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American cinematographer Ted McCord began as an assistant cameraman in 1917; his first "take charge" assignment was 1921's Sacred and Profane. In the 1930s, McCord was at Warner Bros., graduating to A-pictures after several seasons in the B-unit. With the Army during the Second World War, McCord gained a degree of industry fame by being the first American to film the formerly secret strongholds of the fallen Third Reich. McCord's best Hollywood assignments came during the Technicolor-and-Cinemascope era: I Died 1000 Times (1955), The Helen Morgan Story (1957), The Hanging Tree (1959), and his Oscar-nominated work for The Sound of Music (1965) (the winner that year was Doctor Zhivago's Freddie Young). In the twilight of his career, Ted McCord served as an inspiration for several young cinematographers, among them Conrad Hall, who noted admiringly that McCord stayed "young" by continuing to experiment with and grow in his chosen craft.