Biography
Joseph F. Biroc (also credited as Joseph Francis Biroc) was an American cinematographer. Born in New York City, he began working in films in 1918 as a laboratory assistant at Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1920s and worked as a camera operator at RKO Pictures before becoming a director of photography in 1940.
During the Second World War he served in the US Army Signal Corps, filming the Liberation of Paris in 1944 and reaching the rank of captain. After the war he received his first screen credit as cinematographer on It's a Wonderful Life (1946), sharing duties with Joseph Walker. He later freelanced across studios and frequently collaborated with director Robert Aldrich on films including Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and The Longest Yard (1974).
Biroc won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Towering Inferno (1974, shared with Fred J. Koenekamp) and received further Oscar nominations. He also worked extensively in television and was awarded the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. He died in Woodland Hills, California, in 1996.
