The Mummy

Karl W. Freund, A.S.C. (January 16, 1890-May 3, 1969) was an Oscar-winning German cinematographer and film director.

Born in Königinhof, Bohemia, his career began in 1905 when, at age 15, he got a job as an assistant projectionist for a film company in Berlin.

He worked as a cinematographer on over 100 films, including the German Expressionist films The Golem (1920), The Last Laugh (1924) and Metropolis (1927). Freund emigrated to the United States in 1929 where he continued to shoot well-remembered films such as Dracula (1931) and Key Largo (1948). He won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Good Earth (1937). In 1937, he went to Germany to bring his only daughter, Gerda Maria Freund, back to the United States, saving her from almost certain death in the concentration camps. Karl’s ex-wife, Susette Freund, remained in Germany where she was interned at the Ravensbrück and eventually taken in March, 1942 to Bernburg Euthanasia Center where she was murdered.

Between 1921 and 1935, Freund also directed ten films, of which the best known are probably The Mummy (1932) starring Boris Karloff, and his last film as director, Mad Love (1935) starring Peter Lorre.

At the beginning of the 1950s, he was persuaded by Desi Arnaz to be the cinematographer for Arnaz’s television series I Love Lucy. Critics have credited Freund for the show’s lustrous black and white cinematography, but more importantly, Freund also perfected the simultaneous three-camera coverage of the show as it was performed in front of an audience, which remains the primary method for shooting a sitcom.

Freund’s only known film as an actor is Carl Dreyer’s Michael (1924) in which he has a cameo as a sycophantic art dealer who saves the tobacco ashes dropped by a famous painter. —Wikipedia