Oscar-winning director of photography William Daniels was a master of black-and-white cinematographer most famous for the 21 films he shot that starred the immortal 葛丽泰·嘉宝 between 1926 and 1939. Among the Gabro classics he lensed were The Torrent (1924), 灵与肉 (1926), 爱情 (1927) (Garbo and home studio MGM's first crack at 列夫·托尔斯泰's "Anna Karenina"), 魔女玛塔 (1931), 大饭店 (1932), 瑞典女王 (1933), the sound remake of 安娜·卡列尼娜 (1935), 茶花女 (1936), and 妮诺契卡 (1939).
He won fame for his lensing of Garbo, but to those who claimed that he was essential to his success, Daniels replied, "I didn't create a 'Garbo face.' I just did portraits of her I would have done for any star. My lighting of her was determined by the requirements of a scene. I didn't, as some say I did, keep one side of her face light and the other dark. But I did always try to make the camera peer into the eyes, to see what was there."
Though he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the 1930 English-language version of 安娜·克里斯蒂 (1930) (he also shot the 1931 German-language version 安娜·克莉丝蒂 (1930)), ironically, it was his only nomination for a Garbo film. He won his Oscar in 1949 for his brilliant B+W cinematography on the classic film noir 不夜城 (1948).
Daniels received two other Oscar nominations. He was President of the American Society of Cinematographers from 1961 to 1963.
President of American Society of Cinematographers 1961-1963.
In his biography of producer 马克·黑林格 (who produced 不夜城 (1948), which won Daniels an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White), Jim Bishop wrote: "In the old silent days, Daniels had been the best of them all. His camera work was so close to art that producers and directors and cameramen used to sit in private projection rooms, not to judge a picture, but to see what new tricks of lighting and effects Daniels had achieved. The industry acknowledged that Daniels' work was so fine that other cameramen were never censured for shamelessly stealing it".
Frank Sinatra was so impressed by Daniels's work on "Some Came Running" that he insisted on using him as cameraman on nine subsequent films, on three of which he also served as associate producer or co-producer. He also co-produced, but did not photograph, Sinatra's only film as director, "None But The Brave".