Gilbert Taylor

Gilbert Taylor
Gilbert Taylor
	Taylor with George Lucas filming Star Wars
Born	12 April 1914; Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England
Died	23 August 2013 (aged 99); Newport, Isle of Wight, England
Occupation	Cinematographer
Spouse	Dee Vaughan (m. 1967)
Children	4

Gilbert Taylor, B.S.C. (12 April 1914 – 23 August 2013) was a British cinematographer,^[1] best known for his work on films such as Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night (both 1964), Repulsion (1965), The Omen (1976), and Star Wars (1977). In the course of his career, he collaborated with directors like Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Mike Hodges. He was nominated for two BAFTA Awards, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Cinematographers.

Early life

The son of a Hertfordshire builder, Taylor grew up in Bushey Heath. A paternal uncle was a newsreel cameraman and contact with him from the age of ten gave Taylor early experience of working with cameras and developing film stock.^[2] As a teenager, he studied architecture before deciding to pursue a career in film.^[3] While his father disapproved of the film industry, populated he thought by "harridans, whores and gypsies", it was his mother who consented to their son's altered career plans.^[4]

A neighbour offered Taylor, aged 15, a job as a camera assistant to William Shenton, a cinematographer working for Gainsborough Studios at their Islington base. In 1929, Taylor worked on the studio's final two silent films.^[3] Shenton took Taylor to Paris where he worked on two more silent films, before returning to Gainsborough.^[5] He then worked at Elstree for British International Pictures, where he was clapper loader on the Alfred Hitchcock film Number Seventeen (1932). Despite his junior status, formally a second camera assistant, Taylor was entrusted with some of the special effects work, including the use of mattes, to disguise the roofs of poorly-maintained buildings.^[2]^[5]

During six years service in World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, he became an operational cameraman flying in Avro Lancaster bombers, documenting the damage after British bombing raids.^[6] Taylor recalled: "This was requested by Winston Churchill, and my material was delivered to 10 Downing Street for him to view. He was keen for the public to see what our lads were doing. I did 10 of those operations, including raids on Cologne and Dresden".^[7]

Career

After demobilisation, he worked for Two Cities Films. In Fame Is the Spur (1947), he worked on a dream sequence using deep focus. The Boulting brothers were the co-producers of the film and they placed Taylor under contract.^[8] For the Boultings, Taylor, now promoted to full cinematographer, or director of photography, shot The Guinea Pig (US, The Outsider, 1948), Seven Days to Noon (1950) and High Treason (1951).^[9] From this point, Taylor began to use bounced and reflected light gaining a more naturalistic look, whereas the use of direct light was still the common practice by his contemporaries.^[6]^[8] Because it was necessary for London to look unpopulated in Seven Days to Noon, the first of three "end of the world films" Taylor worked on, it was necessary for him to arise at five-o-clock in the morning during a seven-week shoot.^[2]

Kubrick, Lester and Polanski

Taylor worked on a number of films commended for their black and white photography, such as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (both 1964). Taylor, without Kubrick who was unwilling to fly in an aircraft, filmed material in the Arctic to be used as background plates in the flying sequences.^[10]

He commented later: "Strangelove was at the time a unique experience because the lighting was to be incorporated in the sets, with little or no other light used". Concerning the war room set designed by Ken Adam: "Lighting that set was sheer magic, and I don’t quite know how I got away with it all". He continued: "Much of it was the same formula based on the overheads as fill and blasting in the key on faces from the side".^[11] Although Kubrick and Taylor had a rapport, he found the director to be autocratic. An easier project to work on was the Richard Lester film with The Beatles which was heavily improvised.^[10]^[12]

With Lester, Chris Pizzello wrote in 2003, Taylor "adopted a roving, multiple-camera technique (aided by new, versatile 10:1 zoom lenses) so that the Beatles could move about freely and not worry about technicalities like hitting marks. This fast, fresh brand of filmmaking was a perfect fit for the film’s tiny budget, tight schedule and simple black-and-white aesthetic".^[13] Taylor and five other operators on the film used hand-held Arriflex cameras. "The key is not to hold the camera completely still", he once commented "but to let it 'breathe' with you, to move with it".^[2]

