• An American Tragedy (1931)
• Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931)
• Kiss Me Again
  Kiss Me Again (1931 film)
  Kiss Me Again is a musical operetta film filmed entirely in Technicolor. It was originally released in the United States as Toast of the Legion late in 1930, but was quickly withdrawn when Warner Bros. realized that the public had grown weary of musicals. The Warner Bros...
  
   (1931)
• Fighting Caravans (1931)
• Call Her Savage (1932)
• Shanghai Express
  Shanghai Express (film)
  Shanghai Express is a 1932 American film directed by Josef von Sternberg. The pre-Code picture stars Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, and Warner Oland. It was written by Jules Furthman, based on a story by Harry Hervey. It was the fourth of seven teamings of Sternberg and Dietrich.The...
  
   (1932)
• Strange Interlude
  Strange Interlude (1932 film)
  Strange Interlude is a 1932 American romantic drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. The film stars Norma Shearer and Clark Gable, and is based on the play Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill.-Plot:...
  
   (1932)
• Scarface
  Scarface (1932 film)
  Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...
  
   (1932)
• Smilin' Through
  Smilin' Through (1932 film)
  Smilin' Through is a 1932 MGM film based on the play by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin, also named Smilin' Through.The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1932. It was adapted from Cowl and Murfin's play by James Bernard Fagan, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda and Claudine...
  
   (1932)
• Face in the Sky (1933)
• My Lips Betray (1933)
• Zoo in Budapest
  Zoo in Budapest
  Zoo in Budapest is a film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Loretta Young, Gene Raymond, O.P. Heggie, and Paul Fix.- Plot :Flamboyant Zani is a kindly young man who grew up entirely and works in the zoo in Budapest. His only true friends are the zoo's animals, and indeed Zani has been...
  
   (1933)
• Shanghai Madness (1933)
• George White's Scandals of 1934 (1934)
• Crime Without Passion
  Crime Without Passion
  Crime Without Passion is a 1934 American drama film directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, starring Claude Rains. It is the first of four pictures written, produced and directed by Hecht and MacArthur for Paramount Pictures...
  
   (1934)
• The Nephew of Paris (1934)
• I am Suzanne (1934)
• Once in a Blue Moon (1935)

• Dreaming Life (1935)
• The Scoundrel (1935)
• Miss Bracegirdle Doews Her Duty (1936)
• The Sky's the Limit
  The Sky's the Limit (1938 film)
  The Sky's the Limit is a 1938 British musical comedy film directed by Jack Buchanan and Lee Garmes and starring Buchanan, Mara Loseff and William Kendall.-Cast:* Jack Buchanan - Dave Harber* Mara Loseff - Isobella* William Kendall - Thornwell Beamish...
  
   (1938)
• Gone with the Wind
  Gone with the Wind (film)
  Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
  
   (1939)
• Jungle Book (1942)
• Lydia
  Lydia (film)
  Lydia is a 1941 drama film, directed by Julien Duvivier. It stars Merle Oberon as Lydia MacMillan, a woman whose life is seen from her spoiled, immature youth through bitter and resentful middle years, until at last she is old and accepting...
  
   (1941)
• Chica Girl (1942)
• Footlight Serenade (1942)
• Jack London
  Jack London (1943 film)
  Jack London, also known as The Story of Jack London, is a 1943 American biographical film made by Samuel Bronston Productions and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Alfred Santell and produced by Samuel Bronston with Joseph H...
  
   (1943)
• Stormy Weather
  Stormy Weather (1943 film)
  Stormy Weather is a 1943 American musical film produced and released by 20th Century Fox. The film is one of two major Hollywood musicals produced in 1943 with primarily African-American casts, the other being MGM's Cabin in the Sky, and is considered a time capsule showcasing some of the top...
  
   (1943)
• Forever and a Day (1943)
• Flight for Freedom (1943)
• Guest in the House
  Guest in the House
  Guest in the House is an American film noir directed by John Brahm. The drama features Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Aline MacMahon, among others.-Cast:* Anne Baxter as Evelyn Heath* Ralph Bellamy as Douglas Proctor* Aline MacMahon as Aunt Martha...
  
   (1944)
• Since You Went Away
  Since You Went Away
  Since You Went Away is a 1944 film distributed by United Artists, a big-budget epic about the American home front during World War II. It was directed by John Cromwell and adapted and produced by David O. Selznick from the novel Since You Went Away: Letters to a Soldier from His Wife by Margaret...
  
   (1944)
• None Shall Escapee (1944)
• Paris-Underground (1945)
• Love Letters
  Love Letters (1945 film)
  Love Letters is a 1945 film adapted by Ayn Rand from the novel Pity My Simplicity by Christopher Massie. It was directed by William Dieterle and stars Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ann Richards, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper and Anita Louise...
  
   (1945)
• Young Widow (1946)
• Duel in the Sun (1946)
• The Searching Wind (1946)
• Specter of the Rose
  Specter of the Rose
  Specter of the Rose is a film written and directed by Ben Hecht, starring Judith Anderson, Ivan Kirov, Viola Essen, Michael Chekhov, and Lionel Stander and with choreography by Tamara Geva, and music by George Antheil....
  
