Waldemar Young
Waldemar Young was a screenwriter and journalist.
He was born on July 1, 1880, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mahonri Moriancumer Young and Agnes Mackintosh Young. He and his twin brother, Winfield, were not quite four years old when their father died on April 20, 1884. Their older brother, Mahonri Young was six.
He was a grandson of Brigham Young.
Young began to write after high school and worked as an editor for the Salt Lake Herald. He studied English, economics, and history at Stanford University and wrote for the campus literary journal. He wrote various class plays but did not finish his degree. Instead, he took a job with the San Francisco Chronicle and wrote about sports and drama. He then took a position with the San Francisco Examiner as the drama editor.
Before the film industry was born and began to flourish, Young was a press agent and publicity writer for various stage and vaudeville acts.
Young started into films by writing comedy routines for Franklyn Farnum and Brownie Vernon. In the 1920s he often worked on films with Lon Chaney, Tod Browning and their editor Errol Taggart. In the 1930s Young wrote several screen plays for Cecil B. De Mille. He wrote for over eighty films between 1917 and 1938. In 1935, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.”
He was married to Elizabeth Haight, a great-niece of Sam Brannan. Young died of pneumonia on August 30, 1938, in Hollywood, California.
