Charles Lang

For the Champion jockey, see Chick Lang.

Charles Bryant Lang Jr., A.S.C. (March 27, 1902 – April 3, 1998)^[1] was an American cinematographer.

Charles Lang
Lang in 1936
Born	Charles Bryant Lang Jr. (1902-03-27)March 27, 1902 Bluff, Utah, U.S.
Died	April 3, 1998(1998-04-03) (aged 96) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Occupation	Cinematographer
Years active	1926-1973

Early life and career

Lang and Marlon Brando in 1961, filming One-Eyed Jacks

Lang was born in Bluff, Utah, in 1902. His father, Charles B. Lang Sr., was a photographer and explorer of cliff ruins in Utah and the southwestern United States.

Early in his career, he worked with the Akeley camera, a gyroscope-mounted "pancake" camera designed by Carl Akeley for outdoor action shots.^[1] Lang's first credits were as co-cinematographer on the silent films The Night Patrol (1926) and The Loves of Ricardo (1927).^[1]

After completing Tom Sawyer for Paramount Pictures in 1930, he continued working at the studio for more than twenty years. The style of lighting he introduced in A Farewell to Arms became heavily identified with all of Paramount's films during the 1930s and 1940s,^[1] though he occasionally worked for other studios, for instance on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).^{[citation needed][2]}

In 1951, he began the second phase of his career, this time as a free-lance cinematographer.^[1] His credits include The Big Heat (1953) with Glenn Ford and Lee Marvin, Sabrina (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, The Matchmaker (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, The Magnificent Seven (1960) with Steve McQueen, One-Eyed Jacks (1961) with Marlon Brando, How the West Was Won (1962) in Cinerama, Charade (1963) with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), and Butterflies Are Free (1972).

Lang received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1991, for a career which included at least 114 feature films.^[1]

Personal life

Lang married Hylah Lang in 1925, and stayed married until her death in 1982. They had one child: Judy Lang, who became an actress. Judy's daughter, Katherine Kelly Lang is also an actress, best known for her role as Brooke Logan Forrester on the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.^[3]

Death

On April 3, 1998, Lang died at the age of 96, after suffering from pneumonia.^[4]

Academy Awards

Lang won an Oscar the second time he was nominated, early in his career; he received a total of 18 nominations, tying with Leon Shamroy for the most Academy Award for Best Cinematography nominations.

Wins

• A Farewell to Arms (1932)^[5]

Nominations

Lang also received Oscar nominations for the following films:^[6]

The Right to Love (1930) Arise, My Love (1940) Sundown (1941) So Proudly We Hail! (1943) The Uninvited (1944) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) A Foreign Affair (1948) Sudden Fear (1952) Sabrina (1954) Queen Bee (1955) Separate Tables (1958) Some Like It Hot (1959) The Facts of Life (1960) One-Eyed Jacks (1961) How the West Was Won (1962)[7] Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) Butterflies Are Free (1972)