Franz Planer, A.S.C. (born ** František Plánička**; 29 March 1894 – 10 January 1963) was a Czech-American cinematographer.

Biography

Planer was born as František Plánička on 29 March 1894. He was born in Karlovy Vary, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, but his family came from Ústí nad Labem. He studied photography in Vienna in the 1910s and started to work there as cinematographer. He then moved to Germany and shot his first film Storms in May there in 1919, under the pseudonym Franz Planer. In 1923, he married a Jewish woman in Církvice in Czechoslovakia. When the Nazis came to power, he decided to move from Germany to Austria and then to Great Britain. Because of his Jewish wife, he left Europe in 1937 and moved to the United States. He decided to change his name again to Franz Planer, this time officially and permanently. He shot over 130 movies in Hollywood, including Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), The Big Country (1958) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

Partial filmography

Academy Award Nominations