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Leslie Stevens IV was a Navy brat. The son of Adm. Leslie Stevens made his mark first on Broadway, where his play, "The Marriage Go-Round", was a hit. He eventually wrote the screenplay for a movie version in 1960. After adapting Gore Vidal's "The Left-Handed Gun" to the screen in 1959, Stevens produced a low-budget melodrama, Private Property (1960), which starred his then-wife Kate Manx and was filmed at his Hollywood Hills home. The movie led to other work. In the early 1960s, Stevens was the head of Daystar Productions, one of the few independent TV production companies to survive amid the majors. Daystar created the Stoney Burke (1962) and The Outer Limits (1963) series. His 1965 movie Incubus (1966), which starred William Shatner and featured dialog spoken in Esperanto, was withdrawn from circulation by Stevens, who never released the movie beyond a few film festival showings. Stevens claimed in interviews that the deaths of two actors from the film made "Incubus" impossible for him to watch. In the 1970s, Stevens went on the payroll at Universal Studios and produced science-fiction series such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) and Gemini Man (1976). His final movie as a director was Three Kinds of Heat (1987) and, although his output in the 1990s was spotty, he did write a children's film, Gordy (1994).- Writer
- Actor
Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago in December 1928, along with a twin sister, Jane. Jane died less than eight weeks later, allegedly from an allergy to mother's milk. Dick's parents split up during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Berkeley, California, where he lived for most of the rest of his life. Dick became a published author in 1952. His first sale was the short story "Roog." His first novel, "Solar Lottery," appeared in 1955. Dick produced an astonishing amount of material during the 1950s and 1960s, writing and selling nearly a hundred short stories and some two dozen or so novels during this period, including "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," "Time Out Of Joint," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," and the Hugo-award winning "The Man In The High Castle." A supremely chaotic personal life (Dick was married five times) along with drug experimentation, sidetracked Dick's career in the early 1970s. Dick would later maintain that reports of his drug use had been greatly exaggerated by sensationalistic colleagues. In any event, after a layoff of several years, Dick returned to action in 1974 with the Campbell award-winning novel "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said." Perhaps more importantly, though, this same year Dick would have a profound religious experience that would forever alter his life. Dick's final years were haunted by what he alleged to be a 1974 visitation from God, or at least a God-like being. Dick spent the rest of his life writing copious journals regarding the visitation and his interpretations of the event. At times, Dick seemed to regard it as a divine revelation and, at other times, he believed it to be a sign of extreme schizophrenic behaviour. His final novels all deal in some way with the entity he saw in 1974, especially "Valis," in which the title-character is an extraterrestrial God-like machine that chooses to make contact with a hopelessly schizophrenic, possibly drug-addled and decidedly mixed-up science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick. Despite his award-winning novels and almost universal acclaim from within the science-fiction community, Dick was never especially financially successful as a writer. He worked mainly for low-paying science-fiction publishers and never seemed to see any royalties from his novels after the advance had been paid, no matter how many copies they sold. In fact, one of the reasons for his extreme productivity was that he always seemed to need the advance money from his next story or novel in order to make ends meet. But towards the very end of his life, he achieved a measure of financial stability, partly due to the money he received from the producers of Blade Runner (1982) for the rights to his novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" upon which the film was based. Shortly before the film premiered, however, he died of a heart attack at the age of 53. Since his death, several other films have been adapted from his works (incuding Total Recall (1990)) and several unpublished novels have been published posthumously.- Producer
- Director
- Production Designer
Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join the British Army (his elder brother Frank had already joined the Merchant Navy) but his father encouraged him to develop his artistic talents instead and so he went to West Hartlepool College of Art and then London's Royal College of Art where he helped found the film department.
In 1962, he joined the BBC as a trainee set designer working on several high profile series. He attended a trainee director's course while he was there and his first directing job was on an episode of the popular BBC police series Z Cars (1962), Error of Judgement (1965). More TV work followed until, frustrated by the poor financial rewards at the BBC, he went into advertising. With his younger brother, Tony Scott, he formed the advertising production company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in 1967 and spent the next 10 years making some of the best known and best loved TV adverts ever shown on British television, including a series of ads for Hovis bread set to the music of Dvorak's New World Symphony which are still talked about today ("'e were a great baker were our dad.")
