Born Stanislaus Krantz, November 4, 1908, in New York, NY; died in 1997. Photographer and cinematographer. Cortez was an award-winning cinematographer whofilmed classic motion pictures such as The Magnificent Ambersons, Night of the Hunter, The Three Faces of Eve, and Shock Corridor. He began his career inportrait photography, first as an assistant and then behind the camera himself. He relocated to Los Angeles in the 1920s after visiting his brother, Ricardo Cortez, who was working as an actor in silent pictures. Cortez became a camera assistant and worked with famed director D. W. Griffith. His first filmas director of photography was 1936's Four Days' Wonder. He followed with cinematography work on Badlands of Dakota, The Magnificent Ambersons, Since YouWent Away, Smash Up: The Story of a Woman, The Admiral Was a Lady, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, and Night of the Hunter. His later work included The Candidate, Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and Another Man, Another Chance. In addition to working with directors like Griffith during his career, Cortez also filmed pictures directed by Orson Welles, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang, and Charles Laughton, among others. He contributed miniature photography work in Damien: Omen II in 1978 and appeared in the television special "D.W. Griffith: Father of Film" in 1993. His work in The Magnificent Ambersons received a Film Critics of America award and an Academy Award nomination. Since YouWent Away and Night of the Hunter were also nominated for Academy Awards forcinematography. In 1989 Cortez received the Lifetime Achievement Award for cinematography from the American Society of Cinematographers.
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