Renowned cinematographer with a long and distinguished career stretching
over half a century in British and Anglo-American films. Freddie Young
entered the film industry in 1917 as a laboratory assistant at Gaumont's
Shepherd's Bush Studios. His first credit was as assistant cameraman
on W.P. Kellino’s Rob Roy (1922), and through the 1930s he was
chief cameraman to Herbert Wilcox under
contract to his British and Dominions. During the 30s he elaborately
lensed pictures including Goodnight Vienna (1932), Bitter
Sweet (1933), Nell Gwyn (1934), Victoria the Great (1937), Sixty
Glorious Years (1938) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
Following wartime service as chief cameraman in the Army Kinematograph
Service, Young became one of a handful of British cinematographers who
were as proficient with Technicolor as with black-and-white. From 1948
he was under contract as Director of Photography at MGM-British in Elstree.
He continued to be associated with distinguished films after the war,
working with such British directors as Michael
Powell, Carol Reed
and Anthony Asquith,
and Hollywood directors such as George Cukor, John Ford and Vincente
Minnelli. In 1962, at the age of 60, he began a long association with
David Lean which brought
him consecutive Academy Awards for Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
Doctor Zhivago (1965) and
Ryan's Daughter
(1970). He was the first recipient of the American Society of Cinematographers'
International Achievement Award. While many of his contemporaries urged
Young to become a director himself, it wasn't until he turned 82 that
Young directed his first and only film, the made-for-TV Arthur's Hallowed
Ground (1983). Awarded OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1970.