He began working with producer David Puttnam in the 1970s developing ideas for feature films. Their first joint endeavor, The Duellists (1977) won the Jury Prize for Best First Work at Cannes in 1977 and was nominated for the Palm d'Or, more than successfully launching Scott's feature film career. The success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) inspired Scott's interest in making science fiction and he accepted the offer to direct Dan O'Bannon's low budget science fiction horror movie Alien (1979), a critical and commercial success that firmly established his worldwide reputation as a movie director.
Blade Runner (1982) followed in 1982 to, at best, a lukewarm reception from public and critics but in the years that followed, its reputation grew - and Scott's with it - as one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Scott's next major project was back in the advertising world where he created another of the most talked-about advertising spots in broadcast history when his "1984"-inspired ad for the new Apple Macintosh computer was aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984. Scott's movie career has seen a few flops (notably Legend (1985) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)), but with successes like Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) to offset them, his reputation remains solidly intact.
Ridley Scott was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2003 Queen's New Year Honours for his "substantial contribution to the British film industry". On July 3, 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018. BAFTA described him as "a visionary director, one of the great British film-makers whose work has made an indelible mark on the history of cinema. Forty years since his directorial debut, his films continue to cross the boundaries of style and genre, engaging audiences and inspiring the next generation of film talent."- Producer
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Born in Russian Empire in 1904, Lewton moved with his mother and sister to Berlin in 1906, then to USA in 1909. He wrote for newspapers, magazines, novels, pornography, etc.- often using pseudonyms to disguise their origin (the name Val Lewton was one such pseudonym, used first for some novels in the 1930's, then revived later in his career to take writing credit for two movies). In 1933, he got a job with David O. Selznick where he spent many years as a story editor and jack-of-all-trades. Then in 1942, RKO hired him to head their new horror unit, where he made many famous and well-respected B-movies, for very low costs and high profits. In 1946, he "graduated" to A-movies, but increasing health problems, trouble working with big-money Hollywood, and other factors combined to force him to produce only three more movies before his death in 1951.- Bodeen started out as a stage actor and playwright. In his latter capacity, he enjoyed a moderate amount of success with "Escape to Autumn" and "Thing of Beauty", before finding work as a reader in Hollywood. One of Bodeen's plays, "Embers at Haworth" (about the Bronte sisters), came to the attention of Val Lewton, who was at the time working for David O. Selznick on an adaptation of Jane Eyre (1943). Lewton promptly hired Bodeen as a research assistant to work on the script with Aldous Huxley. When Lewton left Selznick after being signed as producer by RKO, he invited Bodeen to join him as part of a unit, specifically tasked with turning out horror movies to be filmed within a budget of $150,000. Bodeen would earn $75 per week (Lewton's own salary was only $250). The other members of this close-knit group included the director Jacques Tourneur, the editor (soon to be promoted to director) Mark Robson, composer Roy Webb and the writer Ardel Wray. For several weeks, Lewton and Bodeen (by now close friends) accumulated experience in the genre by viewing classic horror films from the previous decade, including Paramount's Island of Lost Souls (1932).
The first, and most successful, of the cycle of horror films on which Lewton and Bodeen collaborated, was Cat People (1942). As it turned out, both title and subject were rather imposed upon them by RKO studio chief Charles Koerner. Koerner had this notion that traditional movie monsters had been sufficiently dealt with, while nobody had done anything yet with a cat motif. Though initially apprehensive, Bodeen, eschewing traditional methodology, wrote the script as a study of psychological terror (a novelisation based on his story was later published by horror writer Gary Brandner). "Cat People" was completed in just 24 days and came in well under budget. Koerner was at first disappointed upon seeing the first cut, but quickly changed his mind once the picture began to break records at the box office. Some sources have even suggested, that it may have helped save the studio from bankruptcy.
