Cinematographer Gregg Toland (1904-1948) was born in Charleston, Il., and entered films at age 15 as an office boy. After apprenticeship as an assistant cameraman, he became a lighting cameraman in 1929 and quickly gained recognition as an outstanding and innovative artist. He worked as a director of photography at various studios including MGM, where he shot The Nuisance (1933), a comedy starring Lee Tracy; and Lazy River (1934), a drama with Robert Young.

Toland's exquisite high-key black-and-white photography, with its trademark deep focus and complexity of composition, set the standard in Hollywood for decades. He did some of his most creative work for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, bringing his high level of artistry to such Goldwyn films as Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Westerner (1940), Ball of Fire (1941), The Little Foxes (1941), These Three (1936) and The Bishop's Wife (1947).

The Long Voyage Home(1940), director John Ford's treatment of four Eugene O'Neill plays about merchant seamen, is another of Toland's masterpieces. John Wayne told biographer Maurice Zolotow that "Usually it would be Mr. Ford who helped the cinematographer get his compositions for maximum effect...but in this case it was Gregg Toland who helped Mr. Ford. Long Voyage is about as beautifully photographed a movie as there ever has been." Among Toland's other most brilliantly visualized films are John Ford's adaption of the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) and the Goldwyn/William Wyler production The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in bold will air on TCM on 5/19