Conrad L. Hall, the Oscar-winning cinematographer whose work, characterized by rich, complex compositions that ranged from the sun-stroked Western expanses of 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to the moody suburban interiors of 1999's American Beauty, has died. He was 76.
Hall died Saturday evening at a Santa Monica hospital of complications of bladder cancer, according to his wife, Susan Hall.
A nine-time Academy Award nominee -- and a two-time winner for "Butch" and "Beauty" -- Hall, born in Tahiti, was the son of Mutiny on the Bounty co-author James Norman Hall. He studied filmmaking at USC and received one of his earliest credits on the black-and-white, 1958 drama Edge of Fury. He most recently completed Road to Perdition, which reteamed him with "Beauty" director Sam Mendes, and, though shot in color, containing scenes that evoked a rain-soaked, funeral darkness that approached the monochromatic.
Gone too soon...