Bodeen worked on two more entries in this series: The Seventh Victim (1943) (with a creepy shower scene, precursor to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)); and The Curse of the Cat People (1944), which, in spite of its title, was neither a sequel to "Cat People", nor a horror film in any true sense, but merely a subtle, overly ambiguous study of childhood loneliness. Bodeen did better work as co-writer (with Herman J. Mankiewicz) of another fable, the sentimental feel-good film The Enchanted Cottage (1945), based on a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. After his second contract with RKO expired in 1947, Bodeen free-lanced for a while and then concentrated on writing teleplays. He was several times nominated for Writer's Guild Awards. A regular contributor to film journals, he also authored several books on Hollywood stars, as well as one on "The Films of Cecil B. DeMille". - Producer
- Writer
Irving Grant Thalberg was born in New York City, to Henrietta (Haymann) and William Thalberg, who were of German Jewish descent. He had a bad heart, having contracted rheumatic fever as a teenager and was plagued with other ailments all of his life. He was quite intelligent with a thirst for knowledge but, convinced that he would never see thirty, he skipped college and became, at 21, a high-level executive at Carl Laemmle's Universal Studios, then the largest motion picture studio in the world.
After hitting a career impasse at Universal (partly as a result of a failed romance with Laemmle's daughter), Thalberg jumped ship and enlisted with the relatively obscure Louis B. Mayer Productions overseeing its typically turgid yet profitable melodramas. While the two men shared a common vision for their company, they approached their responsibilities from radically different angles. Mayer was a macro-manager; like a chess master, he would typically engineer business moves far in advance. Given the opportunity, Mayer could've succeeded as CEO of any multi-national corporation. Thalberg was at heart, all about movies, literally pouring his life into his work, largely leaving the managerial duties of the studio to Mayer. Modest, he disavowed screen credit during his lifetime, decrying any credit that one gives themselves as worthless. This working partnership would keep Louis B. Mayer Productions consistently profitable and would extend into their heydays as masters of MGM but would lead to an acrimonious later relationship.
By 1923 theater mogul Marcus Loew had a big problem. In an effort to secure an adequate number of quality films for his theatrical empire, he had merged Metro Pictures with his latest acquisition, Goldwyn Pictures only to discover his new super-studio had inherited a handful of projects (the Italian-based Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and Greed (1924)) that had spun wildly out of control. He soon discovered that his problems were magnified by inheriting an incompetent management team. He instructed his attorney to conduct a headhunting expedition with instructions to investigate Louis B. Mayer Productions --- which Loew had previously visited on one of his trips west. Mayer's east Los Angeles studio actually had few tangible assets --- most of his equipment was rented. Loew ended up paying a pittance for Mayer's company but offered both men (after initially rejecting Thalberg!) huge salaries and even more generous profit participation allowances. Answering to New York-based Loew's Inc., Mayer and Thalberg moved into the then-state-of-the-art Goldwyn lot in Culver City and, with Loew's deep pockets, set about creating the most enviable film studio in Hollywood, quickly eclipsing Thalberg's former employer, Universal. Greed was largely scrapped (Thalberg recognizing director Erich von Stroheim's vision of a 7-hour film was unmarketable, had it extensively edited) and written off after a truncated release, with Ben Hur being called home and re-shot with a new director. Saddled with an unfavorable contract and millions in the red, the film would ultimately benefit the new company from prestige more than net profit, despite drawing huge crowds.
Mayer and Thalberg quickly moved past these inherited nightmares and created their dream studio. From 1925 through the mid-1940s there was MGM and then everyone else. It's roster of stars, directors and technicians were unmatched by any other studio. Indeed, to work for MGM meant that you had reached the top of your profession, whether it was front of or behind the cameras. Under Mayer and Thalberg, the studio refined the mechanics of assembly-line film production --- even their B-pictures would outclass the other major's principal productions (arguably MGM's only weakness was comedy). Their formula for quality made MGM the only major studio to remain profitable throughout the Great Depression (although a lesser studio, Columbia also did so, it achieved "major" studio status after 1934, ironically assisted by loaned out stars from MGM).
