As per our current Database, Robert Surtees has been died on 5 January, 1985 at Monterey, California, USA.
When Robert Surtees die, Robert Surtees was 79 years old.
| Popular As | Robert Surtees |
| Occupation | Cinematographer |
| Age | 79 years old |
| Zodiac Sign | Leo |
| Born | August 9, 1906 (Covington, Kentucky, USA) |
| Birthday | August 9 |
| Town/City | Covington, Kentucky, USA |
| Nationality | USA |
Robert Surtees’s zodiac sign is Leo. According to astrologers, people born under the sign of Leo are natural born leaders. They are dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. Leo often has many friends for they are generous and loyal. Self-confident and attractive, this is a Sun sign capable of uniting different groups of people and leading them as one towards a shared cause, and their healthy sense of humor makes collaboration with other people even easier.
Robert Surtees was born in the Year of the Horse. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Horse love to roam free. They’re energetic, self-reliant, money-wise, and they enjoy traveling, love and intimacy. They’re great at seducing, sharp-witted, impatient and sometimes seen as a drifter. Compatible with Dog or Tiger.
Robert L. Surtees began his working life as a portrait photographer and retoucher, before becoming camera assistant at Universal in 1927. He spent a lengthy apprenticeship (15 years) working under such experienced cinematographers as Hal Mohr, Joseph Ruttenberg and Gregg Toland.
Between 1929 and 1930, he was seconded to the Universal studios in Berlin, subsequently spending the remainder of the decade at First National, Warner Brothers and Pathe. He settled at MGM in 1943 (remaining under contract until 1962), and soon developed a reputation as one of Hollywood's foremost lighting cameramen.
In keeping with the glamorous, lavish look of MGM product of the time, Surtees typically employed high-key lighting. This particularly suited big budget colour epics, like Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959) (filmed in the large screen Camera 65 process with anamorphic lenses, which greatly enhanced colour definition and sharpness); expansive outdoor musicals like Oklahoma! (1955) (the first picture shot in 70 mm Todd-AO ultra wide- screen format); or lush, romantic period drama like Raintree County (1957).
Forever at the cutting edge of technological innovation, Surtees was an extremely versatile craftsman. He excelled at every genre and photographic process, superb at shooting sweeping scenery (for example, his Technicolor lensing of King Solomon's Mines (1950)on location in Africa), or bringing the best out of his close-ups.
An undoubted high point in his career would have to be the 9-minute chariot race from "Ben-Hur".Surtees received the first of his 16 Oscar nominations for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) (when the studio system was at its peak), and his last - some 33 years later - for The Turning Point (1977).
Testimony to his ageless endurance was being picked by director Peter Bogdanovich to shoot The Last Picture Show (1971). In the same nostalgic vein, his work on The Sting (1973), photographed in subtle sepia tones (the film was deemed by the Library of Congress as 'aesthetically significant'), contributed greatly to its winning 7 Academy Awards.
