19 Facts About Douglas Slocombe

Ralph Douglas Vladimir Slocombe OBE, BSC, ASC, GBCT was a British cinematographer, particularly known for his work at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the first three Indiana Jones films.

Douglas Slocombe won BAFTA Awards in 1964,1975, and 1979, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography on three occasions.

Douglas Slocombe's father was the Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald, and so Slocombe spent part of his upbringing in France, returning to the United Kingdom around 1933.

Douglas Slocombe graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the Sorbonne.

Douglas Slocombe initially intended to become a photojournalist, and as a young photographer, he witnessed the early events leading up to the outbreak of World War II.

Douglas Slocombe was in Warsaw with a movie camera on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded.

Douglas Slocombe developed a relationship with Ealing Studios, where filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti, who helped him obtain his position, worked.

Douglas Slocombe moved into photographing for feature films at Ealing Studios during the later 1940s, after being hired on the strength of his documentary work.

Douglas Slocombe later described his early work on Champagne Charlie as amateurish, in one case resulting in a sequence having to be reshot.

However, in his career, Douglas Slocombe worked on 84 feature films over a period of 47 years.

Douglas Slocombe was particularly praised for his flexible, high-contrast cinematography for the horror film Dead of Night, and for his bright, colourful West Country summer landscapes on The Titfield Thunderbolt.

Apart from filming, Douglas Slocombe worked on developing plans for shots, visiting prisoner-of-war camps in Germany as part of pre-production for The Captive Heart.

Douglas Slocombe recalled sleeping in the studio to make sure nobody touched the camera.

Douglas Slocombe personally regarded Basil Dearden as the "most competent" of the directors he worked with at Ealing.

Douglas Slocombe found widescreen equipment sometimes restrictive, finding the Technirama camera system used on Davy "a block of flats" and difficult to compose shots with.

Douglas Slocombe won the British Society of Cinematographers Award five times, and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.

Douglas Slocombe experienced problems with his vision from the 1980s onwards, including a detached retina in one eye and complications from unsuccessful laser eye surgery in the other, and was nearly blind at the end of his life.

Douglas Slocombe was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 New Year Honours, and attended a BAFTA dinner in his honour in 2009.

Douglas Slocombe died on the morning of 22 February 2016, in a London hospital from complications following a fall.