Career
The Planer family was 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 ranking officers for their own family"s 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 pathological 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 till 1933, In 1937, he left the failing Austrian film industry, to begin work in Hollywood.
He shot over 130 movies, including Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) plus the color films and
Queen of the Boulevards Nominated for Cinematography (Black & White) 1951: Death of a Salesman Nominated for Cinematography (Black & White) 1953: Roman Holiday Nominated for Cinematography (Color) 1959: The Nun"s Story Nominated for Cinematography (Black & White) 1961: The Children"s Hour.