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Hal Mohr, A.S.C. (August 2, 1894, San Francisco — May 10, 1974, Santa Monica, California) was a famed movie cinematographer. In 1915, in an early example of an exploitation film peddled directly to theater owners, Mohr and Sol Lesser produced and directed a film The Last Night of the Barbary Coast. This film purported to show the last night of the depraved Barbary Coast red-light district of San Francisco before it was shut down by the police. (The area wasn't actually closed down until 1917.) This is now considered a lost film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best... MORE

Hal Mohr, A.S.C. (August 2, 1894, San Francisco — May 10, 1974, Santa Monica, California) was a famed movie cinematographer. In 1915, in an early example of an exploitation film peddled directly to theater owners, Mohr and Sol Lesser produced and directed a film The Last Night of the Barbary Coast. This film purported to show the last night of the depraved Barbary Coast red-light district of San Francisco before it was shut down by the police. (The area wasn't actually closed down until 1917.) This is now considered a lost film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematographer for his work on The Fourposter (1952), a film based on a play of the same name, written by Jan de Hartog. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Cinematography in a Black and White Film, for his work on the same movie. Notably, he is the only person to have won a competitive Academy Award without being nominated for it. In 1936, a write-in campaign won him the Best Cinematography Oscar for his work on A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). The Academy later changed the Oscar rules, making write-in voting impossible. He won another Academy Award for his work on The Phantom of the Opera LESS