Daniel L. Fapp(1904-1986)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
American cinematographer who spent the bulk of his career at Paramount
(1923-1959). After two years apprenticed in the studio lab, Fapp first
worked the movie camera as an assistant in 1925. By 1941, he had
graduated to full director of photography at the behest of
cinematographer, turned director,
Ted Tetzlaff. Fapp joined the
American Society of Cinematographers that same year. Though he was
generally confined to shooting B-grade material, he was allowed to
shine whenever bigger budgeted productions came his way. He did
arguably his best work for the director
Mitchell Leisen, who, as a former art
director and costume designer, had a famously keen eye for visual
style.
Fapp excelled shooting Leisen's sumptuous-looking period romance Kitty (1945) (a true example of style trumping content). He was equally effective on another Leisen film, lensing Olivia de Havilland (as she aged in the course of three decades) in the superior tearjerker To Each His Own (1946). Other efforts in contrasting style: the noirish crime flic The Big Clock (1948) in stark, austere black & white; the vivid Technicolor frontier adventure The Far Horizons (1955), its stunning scenery expertly captured in Vista Vision (directed by another former cinematographer, Rudolph Maté); the frantic Billy Wilder farce One, Two, Three (1961); and West Side Story (1961), which finally won Fapp an Oscar (and a Golden Laurel Award) for Best Color Cinematography. After leaving Paramount in 1959, Fapp free-lanced for another decade and retired in 1969.
Fapp excelled shooting Leisen's sumptuous-looking period romance Kitty (1945) (a true example of style trumping content). He was equally effective on another Leisen film, lensing Olivia de Havilland (as she aged in the course of three decades) in the superior tearjerker To Each His Own (1946). Other efforts in contrasting style: the noirish crime flic The Big Clock (1948) in stark, austere black & white; the vivid Technicolor frontier adventure The Far Horizons (1955), its stunning scenery expertly captured in Vista Vision (directed by another former cinematographer, Rudolph Maté); the frantic Billy Wilder farce One, Two, Three (1961); and West Side Story (1961), which finally won Fapp an Oscar (and a Golden Laurel Award) for Best Color Cinematography. After leaving Paramount in 1959, Fapp free-lanced for another decade and retired in 1969.