His work on Dr Strangelove led Roman Polanski to seek Taylor for Repulsion (1965). In committing to the Polish director's first English-language film, Taylor rejected the opportunity to work on a Bond film (Thunderball) because he thought Polanski "was a very interesting guy".^[14] According to Polanski in his 1984 autobiography, Repulsion's executive producer Michael Klinger "protested that Gil Taylor was one of the most expensive cameramen in the business, but I held out for Taylor and I got him".^[11] Taylor said his "aim was to get a stronger negative and good shadows in the final print. The shadows are what make good movies".^[2]

Their collaboration continued with Cul-de-sac (1966) and Macbeth (1971), the third and last film he shot with Polanski. According to Ronald Bergan, "although shot in colour", Macbeth, "is as near to black and white as possible, with its grey, misty landscape".^[6] Taylor received BAFTA nominations over two consecutive years for the first two collaborations.^[15]

Later work in colour

Hitchcock requested Taylor work on his penultimate film Frenzy (1972). Despite a claim in Bergan's obituary of the cinematographer that Hitchcock was unaware the two men had worked together forty years earlier, according to Taylor they had stayed in touch.^[2]^[6] Hitchcock never looked through the camera, because of his use of storyboards, leaving decisions to Taylor.^[2] The tracking shot, up and down a flight of stairs and then into the street, which invisibly merged shots from a studio set and street location took a day to achieve with the switch disguised by the movement of an extra in front of the camera.^[8]

Taylor's later films include The Omen (1976), and Star Wars (1977). On Star Wars, he established principles about visual aesthetics which have been maintained in the later films in the series.^[12] He told Mark Newbold in 2005:

"I wanted to give Star Wars a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science fiction genre. I wanted Star Wars to have clarity because I think space isn’t out of focus, also I was mindful that there was an enormous amount of process work to be done in America with Dykstra after we had finished shooting in England, and a crisp result would help this process".^[7]

Taylor found George Lucas an elusive person to consult, leading Taylor to make his own decisions as how to shoot the picture after multiple readings of the script.^[11]^[16] Differences of opinion between the director and cinematographer led to 20th Century Fox, for whom Taylor had shot The Omen, intervening to retain him on the picture.^[10] After the experience of working on Star Wars, Taylor decided he would never work again with Lucas.^[2]

His last film credit was Don't Get Me Started released in 1994, but he continued to work on commercials for some time afterwards.^[17]

Taylor was a founder member of the British Society of Cinematographers, receiving their lifetime achievement award in 2001.^[14] He received an international award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2006.^[17]

Personal life

Taylor met his wife, former script supervisor Dee Vaughan, while both were working on comedian Tony Hancock's film, The Punch and Judy Man (1963), and married in 1967.^[14] The couple had a son and daughter. Taylor also had a son and daughter from an earlier marriage. He died on 23 August 2013, aged 99, at his home on the Isle of Wight.^[18]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1948	The Guinea Pig	Roy Boulting
1950	Seven Days to Noon	John Boulting Roy Boulting
1951	High Treason	Roy Boulting
1952	The Yellow Balloon	J. Lee Thompson
1953	Single-Handed	Roy Boulting
1954	Front Page Story	Gordon Parry
	The Weak and the Wicked	J. Lee Thompson
	Seagulls Over Sorrento	John Boulting Roy Boulting
	Trouble in the Glen	Herbert Wilcox	Uncredited
1955	As Long as They're Happy	J. Lee Thompson
1955	Josephine and Men	Roy Boulting
1956	Yield to the Night	J. Lee Thompson
	It's Great to Be Young	Cyril Frankel
	The Silken Affair	Roy Kellino
	My Wife's Family	Gilbert Gunn
1957	The Good Companions	J. Lee Thompson
	Woman in a Dressing Gown	J. Lee Thompson
	No Time for Tears	Cyril Frankel
1958	Ice Cold in Alex	J. Lee Thompson
	She Didn't Say No!	Cyril Frankel
	Alive and Kicking	Cyril Frankel
1959	No Trees in the Street	J. Lee Thompson
	Operation Bullshine	Gilbert Gunn
	Tommy the Toreador	John Paddy Carstairs
1960	Bottoms Up	Mario Zampi
1960	Sands of the Desert	John Paddy Carstairs
1961	The Full Treatment	Val Guest
	The Rebel	Robert Day
	Petticoat Pirates	David MacDonald
1962	It's Trad, Dad!	Richard Lester
1962	A Prize of Arms	Cliff Owen	With Gerald Gibbs
1963	The Punch and Judy Man	Jeremy Summers
1964	Dr. Strangelove	Stanley Kubrick
	Hide and Seek	Cy Endfield
	A Hard Day's Night	Richard Lester
1965	Ferry Cross the Mersey	Jeremy Summers
	Repulsion	Roman Polanski	Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
	The Bedford Incident	James B. Harris
1966	Cul-de-sac	Roman Polanski	Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
1967	Theatre of Death	Samuel Gallu
1967	The Man Outside	Samuel Gallu
1968	Work Is a Four-Letter Word	Peter Hall
1968	Before Winter Comes	J. Lee Thompson
1969	A Nice Girl Like Me	Desmond Davis	With Manny Wynn
1970	A Day at the Beach	Simon Hesera
1970	Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx	Waris Hussein
1971	Macbeth	Roman Polanski
1972	Frenzy	Alfred Hitchcock
1974	Soft Beds, Hard Battles	Roy Boulting
1976	The Omen	Richard Donner
1977	Star Wars	George Lucas
1979	Escape to Athena	George P. Cosmatos
	Meetings with Remarkable Men	Peter Brook
	Dracula	John Badham
1980	Flash Gordon	Mike Hodges
1981	Green Ice	Ernest Day
1981	Venom	Piers Haggard
1983	Losin' It	Curtis Hanson
1984	Lassiter	Roger Young
1984	Voyage of the Rock Aliens	James Fargo
1987	The Bedroom Window	Curtis Hanson
1994	Don't Get Me Started	Arthur Ellis

