Stanley Cortez; Leading Cinematographer

Cinematographer Stanley Cortez, whose powerful images in such American classics as “The Magnificent Ambersons” and “Night of the Hunter” won him top honors, has died. He was 89.

Working with such directors as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Samuel Fuller, Cortez distinguished himself as an artist of great ability.

Seven years ago, when he was honored with his fourth major award from the American Society of Cinematographers, society President Leonard South said: “He approaches film like a fine painter.”

And Stephen H. Burum, whose cinematography credits include “The Untouchables” and “The War of the Roses,” said Cortez’s great strength was in his ability to film extraordinarily powerful images that reflect the content of the scenes without drawing attention to the technique.

As for himself, Cortez said his best teacher was life itself.

“All of us in the creative field must be observers of human life,” Cortez once said. “The things that you experience give you the grammar of life itself, which you interpret in your work.”

Born Stanislaus Krantz in New York City on Nov. 4, 1908, Cortez began his career as an assistant to noted portrait photographers.

While working as a portrait photographer in New York in the 1920s, he came to Los Angeles to visit his brother, silent film star Ricardo Cortez.

“I walked into the studio and saw hundreds of lights,” Cortez recalled in 1990. “It was a big set with 300 people. A great orchestra played a great waltz, and there stood the director--D.W. Griffith--holding a megaphone. I stood watching, transfixed by the magic of it all.”

He abandoned portrait photography and entered the film business as a camera assistant, working on two of Griffith’s last films and on several Busby Berkeley musicals.

His first feature film as director of photography came in 1937. He quickly gained a reputation for the quality of his camera work, although he worked mostly in B pictures.

His break came in 1942 with his work on Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

In 1955, a quarter-century after visiting the Griffith set, Cortez went to work on “The Night of the Hunter,” starring Robert Mitchum and directed by Charles Laughton.

Many critics have said the film is one of the most remarkably photographed of all time.

Funeral services were scheduled for today.