Douglas Slocombe facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Douglas Slocombe OBE, BSC, ASC, GBCT
Born	Ralph Douglas Vladimir Slocombe (1913-02-10)10 February 1913 Putney, London, UK
Died	22 February 2016(2016-02-22) (aged 103) London, UK
Occupation	Cinematographer
Years active	1940–1989

Ralph Douglas Vladimir Slocombe (February 10, 1913 – February 22, 2016) was a famous British cinematographer. A cinematographer is the person in charge of how a movie is filmed. They decide on the lighting, camera angles, and overall look of the film.

Douglas Slocombe was especially known for his work at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s. He also filmed the first three exciting Indiana Jones movies. He won several BAFTA Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award three times.

Douglas Slocombe: A Master of Film

Early Life and Wartime Adventures

Douglas Slocombe was born in Putney, London. His father was a journalist, and his mother was Russian. Because of his father's job, Douglas spent some of his childhood in France. He returned to the United Kingdom around 1933. He even studied Math at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Douglas first wanted to be a photojournalist, which means taking photos for news stories. As a young photographer, he saw important events before World War II began. In 1939, he visited a city called Danzig (now Gdańsk). There, he photographed growing problems for Jewish people. He was even briefly arrested for filming a rally and a synagogue burning.

On September 1, 1939, Douglas was in Warsaw with his movie camera when Germany invaded Poland. He managed to escape, but his train was attacked by a German airplane. After leaving the train, he and a friend bought a horse and cart from a Polish farm. They eventually made it back to London through Latvia and Stockholm.

Filming at Ealing Studios

After returning to England, Douglas Slocombe became a cinematographer for the British government. He filmed important footage, like Atlantic convoys during the war. He also started working with Ealing Studios, a famous film studio in London.

Ealing Studios in west London, where Douglas Slocombe started his feature film career.

Douglas began working on feature films at Ealing Studios in the late 1940s. He filmed 84 feature films over 47 years! He really liked how Ealing Studios developed their movie scripts. However, he also felt that the studio system was strict. It didn't allow him to try directing films, which he had thought about doing.

His early films at Ealing Studios included many classic comedies. Some of these were Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951). He was praised for his unique filming style in the horror film Dead of Night (1945). He also created bright, colorful landscapes for The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953).

Douglas also helped plan shots for films. For example, he visited prisoner-of-war camps in Germany for the movie The Captive Heart (1946). For Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), he helped create a dark, moody style. He later said this was some of his best work from that time.

Creating Movie Magic: Special Effects

Douglas Slocombe even created special effects! In Kind Hearts and Coronets, actor Alec Guinness played eight different characters. Douglas made it look like six of them were on screen at the same time. He did this by covering parts of the camera lens and filming Guinness in different spots. He had to film the same scene multiple times over several days. Douglas even slept in the studio to make sure no one touched the camera!

He sometimes found wide-screen cameras difficult to use. He called one camera system "a block of flats" because it was so big and hard to compose shots with.

Beyond Ealing: New Film Projects

Ealing Studios eventually closed down in the late 1950s. Douglas Slocombe said that he and his colleagues had to move on with their careers.

For the movie The Italian Job (1969), Douglas was chosen because he was very efficient. He also created a "moody" look for films. He remembered filming inside a real prison, Kilmainham Gaol. He found it a bit scary, knowing that many people had suffered there.

Douglas won the British Society of Cinematographers Award five times. He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Film critic Roger Ebert praised his work on Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Ebert said the film had colors that "glowed with life."

The Indiana Jones Years

In the 1980s, Douglas Slocombe worked with famous director Steven Spielberg. He filmed the first three Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Spielberg enjoyed working with him on an earlier film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

These Indiana Jones films were some of Douglas's last big projects. He was 75 years old when he filmed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He said that filming action movies was exciting, like being a "Boy Scout." The cinematographer for a later Indiana Jones film, Janusz Kamiński, tried to make his movie look similar to Douglas Slocombe's work. This helped keep the look of the films consistent.

Later Life and Legacy

Douglas Slocombe started having problems with his eyesight in the 1980s. He became nearly blind later in his life. He lived in West London with his daughter, who was his only child.

He received an OBE award in 2008. This is a special honor from the British government. He also attended a special dinner in his honor in 2009. In February 2013, he turned 100 years old! Even with his blindness, Douglas continued to give interviews. He was interviewed by French television, the BBC, and for a book about cinematographers. He once said it was a "weird feeling" to have outlived almost everyone he worked with.

Death

Douglas Slocombe passed away at the age of 103. He died on February 22, 2016, in a London hospital after a fall.

Awards and Achievements

Films Douglas Slocombe Worked On

See also

• List of centenarians (actors, filmmakers and entertainers)