Charles Lang

Charles Lang

Charles Bryant Lang, Jr., A.S.C. (March 27, 1902, Bluff, Utah – April 3, 1998, Santa Monica, California ) was an American cinematographer.

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

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, though he occasionally worked for other studios, for instance on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

In 1951, he began the second phase of his career, this time as a free-lance cinematographer. His credits include The Big Heat (1953), Sabrina (1954), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Matchmaker (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), How the West Was Won (1962), Charade (1963), 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.