He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1931 for Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, his debut film, before going on to shoot over 120 productions in a career spanning over 40 years.
In 1929, Flaherty hired Crosby to shoot the ethnographic film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, directed by F. W. Murnau.
Crosby subsequently filmed the Bedaux expedition in 1934, and shot other documentaries for the likes of Pare Lorentz and Joris Ivens.
[citation needed] His disinterest in studio politics dissuaded him from working on traditional feature films, and he remained a somewhat fringe figure until 1951, when Robert Rossen hired him to shoot The Brave Bulls.
[6] The following year, he shot High Noon (1952) for director Fred Zinnemann, which went on to win four Academy Awards.
[6] In 1973, he participated in an oral history sponsored by the American Film Institute, part of which dealt with his work on Tabu: A Story of the South Seas.