Russell Metty

Cinematographer Russell Metty, a superb craftsman who worked with such top directors as John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Orson Welles, was born in Los Angeles on Septmeber 20, 1906. Entering the movie industry as a lab assistant, he apprenticed as an assistant cameraman and graduated to lighting cameraman at RKO Radio Pictures in 1935. Metty's ability to create effects with black-and-white contrast while shooting twilight and night were on display in two films he shot for Welles, The Stranger (1946) and the classic Touch of Evil (1958), the latter showing his mastery of complex crane shots. (Metty shot additional scenes for Welles' second masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), whose lighting cameraman was Stanley Cortez but had the look of Citizen Kane (1941), which was shot by Gregg Toland). At Universal in the 1950s he enjoyed a productive collaboration with director Douglas Sirk on ten films from 1953-59, including Sirk's masterpieces Magnificent Obsession