Cinematographer Conrad Hall, ASC, will be honored posthumously with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star for Hall will be unveiled on Thursday, May 1, at 11:30am at 7060 Hollywood Boulevard near Sycamore Avenue. His star is near the star of his good friend and fellow cinematographer Haskell Wexler, ASC. Hall died on January 4, 2003, in Los Angeles. He was 76 years old.
Johnny Grant, honorary mayor of Hollywood and chairman of the Walk Fame Committee, will preside over the event and Leron Gubler, president/CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce will speak on behalf of the organization. Participating at the event will be writer/directors Robert Towne and Steve Zaillian, who respectively collaborated with the cinematographer on Tequila Sunrise, and Searching for Bobby Fischer and A Civil Action.
Hall was born and raised in Papeete, Tahiti. His father was James Norman Hall, who co-authored Mutiny on the Bounty and other classic novels. His parents sent him to school at the University of Southern California with instructions to find a career. Serendipity led Hall into the film department and cinematography. He served a brief apprenticeship as an assistant cameraman and operator and earned his first narrative credits for the television series Stoney Burke and The Outer Limits, and his first feature credit in 1965 for Wild Seed.
The DP earned 10 Oscar nominations during a career that spanned five decades. He took top honors in 1969 for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in 2000 for American Beauty, and most recently for Road to Perdition. Hall received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 1993 and the Camerimage International Festival of Cinematography in 1995. He also earned four ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards for a theatrical release (Tequila Sunrise, 1988; Searching for Bobby Fischer, 1993; American Beauty, 2000; Road to Perdition, 2003).
Hall mentored scores of young filmmakers and always gave freely of his time to help the next generation learn the art and craft of cinematography, by volunteering to speak and teach at the International Cinematographers Guild Lighting Workshops held annually. He also volunteered as the Kodak Cinematographer in Residence at UCLA.
"Conrad Hall made a deep and indelible impression on the art of filmmaking," says ASC president Richard Crudo. "He introduced a bold, new style of naturalistic cinematography, which has been widely emulated but never reproduced."