Conrad L. Hall, one of Hollywood's most respected cameramen and whose stunning work earned two Academy Awards and seven additional nominations, died Saturday in a Santa Monica hospital of complications from bladder cancer on January 4. He was 76.

Born in Tahiti, Hall was the son of James Norman Hall, co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty. While in school at USC, he initially planned to become a journalist, but studied filmmaking instead. After he graduated from film school in 1949, Hall joined two friends to form a production company called Canyon Films handling many self-produced projects. Although he wanted to direct, he became the cinematographer instead, but he soon discovered his gift for visual storytelling.

It wasn't long before they sold their first project, called Sea Theme, to a local television station and from there Hall's company branched out into making industrial films, television commercials and location footage for several feature films - including the Disney documentary The Living Desert (1953). By the '60s, Hall was the cameraman on such television shows as Stoney Burke and The Outer Limits, where his thorough, professional work eventually promoted him to features films, and he received his first cinematographer credit for the minor, but rewarding road movie Wild Seed (1965) with Michael Parks. Amazingly, Hall received an Oscar nomination for his very next feature film, the World War II espionage thriller Morituri (1965) starring Marlon Brando.

His resume for the next ten years proved Hall to be a master cinematographer whose rich, complex compositions enlivened a string of sharp hits: Harper (1966), The Professionals (1966, his second Oscar nomination), Cool Hand Luke (1967), the harsh, austere black-and-white of In Cold Blood (1967, yet another Oscar nomination), a deserved Oscar winner for the beautiful sepia sheen of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Fat City (1972), Electra Glide in Blue (1973), Smile (1975), the brilliantly hazy visuals of The Day of the Locust (1975, another Oscar nomination), and Marathon Man (1976). Hall took a hiatus to run a commercial production company with fellow cinematographer Haskell Wexler, but he returned to camera work with the chic film noir Black Widow (1987). Within a year, he had another Oscar nomination, for Tequila Sunrise (1988), and earned additional nominations for Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), A Civil Action (1998), and won his second Oscar for his mesmerizing work on Sam Mendes' American Beauty (1999). There was no indication that Hall was slowing down as his most recent effort was another Mendes' film, Road to Perdition (2002), just released this past July.

Fortunately, Hall was receiving much recognition before his passing last week. He received his field's highest honor, the lifetime achievement award, from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1994; he was to be honored later this month with a similar award from the National Board of Review and last May, UCLA assembled a retrospective of Hall's films. He is survived by is his son, Conrad W. Hall, also a cinematographer, whose notable credit was the hit Panic Room (2002), daughters Kate Hall-Feist, Naia Hall-West, and his sister Nancy Rutgers.

by Michael T. Toole