   (1946)
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (film)
  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a 1947 comedy film, loosely based on the short story of the same name by James Thurber. It stars Danny Kaye as a young daydreaming editor for a book publishing firm. The film was adapted for the screen by Ken Englund, Everett Freeman, and Philip Rapp, and directed...
  
   (1947)
• The Paradine Case
  The Paradine Case
  The Paradine Case is a 1947 American courtroom drama film, set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick. The screenplay was written by Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht, from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the novel by Robert Smythe Hichens...
  
   (1947)
• Nightmare Alley
  Nightmare Alley (1947 film)
  Nightmare Alley is a 20th Century Fox film noir starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, and directed by Edmund Goulding. The movie rights for the 1946 novel of the same name, written by William Lindsay Gresham, were bought by Power, who planned on starring in the film...
  
   (1947)
• The Fighting Kentuckian
  The Fighting Kentuckian
  The Fighting Kentuckian American comedy action film starring John Wayne and Oliver Hardy. The movie was written and directed by George Waggner and made by Republic Pictures...
  
   (1949)
• Roseanna McCoy
  Roseanna McCoy
  Roseanna McCoy is a 1949 American drama film directed by Irving Reis. The screenplay by John Collier, based on the 1947 novel of the same title by Alberta Hannum, is a romanticized and semi-fictionalized account of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.-Plot:...
  
   (1949)
• My Foolish Heart (1949)
• Caught
  Caught (film)
  Caught is an American dramatic film starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Robert Ryan, directed by Max Ophuls, and based on a novel by Libbie Block. Caught has been released on DVD in France and the UK....
  
   (1949)
• Our Very Own
  Our Very Own (1950 film)
  Our Very Own is a 1950 American drama film directed by David Miller. The screenplay by F. Hugh Herbert focuses on a teenaged girl who learns she was adopted as an infant.-Plot:...
  
   (1950)
• My Friend Irma Goes West (1950)
• Detective Story (1951)
• Saturday's Hero (1951)
• That's My Boy (1951)
• Actors and Sin (1952)
• The Captive City
  The Captive City
  The Captive City is a 1952 film, considered film noir, directed by Robert Wise.John Forsythe plays a crusading small city newspaper editor in a semidocumentary depiction of corruption and vice in paranoid post-World War II America. This is one of several 1950s films to have storylines influenced by...
  
   (1952)
• The Lusty Men (1952)
• Outlaw Territory (1953)
• Thunder in the East (1953)
• Abdulla the Great
  Abdulla the Great
  Abdulla the Great, also known as Abdullah's Harem is a 1955 comedy film made by Misr Universal Cairo and Sphinx Films and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. It was directed and produced by Gregory Ratoff, from a screenplay by Boris Ingster and George St. George, based on the...
  
   (1954)
• The Desperate Hours
  The Desperate Hours (film)
  The Desperate Hours is a 1955 film from Paramount Pictures starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. The movie was produced and directed by William Wyler and based on a novel and play of the same name written by Joseph Hayes which were loosely based on actual events.The original Broadway...
  
   (1955)
• Man With the Gun (1955)
• Land of the Pharaohs
  Land of the Pharaohs
  Land of the Pharaohs is a 1955 CinemaScope epic film made by the Continental Company, Ltd and presented by Warner Bros. It was directed and produced by Howard Hawks from a screenplay by Harold Jack Bloom, Harry Kurnitz, and the novelist William Faulkner...
  
   (1955)
• The Bottom of the Bottle (1956)
• The Sharkfighters (1956)
• D-Day the Sixth of June
  D-Day the Sixth of June
  D-Day the Sixth of June is a 1956 romantic war film made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Henry Koster and produced by Charles Brackett from a screenplay by Ivan Moffat and Harry Brown, based on the novel, The Sixth of June by Lionel Shapiro....
  
   (1956)
• The Big Boodle (1956)
• Never Love a Stranger (1958)
• Happy Anniversary
  Happy Anniversary (film)
  Happy Anniversary is a 1959 comedy film starring David Niven and Mitzi Gaynor.Directed by David Miller, the movie's cast also included Carl Reiner and a young Patty Duke. Duke's next film, The Miracle Worker, would earn her an Academy Award.-Plot:...
  
   (1959)
• The Big Fisherman
  The Big Fisherman
  The Big Fisherman is a 1959 American film directed by Frank Borzage about the later life of Peter, one of the closest disciples of Jesus.The film is adapted from a novel written by Lloyd C. Douglas...
  
   (1959)
• Misty
  Misty (1961 film)
  Misty is the name of a 1961 film based upon Marguerite Henry's award-winning children's book Misty of Chincoteague, published in 1947.-1961 filming:...
  
   (1961)
• Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
• Ten Girls Ago (1962)
• Lady in a Cage (1964)
• A Big Hand for the Little Lady
  A Big Hand for the Little Lady
  A Big Hand for the Little Lady is a 1966 western film, made by Eden Productions Inc. and released by Warner Bros...
  
   (1966)
• How to Save a Marriage (And Ruin Your Life) (1968)
• Why (1972)

External links

...

• Lee Garmes at the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers.
• Lee Garmes at Film Reference.
• Lee Garmes Cinema Institute