Thalberg himself was a workaholic and his health, which was never good, suffered. In his position as production supervisor, Thalberg had no qualms about expensive retakes or even extensively re-working a picture after it had completed principal photography --- one such case was with King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925), where he recognized the modest $200,000 WWI drama was lacking the war itself and could be turned into a true spectacle with a few epic battle scenes added. These few additional shots cost $45,000 and turned the film into MGM's first major home-grown hit (and its biggest hit of the silent era), grossing nearly $5 million. If he micro-managed productions there was no one in Hollywood who did it more effectively. Thalberg fell into a deep depression after the mysterious death of his friend and assistant Paul Bern (the two had worked extensively together on the hit Grand Hotel (1932)) and he demanded a one-year sabbatical. Loew's Inc. head Nicholas Schenck (Marcus Loew had died in late 1926) responded by throwing more money at him --- more than Mayer himself was scheduled to earn for the year, alienating Mayer. This, to his ostensible boss was an insufferable insult, one that would drastically alter their relationship. Thalberg remained on the job but suffered a heart attack following a 1932 Christmas party. Mayer quickly engineered a coup of sorts, recruiting a new inner circle of producers (including David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger) to replace him. Thalberg recuperated in Europe with his wife Norma Shearer and returned to MGM in August, 1933 resuming his somewhat reduced duties as a unit production head. He continued to score hits, supervising The Merry Widow (1934), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), the rousing, definitive version of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938) (released after his death).
Thalberg also sought to rectify the studio's poor record in comedy films, signing the Marx Brothers, who had just been released from their contract at Paramount after string of flops. He felt the brilliant comedy team had been seriously mismanaged and ordered their MGM films to be shot in sequence and after their routines had been well tested on stage. The Thalberg-produced A Night at the Opera (1935) was a big hit but he wasn't infallible, stumbling with the critically well-received production of Romeo and Juliet (1936), which went on the books as a $1 million loss. Over Mayer's objections, he delved into the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (1937) but died of pneumonia on September 14, 1936 at age 37. The Good Earth (1937) was released soon afterward, MGM honoring him by providing him his only screen credit (Thalberg had always eschewed a producer's credit on his films).
He was survived by his widow Norma and their two children; Irving, Jr. and Katherine. After his death the Motion Picture Academy created the Irving Thalberg Award, given for excellence in production.- Frank Norris was born on 5 March 1870 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer, known for Greed (1924), Moran of the Lady Letty (1922) and Life's Whirlpool (1916). He was married to Jeanette Black. He died on 25 October 1902 in San Francisco, California, USA.
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From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at night. In 1911 he joined the Deutsches Theater of famous director/producer/impresario Max Reinhardt, and was able to move up to leading acting roles in a short time. He took an extra job as a handyman while learning silent film acting at Berlin's Bioscope film studios. The next year he launched his own film career by appearing in a series of comedies showcasing traditional ethnic Jewish slice-of-life fare. Finding great success in these character roles, Lubitsch turned to broader comedy, then beginning in 1914 started writing and directing his own films.
His breakthrough film came in 1918 with The Eyes of the Mummy (1918) ("The Eyes of the Mummy"), a tragedy starring future Hollywood star Pola Negri. Also that year he made Carmen (1918), again with Negri, a film that was commercially successful on the international level. His work already showed his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in not only comedy but historical drama. The year 1919 found Lubitsch directing seven films, the two standouts being his lavish Passion (1919) with two of his favorite actors--Negri (yet again) and Emil Jannings. His other standout was the witty parody of the American upper crust, The Oyster Princess (1919) ("The Oyster Princess"). This film was a perfect example of what became known as the Lubitsch style, or the "Lubitsch Touch", as it became known--sophisticated humor combined with inspired staging that economically presented a visual synopsis of storyline, scenes and characters.
His success in Europe brought him to the shores of America to promote The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) ("The Loves of Pharaoh") and he become acquainted with the thriving US film industry. He soon returned to Europe, but came back to the US for good to direct new friend and influential star Mary Pickford in his first American hit, Rosita (1923). The Marriage Circle (1924) began Lubitsch's unprecedented run of sophisticated films that mirrored the American scene (though always relocated to foreign or imaginary lands) and all its skewed panorama of the human condition. There was a smooth transition between his silent films for Warner Bros. and the sound movies--usually at Paramount--now embellished with the flow of speech of Hollywood's greats lending personal nuances to continually heighten the popularity at the box office and the fame of Lubitsch's first-rate versatility in crafting a smart film. There was a mix of pioneering musical films and some drama also through the 1930s. The of those films resulted in Paramount making him its production chief in 1935, so he could produce his own films and supervise production of others. In 1938 he signed a three-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox.
