Bill Butler (cinematographer)
American cinematographer (1921–2023)
Wilmer Cable Butler, ASC (April 7, 1921 – April 5, 2023) was an American cinematographer, known for his contributions to the New Hollywood movement. He had notable collaborations with directors Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, and Ivan Reitman. His most notable films included The Conversation (1974), Jaws (1975), Grease (1978), and three Rocky sequels.
He was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his work on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which he completed after original cinematographer Haskell Wexler was fired from the production. He was also a two-time Primetime Emmy Award winner.
Early life and education
Wilmer Cable Butler was born on April 7, 1921, in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Butler spent the first five years of his life living in a log cabin on a homestead in Colorado, where his parents were farmers. He moved with his parents to Henry County when he was 5 years old and raised in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a small college town. He graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1940.
During World War II, Butler served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, working as a signal caller due to his background with high frequency electronics.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Butler (cinematographer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.