Terence Young (director)

Shaun Terence Young (20 June 1915 – 7 September 1994) was a British film director and screenwriter best known for directing three James Bond films, Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965).

Biography

The son of a Police Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police, Young was born in Shanghai, China and was public-school educated. He read oriental history at St Catharine's College in the University of Cambridge.

Commissioned in the Irish Guards, Young was a tank commander during World War II where he participated in Operation Market Garden in Arnhem, Netherlands.

Film career

Young began his film career as a screenwriter in British films of the 1940s, working, for example, on Brian Desmond Hurst's On the Night of the Fire (1939), Dangerous Moonlight (1941), and A Letter From Ulster (1942). In 1946, he returned to assist Hurst with the script of Theirs is the Glory, which recaptured the fighting around Arnhem bridge. Arnhem, coincidentally, was home to the adolescent Audrey Hepburn. During the filming of Young's film, Wait Until Dark, Hepburn and Young would joke that he was shelling his favorite star without even knowing it. Young also directed an account of the Guards Armoured Division They Were Not Divided.