Talk:Terence Young (director)

Early Life

As a tank commander, it's very unlikely Terence Young fought at Arnhem itself, as the tanks never crossed the bridge at Arnhem. I would guess he was part of the Operation Market-Garden and faught on the corridor to Arnhem, trying to rescue/relieve the british 1st Airborne beleaguered in Arnhem —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.42.80.225 (talk) 21:52, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

You forget that the tanks did subsequently get to Arnhem! The page on the Battle of Arnhem, under Operation Market Garden says "The buildings of Arnhem were heavily shelled by the Allies over the next few months ...". MaltaGC —Preceding undated comment added 21:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Irishman?

The claim that Young was Irish feels forced and exaggerated. He appears at most to have had one parent (his father) of partial Irish ancestry. Every detail of his biography (including the reference in the article to his family "mov[ing] back to England when he was young" - still present as of September 2021), indicate an Englishman/Briton, of the upper-middle/upper class. Many of this class of course has Irish (or Anglo-Irish) ancestry, and Young may well be among them, but this does not equate to being Irish. The article as originally formulated - referring to him as an English/British man of (partial) Irish ancestry - seems to have been a neutral and fair portrayal of him. The current one, describing him baldly and without qualification as Irish, feels like a tendentious attempt to "claim" him.

The link to the Ebony magazine review of The Klansman is interesting, but too insubstantial and uncorroborated to base this important biographical revision on. Would not sources demonstrating that he identified as Irish, held Irish nationality, or spent a substantial part of his life living in Ireland, be needed to justify the claim? This seems to be the broad standard across Wikipedia.

None of the many online biographies and obituaries of Young have ever recorded Young as being an Irishman. This now appears to be changing - having managed to insert this reference into his Wikipedia biography, it is inevitably being picked up by other websites, which will presumably be used as "evidence" backing up the claim - a fake feedback loop.Shiresman (talk) 23:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Shiresman - I'm given to agreeing with this. It is not clear that Ebony would be a good source for this. It is also not clear how a list of arriving passengers for Canada from Ancestry.com would demonstrate anything. Many, many biographies have been written about Young and no actual nationality is stated in some of them - instead they note his place of birth (Shanghai) and place of education (Cambridge). However, the ones that does use a nationality overwhelmingly identify him as British if they identify him as anything. For example this book credits him as British as does this this this this this this and this. In contrast this search turned up zero references to Young as an "Irish director".

Applying Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom#Guide to finding UK nationality I get -

1) The available evidence seems to point to him as a "British director". This includes reference texts (e.g., Brewer's encyclopaedia).

2) Some of the above references are from outside the UK (as, it should be mentioned, are both the Canadian and Ebony references that have been used to refer to him as "Irish") but many of them referring to him as "British" are from within the UK.

3) There doesn't seem to be any evidence at all that Young identified as Irish. I don't have an Ancestry.com account but given the time-range it would likely have been when Young was a child and hence represent perhaps his father's identity, if this Terence Young was the actual Terence Young anyway and not another person of the same name (and how on earth would anyone be able to tell who they were from an immigration record in the period 1860-1935? Did Young even go to Canada in this period? Seems unlikely as he was either still yet-to-be-born, in Shanghai, and being educated in the UK in this time). Ultimately this kind of research is basically WP:OR - we summarise what secondary sources say, not decide this kind of thing ourselves.

Turning to Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom#Changing an existing UK nationality I get:

1) "Consider why the existing nationality was chosen." - apparently based on a reference that was outside the UK and a Canadian record on Ancestry.com.

2) "Examine the article for details that support the existing label." see above.

3) "Look for existing consensus on the discussion page, and in any archives that may be present." - only the above where people disagree with the present nationality. Looking at the page history I see it was created with no nationality specified. This was then changed to "British director" by Jay-W in 2005. As far as I can see it remained as "British" until it was changed to "Irish" in June 2021. Simply on basis of it having said "British" for more than 15 years and the disagreement above, if there ever was a consensus around this, it is for "British".

4) "Conduct research to be certain your choice is preferable (you can consult the guide above)." - see above.

As such I'm changing it back to the original nationality and adding some of the above references. FOARP (talk) 14:16, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

PS - I guess I should say that one of the sources above describes Young as cosmopolitan and I think this is probably closer to the truth. His accent was maybe closest to British but very trans-Atlantic, he lived in France and elsewhere etc. However the sources that characterise his nationality almost universally refer to him as British. Sight and Sound's obituary of him describes him as "un-British" but ultimately unable to fully escape from British-ness, which is I think another fair characterisation Incidentally this describes his wife as "an Italian starlet" which is yet another of the very confusing mistakes (?) in coverage of Young - I get the feeling that there was a lot of untrue stuff about Young out there that may ultimately have originated with the man himself, and it's for this reason that there is no biography of Young even though full biographies have been written of other progenitors of Bond (e.g., Ken Adams, Cubby Broccoli etc.).FOARP (talk) 21:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Accuracy points

Sadly there doesn't ever seem to have been a full biography of Young, but this piece on p.119 of the St. Catherine's college newsletter seems to point to a lot of stuff here being inaccurate. Specifically:

• 1) Young appears to have been an intelligence officer, not a tank-commander. The claim that he was with the Irish Guards specifically appears a bit dubious based on this - he could have been on the divisional staff.
• 2) Young's full name appears to have been Stewart Terence Herbert Young
  

However, it would be great if we could get a better source - does anyone have access to the ONDB? FOARP (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Irish Guards?

This source claims that he was in the Welsh Guards, not the Irish Guards, though it says he was in the " Welsh Guards’ Armoured Tank Division", which is not something that ever existed AFAIK. This source also says "Welsh Guards Armoured Test Division" which is an even more strange name for a unit. For this reason I have removed the claim that he was in the Irish Guards, which anyway was without a source. FOARP (talk) 08:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Spouse?

We're saying he was married to Dorothea Bennett. Dorothea Bennett died in 1985 according to our article on her, but the 1994 Times obituary says he was survived by his wife Dosia (i.e., Dorothea). Is the 1985 death-date wrong? Also some sources (e.g., the Sight & Sound obituary) describe him being married to someone else (an "Italian starlet" according to Sight & Sound, though other sources mention Sabine Sun, a french actress). For Sun at least this is a BLP situation so I'm not going to include any other details without better sourcing. FOARP (talk) 09:23, 11 September 2023 (UTC)