Sidney Hickox(1895-1982)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Hickox started out as assistant cameraman at the Manhattan Biograph
Studios in 1915, followed by two years of wartime photographic work
with the U.S. Naval Air Service. He joined First National after 1919,
graduating to director of photography by 1927. When Warner Brothers
absorbed that company in 1930, he stayed the course for the bulk of his
career (until 1954), then worked primarily in television until his
retirement in 1971.
Hickox was best known as an action photographer, who excelled shooting the gritty, moody crime films and melodramas, in which Warners tended to corner the market. He collaborated particularly well with another action specialist, the director Raoul Walsh. Hickox had the uncanny ability to make productions, shot on a modest budget, look a lot classier. His best films cover the period from 1942 to 1954. They include the boxing drama Gentleman Jim (1942); the films noir To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and White Heat (1949); and, finally, the sci-fi cult classic Them! (1954).
Hickox was best known as an action photographer, who excelled shooting the gritty, moody crime films and melodramas, in which Warners tended to corner the market. He collaborated particularly well with another action specialist, the director Raoul Walsh. Hickox had the uncanny ability to make productions, shot on a modest budget, look a lot classier. His best films cover the period from 1942 to 1954. They include the boxing drama Gentleman Jim (1942); the films noir To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and White Heat (1949); and, finally, the sci-fi cult classic Them! (1954).