Certainly two of his most beloved films near the end of his career dealt with the political landscape of the World War II era. He moved to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), a fast-paced comedy of "decadent" Westerners meeting Soviet "comrades" who were seeking more of life than the mother country could--or would--offer. During the war he directed perhaps his most beloved comedy--controversial to say the least, dark in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way--but certainly a razor-sharp tour de force in smart, precise dialog, staging and story: To Be or Not to Be (1942), produced by his own company, Romaine Film Corp. It was a biting satire of Nazi tyranny that also poked fun at Lubitsch's own theater roots with the problems and bickering--but also the triumph--of a somewhat raggedy acting troupe in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Jack Benny's perfect deadpan humor worked well with the zany vivaciousness of Carole Lombard, and a cast of veteran character actors from both Hollywood and Lubitsch's native Germany provided all the chemistry needed to make this a classic comedy, as well as a fierce statement against the perpetrators of war. The most poignant scene was profoundly so, with Felix Bressart--another of Reinhardt's students--as the only Jewish bit player in the company. His supreme hope is a chance to someday play Shylock. He gets his chance as part of a ruse in front of Adolf Hitler's SS bodyguards. The famous soliloquy was a bold declaration to the world of the Axis' brutal inhumanity to man, as in its treatment of and plans for the Jewry of Europe.
Lubitsch had a massive heart attack in 1943 after having signed a producer/director's contract with 20th Century-Fox earlier that year, but completed Heaven Can Wait (1943). His continued efforts in film were severely stymied but he worked as he could. In late 1944 Otto Preminger, another disciple of Reinhardt's Viennese theater work, took over the direction of A Royal Scandal (1945), with Lubitsch credited as nominal producer. March of 1947, the year of his passing, brought a special Academy Award (he was nominated three times) to the fading producer/director for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures." At his funeral, two of his fellow directorial émigrés from Germany put his epitaph succinctly as they left. Billy Wilder noted, "No more Lubitsch." William Wyler answered, "Worse than that - no more Lubitsch films."- Ladislaus Bus-Fekete first worked as a critic for the Hungarian theater magazine Színházi Élet. His review of the only (lost) opera by the operetta composer Paul Abraham (Etelkas Herz) is interesting from a musical history point of view. Later he also worked as a journalist in Vienna and reported, among other things, on the Olympic Games in 1936.
Bus-Fekete celebrated success as a writer of theater comedies in Budapest, Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s and also in the early 1930s. His "birthday play. A life picture in six chapters" was later filmed by Ernst Lubitsch under the name Heaven Can Wait (German: A heavenly sinner) in Hollywood. After his play "Jean," a Hollywood film ("The Baroness and the Butler") and two television productions under the name "Jean" (1957 and 1965) were shot with his collaboration. Ladislaus Bus-Fekete was with the playwright and novelist Maria Fagyas married and worked with her on many productions.
Around 1937 the couple moved to the United States, where Bus-Fekete worked successfully as a screenwriter, primarily under the name Leslie Bush-Fekete. He wrote countless story lines and scripts for Hollywood productions, including "Ein Himmlischer Sünder" by Ernst Lubitsch, "Reunion in France" by Jules Dassin (with Joan Crawford and John Wayne) and "A Woman's Heart Never Forgets" (Lydia) by Julien Duvivier (with Merle Oberon and Joseph Cotten). After the war, Fekete also wrote numerous screenplays for television films. Together with Mária Helena Fagyas, he set up the novels "Der verntreute Himmel" and "Der Abituriententag" by Franz Werfel for the stage under the name L. Bush-Fekete. Due to the three spheres of activity of his work (Hungary, German-speaking countries and the USA), Bus-Fekete varied his first and last names many times. So, depending on the occasion, he drew his works as follows: Ladislas Bus-Fekete, Ladislaus Bus-Fekete, Laszlo Bus-Fekete, Leslie Bush-Fekete, L. Bush-Fekete, Ladislaus Bush-Fekete, László Bús-Fekete, Bús Fekete László and Bús-Fekete László. - Writer
- Actor
Aladár László was born on 10 October 1896 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a writer and actor, known for Trouble in Paradise (1932), Girl Rush (1944) and Pardon, tévedtem (1933). He was married to Margit Fellegi Laszlo. He died on 16 September 1958 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
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- Script and Continuity Department
Hanns Kräly was born on 16 January 1884 in Hamburg, Germany. He was a writer and actor, known for The Patriot (1928), One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) and Broadway Gondolier (1935). He died on 11 November 1950 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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Sidney Franklin was involved in amateur filmmaking while still at school. With his brother Chester M. Franklin, he wrote, directed and edited a short film, The Baby (1915), at a cost of $400. Somehow it attracted the interest of D.W. Griffith, who decided to put the brothers to work making children's films for the Triangle Film Corporation. After three years they went their separate ways. Sidney ended up with the more successful career. He established his reputation with Smilin' Through (1922), and went on to direct some of the great female stars of the silent era, including Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford and Greta Garbo. He joined MGM in 1926 and remained affiliated with the studio until his departure in 1958.
