Versatile Mexico City-born cinematographer Joseph Patrick MacDonald was initially trained as a mining engineer at the University of Southern California. He served a lengthy apprenticeship, starting as assistant cameraman at First National in the early 1920's before eventually graduating to first camera operator by the beginning of the following decade. He became a full director of photography only after joining 20th Century Fox in 1941, staying at this studio until 1959. He was equally adept working with black-and-white or with colour film and was skilled in every genre, from films noir, to westerns, to musicals.

Most representative of his work are the gritty films noir Call Northside 777 (1948) and Panic in the Streets (1950); and two of the most sumptuous-looking films with Marilyn Monroe at her very peak: Niagara (1953) and Milyoner avcıları (1953) (incidentally, the first picture shot in CinemaScope). In stark contrast, MacDonald also shot one of the most visually evocative westerns of the period, John Ford's seminal Kanun Harici (1946)and Elia Kazan's sweeping outdoor biopic Viva Zapata! (1952), partly filmed on location in Durango, Mexico.