Robert Burks began as a special effects tech in the late 1930s, and became a director of photography in the mid-1940s. Burks shot every Alfred Hitchcock film beginning with Strangers on a Train which earned him an oscar nomination in 1951, through Marnie in 1964, with the exception of 1960's Psycho. Additional credits include The Fountainhead, Beyond the Forest, The Glass Menagerie, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Music Man, and A Patch of Blue. Burks and his wife died in a house fire.