Biography

Floyd Crosby

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Floyd Delafield Crosby was born in 1899 to Fredrick Van Schoonhoven Crosby (1860-1920) and Julia Floyd Delafield (1874-1952). Floyd had one sibling, Katherine Van Rensselaer (Gregory). Floyd married Aliph Van Cortland Whitehead in 1940 and they had two children, Floyd Delafield Crosby (Ethan) in 1936 and David Crosby in 1940. Floyd and Aliph were divorced in 1960 and Floyd married Betty Cormack the same year. During World War II Crosby shot training films for pilots learning air routes and landing patterns all over the world (these films are very difficult to find today and do not carry credits). Crosby left the military as a major in 1946. He enjoyed working on Hollywood "B" movies and shot many of them in the 1950s and 1960s, often for director Roger Corman. In the late 1960s he retired to live with his wife Betty in Ojai, CA. He passed away in 1986. More information about Floyd and his relationship with his family is available in his son David's autobiography "Long Time Gone".
- IMDb mini biography by: Chris Gregory

Floyd Crosby was the father of Rock and Roll legend David Crosby of The Byrds and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
He was the first to shoot underwater footage in three strip Technicolor.
A meeting with William Beebe led to a job as an apprentice photographer on the Beebe Haitian Expedition. This experience led to an assignment with Robert J. Flaherty and F.W. Murnau to shoot Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931). He specialized in documentaries for the next two decades.
He began a career on Wall Street. He later attended the New York Institute of Photography.
During World War II, he was a member of the Air Force Transport Command, where he rose to the rank of major. He made reference films for pilots.

[on the problems shooting Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)]: The relationship between Murnau [director F.W. Murnau] and Flaherty [co-director Robert J. Flaherty] was a strange one. Murnau liked Flaherty, but Flaherty hated Murnau, partly because Murnau was a bit Prussian in manner and very selfish, and partly because of jealousy, as Murnau knew ten times as much about direction as Flaherty.

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