Terence Young (director)

Terence Young
Born	Stewart Terence Herbert Young (1915-06-20)20 June 1915 Shanghai International Settlement, China
Died	7 September 1994(1994-09-07) (aged 79) Cannes, France
Nationality	British
Other names	Shaun Terence Young
Alma mater	St Catharine's College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter
Spouse	Dorothea Bennett ​ (m. 1942)​
Children	3

Stewart Terence Herbert Young^[1] (20 June 1915 – 7 September 1994) was a British^[2][1][3] film director and screenwriter who worked in the United Kingdom, Europe and Hollywood. He is best known for directing three James Bond films: the first two films in the series, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965). His other films include the Audrey Hepburn thrillers Wait Until Dark (1967) and Bloodline (1979), the historical drama Mayerling (1968), the infamous Korean War epic Inchon (1981), and the Charles Bronson films Cold Sweat (1970), Red Sun (1971), and The Valachi Papers (1972).

Young was born in the International Settlement, of Shanghai, China to British parents,^[3] His civil registration documents gives his name as Stewart Terence Herbert Young,^[1] though he also used the name Shaun Terence Young,^[4] and is listed as such by the British Film Institute's Screenonline database.

Young’s father was a deputy commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police. His family moved back to England when he was a child, and he was educated at Harrow School in London. He read history at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. During the Second World War Young rose to the rank of captain in the British Army, and as intelligence officer of the Guards Armoured Division, Young participated in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands and was wounded.^[1]

Young began his career in the film industry as a screenwriter, earning a credit for Brian Desmond Hurst's On the Night of the Fire (1939), A Call for Arms (1940), Dangerous Moonlight (1941), and A Letter from Ulster (1942) and for other directors on Secret Mission (1942), On Approval (1944). In 1946, he returned to assist Hurst again with the script of Theirs Is the Glory, which told the story of the fighting around Arnhem Bridge. Arnhem, coincidentally, was home to an adolescent Audrey Hepburn. During the later filming of Young's film Wait Until Dark, Hepburn and Young joked that he had been shelling his favourite star without even knowing it. Young worked on the screenplays for Hurst's Hungry Hill (1947) and David McDonald's The Bad Lord Byron (1949).

Young's first sole credit as director (and also Christopher Lee's film debut) was Corridor of Mirrors (1948), an acclaimed film made in France. He followed it with a musical One Night with You (1948); Woman Hater (1948), a comedy with Stewart Granger; and They Were Not Divided (1950). Young also directed Valley of Eagles (1951) and The Tall Headlines (1952).

Young then made the first film for Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli's Warwick Films, The Red Beret with Alan Ladd. Young made That Lady (1955) in Spain with Olivia de Havilland and Storm Over the Nile (1955), an essentially shot-for-shot remake of the 1939 film The Four Feathers. Warwick asked Young back to do Safari (1956), a movie about the Mau Mau, with Victor Mature. For the same company, he did Zarak (1957), also with Mature. MGM hired him to make Action of the Tiger (1957) with Van Johnson; a young Sean Connery had a supporting role. No Time to Die (1958) was Young's fourth film for Warwick, and third with Mature. He made Serious Charge (1959), which was Cliff Richard's film debut; Too Hot to Handle (1960) with Jayne Mansfield; Black Tights (1961) in France; and Duel of Champions (1961) in Italy with Alan Ladd.

Albert Broccoli and Irving Allen had split as a producing team, and Broccoli went into partnership with Harry Saltzman to make a series of films based on the James Bond novels. Broccoli used many of the crew he had worked with during his time at Warwick for the first Bond movies, including Young as director. Young made a crucial contribution to Dr. No (1962), including recruiting Sean Connery to portray Bond. Actress Lois Maxwell, who portrayed Miss Moneypenny, later said that "Terence took Sean under his wing. He took him to dinner, to his tailor, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat."^[5]

The movie was a huge success and was quickly followed by From Russia with Love (1963), an even bigger hit. During the filming, Young and a photographer nearly drowned when their helicopter crashed into the sea while filming a key sequence. They were rescued by other members of the film crew. Young was back behind the camera 30 minutes after being rescued. Young was deluged with offers and elected not to direct Goldfinger. Instead he made The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965). Young returned for Thunderball (1965), the fourth Bond movie. According to Young, he was offered and turned down the direction of Bond films For Your Eyes Only and Never Say Never Again.

Following Thunderball, most of Young's work was in continental Europe, mainly Italy and France. Young directed part of the 1965 espionage portmanteau film The Dirty Game. He provided the story for Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 (1966) and directed the all-star The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966). He followed this with Triple Cross (1966), and The Rover (1967). Young had a hit with Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn.

In a 1967 interview he said his three best films were Black Tights, From Russia with Love and They Were Not Divided.^[6] He then directed Mayerling (1968) with Omar Sharif, and The Christmas Tree (1969) with William Holden.

He made three films starring Charles Bronson: the thriller Cold Sweat (1970), the offbeat Western Red Sun (1972), and the biographical mob drama The Valachi Papers (1972).

Young's later films include War Goddess (1973), and The Klansman (1974, replacing Samuel Fuller). He worked on Jackpot but the film was never finished. Later credits include Bloodline (1979), Inchon (1981) about the Battle of Inchon with Laurence Olivier, The Jigsaw Man (1983) with Michael Caine and Olivier (replacing the original director), and Run for Your Life (1988). Olivier and Young had been friends since 1943 when Olivier had initially offered the direction of his film Henry V (1944) to Young, who declined.^[7] At the 3rd Golden Raspberry Awards in 1983, he won the Razzie Award for Worst Director for Inchon.^[8]

Young contributed to the screenplay for the Hong Kong film Foxbat (1977), which led to him being credited as co-director in some regions. Young was the editor of The Long Days (Al-ayyam al-tawila) (1980), a six-hour Iraqi telenovela about the life of Saddam Hussein, which also led to him being credited as co-director in some regions.^[9]

Young married the novelist Dorothea "Dosia" Bennett in 1942. Bennett had been married to a Norwegian man by the name of Nissen, with whom she had had a daughter, but had had her marriage to him dissolved by the Norwegian government-in-exile in London in June 1942 and married Young five days later. Nissen later sued for divorce from Bennett alleging that the dissolution by the Norwegian government-in-exile had been invalid, and citing Young as the respondent. Nissen's suit was upheld at first instance in March 1955 before being over-turned on appeal later the same year, with the original dissolution being found valid.^{[10][11][12][13]}

He had a son and two daughters with Bennett, their son being born in March 1943. Juliet Nissen, Bennett's daughter by her previous marriage, was raised as Young's step-daughter.^[14] Bennett and Young's youngest child was a three-week-old girl they adopted in 1966 when their first two children were already adults.^[15][13][16]

In 2022, actress Marguerite LeWars claimed that Young sexually assaulted her in 1962.^[17] According to an interview with LeWars, the incident occurred while the two were in a limousine on their way to a wrap party for Dr. No. Young repeatedly propositioned LeWars and, when she refused, groped her. After LeWars rejected his advances, Young threatened to cut her scenes out of Dr. No. Two months later, Young telephoned LeWars at her home in Kingston and propositioned her again, asking her to fly out to London to dub her lines. When she refused, he again threatened to cut her from the film. LeWars stated this was the real reason for her voice having been dubbed over by another actress.^[17]

Young died of a heart attack in Cannes; he was 79.^[18]

• Terence Young at the BFI's Screenonline
• Terence Young at IMDb
• The Independent, 16 September 1994: Obituary: Terence Young
• New York Times, 9 September 1994: Terence Young, 79; In 1960's, Directed 3 James Bond Films