Franz Planer

Franz F. Planer, A.S.C. (29 March 1894 – 10 January 1963) was an Austrian-born cinematographer born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. The Planer family were very influential, and owned large tracts of farmland, businesses, libraries, and shops in Austria-Hungary, and several properties in and around Vienna, some of which were stolen by certain low to high ranking National officers for their own families' use in the mid to late 1930s, using falsely issued papers and threats.

Planer had trained as a portrait painter, but realizing that photography was becoming very popular, and would replace the requirement for talented artists changed his career path. He changed direction into films, and thus began his career as a director of photography for films in Germany and later throughout Europe in the early 1900s until 1933,

In 1937, he left the failing Austrian film industry just before Karl Hartl took control of Wien Film (formed under German influencer Goebbels), to begin work in Hollywood. He shot over 130 movies, including Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), The Big Country (1958) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).