The great cinematographer and noted John Huston collaborator Oswald Morris has passed at age 98. Morris is best known for creating highly idiosyncratic color schemes for Huston’s Moulin Rouge (’52), Moby Dick (’56) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (’67). Rouge featured a rosey watercolor palette that recalled the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec. Moby Dick used a desaturated color-mixed-with-monochrome look (Bosley Crowther called it “strange” and “subdued”) that was inspired by Currier & Ives etchings. Golden Eye was colored with sickly yellow-pinkish hues. Morris also shot Huston’s Beat the Devil (’54) Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (’57), The Mackintosh Man (’73) and The Man Who Would Be King (’75). He also shot Look Back in Anger (’59), The Entertainer (’60), The Guns of Navarone (’61), Lolita (’62), Of Human Bondage (’64), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (’65) and Sleuth (’72).


Oswald Morris (l.) and Stanley Kubrick (r., not holding bullhorn) during filming of Lolita.