- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLeonard Tolstoy Shamroy
- Nickname
- The Cameraman's Cameraman
- Leon Shamroy, born Leon Shamroyevsky, was an American film cinematographer. He is best known for The Black Swan (1942),Wilson (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Robe (1953), Cleopatra (1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and Planet of the Apes (1968).
He and Charles Lang share the record for most number of Academy Award nominations for Cinematography. During his five-decade career, he gained eighteen nominations with four wins, sharing the record with Joseph Ruttenberg.
Shamroy died in 1974 at the age of 72.
- IMDb mini biography by: Pedro Borges
- SpousesMary Anderson(May 12, 1953 - July 7, 1974) (his death, 1 child)Audrey Mason(February 2, 1938 - April 23, 1948) (divorced, 2 children)Rosamund Marcus(November 1, 1925 - February 1, 1937) (divorced, 1 child)
- Children
- RelativesBernard B. Ray(Sibling)
- Though Ben Lyon may have been the first to discover Marilyn Monroe, it was Shamroy who shot her very first Technicolor screen test. The six-minute test was filmed on the same set that had been used for the Betty Grable movie, Mother Wore Tights (1947). Ironically, both Monroe and Grable would later co-star in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
- Had a reputation for being very gruff and short-tempered.
- Cinematographer for six Oscar Best Picture nominees: Wilson (1944), Twelve O'Clock High (1949), The Robe (1953), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The King and I (1956) and Cleopatra (1963).
- President American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) 1947-1948.
- He is one of only six cinematographers to have a star on the famous "Hollywood Walk of Fame"; the others are Hal Mohr, Ray Rennahan, J. Peverell Marley, Conrad L. Hall and Haskell Wexler.
- God was a great photographer. He'd only gotten one light.
Lee Garmes will never see the day that he's as good as I am, and that goes for anybody in the motion picture business. - [recalling the screen test he shot for Marilyn Monroe in 1946] I thought, "This girl will be another Harlow [Jean Harlow]". Her natural beauty plus her inferiority complex gave her a look of mystery. I got a cold chill. This girl had something I hadn't seen since silent pictures.
- [on Forever Amber (1947)] There was something strange about that picture. Linda Darnell was burned in the Great Fire of London, and in Anna and the King of Siam (1946) she was burned to death as a punishment . . . and then, it's extraordinary, she actually died in a fire [in her home in 1965]. . . And she only just escaped death in the picture, because, during the Great Fire, a roof caved in, I pulled the camera back and she only just got out with it in time. She was terrified of fire, almost as though she had a premonition.
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