Joseph Biroc

Joseph Francis Biroc, ASC (February 12, 1903 – September 7, 1996) was an American cinematographer. Born in New York City, he entered the film industry in 1918 as a laboratory technician in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and moved to Los Angeles in 1927, where he worked as a camera operator at RKO Pictures. During World War II he served in the U.S. ArmySignal Corps, filming the Liberation of Paris in August 1944. He later worked as a freelance cinematographer at various studios and frequently collaborated with the director Robert Aldrich.

In addition to his film work, which included It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Biroc worked on various television series, including Adventures of Superman.

Biroc won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Towering Inferno (1974), which he shared with Fred J. Koenekamp, having previously been nominated for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). He also won two Primetime Emmy Awards, one for the television film Brian's Song and one for the series Casablanca. In 1988, he received the American Society of Cinematographers' Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work.