Television

Director

Year	Title	Notes
1969	Department S	Episode "The Man from X" (Credited as "Gil Taylor")

Cinematographer

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1965	The Man in a Looking Glass	Cyril Frankel	TV movie, combination of episodes of The Baron series
1966-1967	The Baron		13 episodes
1966-1969	The Avengers		8 episodes
1969	Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)	Cyril Frankel	Episode "My Late Lamented Friend and Partner"
1972-1973	Pathfinders	Jeremy Summers Robert Asher Harry Booth	4 episodes
1973	The New-Fangled Wandering Minstrel Show	Buddy Bregman	TV special
1978	Breaking Up	Delbert Mann	TV movie

References

^ "Gilbert Taylor". BFI. Archived from the original on 11 July 2012.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Hilton, Kevin (4 May 2015). "Shadows Make Good Movies". British Cinematographer. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b Ellis, David A. (2012). Conversations with Cinematographers. Lanham, Maryland & Plymouth, England: Scarecrow Press. p. 73. ISBN 9780810881266.
^ "Gilbert Taylor". The Daily Telegraph. 25 August 2013. Retrieved 9 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b Ellis, p. 74
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Bergan, Ronald (25 August 2013). "Gilbert Taylor obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b Newbold, Mark (24 July 2005). "Gil Taylor Interview". Jedi News. Archived from the original on 11 April 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c Farquhar, Simon (28 August 2013). "Gilbert Taylor: Cinematographer who worked with Hitchcock, Kubrick, Polanski and Lucas". The Independent. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ McFarlane, Brian (2003–14). "Taylor, Gilbert (1914-[2013])". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 10 April 2017. The text is reprinted from McFarlane, Brian, ed. (2003). The Encyclopedia of British Film. London: BFI/Methuen. p. 656.
^ ^a ^b ^c Hughes, James (29 August 2013). "A Long Time Ago …". Slate. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c Williams, David E. (February 2006). "High Key Highlights". American Cinematographer. Retrieved 9 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b "Gilbert Taylor". The Times. London. 26 August 2016. Retrieved 9 April 2017. (subscription required)
^ Pizzello, Chris (February 2003). "A Hard Day's Night (1964)". American Cinematographer. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Gilbert Taylor, Star Wars cinematographer, dies aged 99". BBC News. 23 August 2013. Retrieved 9 April 2017.
^ Barnes, Mike (23 August 2013). "Star Wars Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor Dies at 99". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ Ellis, p. 77–8
^ ^a ^b Chagollan, Steve (27 August 2013). "Star Wars Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor Dies at 99". Variety. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^ Hickey, Shane (24 August 2013). "Gilbert Taylor, Star Wars cinematographer, dies aged 99". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 September 2018.