A protégé of the similarly inclined chief of production at MGM,Irving Thalberg, Franklin was thought of as a "literate" filmmaker. He was at his best bringing classics to the screen, like the Noël Coward adaptation of Private Lives (1931); Reunion in Vienna (1933), based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood; Rudolph Besier's period melodrama The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) or Pearl S. Buck's tale of struggling Chinese farmers, The Good Earth (1937). All were lavishly produced as A-grade features, with A-grade budgets.
From 1939 Sidney spent most of his time as producer on similarly prestigious films, with a strong inclination towards sentimental melodrama. The biggest box-office hits were Waterloo Bridge (1940), Random Harvest (1942), Madame Curie (1943),The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), a picture he thought would lose money but needed to be made. It turned out to be the most popular picture of the year and contributed in no small way to Sidney winning the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award in 1943, for "consistent high quality of production and achievement".- Writer
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- Music Department
Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first ambassador of "cool Britannia." Even before his 1924 drugs-and-sex scandal of The Vortex, his fans were hanging out of their scarves over the theater balcony, imitating their idol's dress and repeating each "Noelism" with glee. Born in suburban Teddington on 16 December 1899, Coward was on stage by the age of six, and writing his first drama ten years later. A visit to New York in 1921 infused him with the pace of Broadway shows, and he injected its speed into staid British drama and music to create a high-octane rush for the jazz-mad, dance-crazy 1920s. Coward's style was imitated everywhere, as otherwise quite normal Englishmen donned dressing gowns, stuck cigarettes in long holders and called each other "dahling"; his revues propagated the message, with songs sentimental ("A Room With A View," "I'll See You Again") and satirical ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Don't Put Your Daughter On the Stage, Mrs. Worthington"). His between-the-wars celebrity reached a peak in 1930 with "Private Lives," by which time he had become the highest earning author in the western world. With the onset of World War II he redefined the spirit of the country in films such as This Happy Breed (1944), In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and, perhaps most memorably, Brief Encounter (1945). In the postwar period, Coward, the aging Bright Young Thing, seemed outmoded by the Angry Young Men, but, like any modern pop star, he reinvented himself, this time as a hip cabaret singer: "Las Vegas, Flipping, Shouts "More!" as Noel Coward Wows 'Em in Cafe Turn" enthused Variety. By the 1960s, his reappraisal was complete -- "Dad's Renaissance", called it -- and his "Hay Fever" was the first work by a living author to be produced at the National Theatre. He was knighted -- at last -- in 1970, and died in his beloved Jamaica on 26 March 1973. Since his death, his reputation has grown. There is never a point at which his plays are not being performed, or his songs being sung. A playwright, director, actor, songwriter, filmmaker, novelist, wit . . . was there nothing this man couldn't do? Born into a musical family he was soon treading the boards in various music hall shows where he met a young girl called Gertrude Lawrence, a friendship and working partnership that lasted until her death. His early writings were mainly short songs and sketches for the revue shows popular in the 1920s, but even his early works often contained touches of the genius to come ("Parisian Pierrot" 1923). He went on to write and star (with Gertie) in his own revues, but the whiff of scandal was never far away, such as that from the drug addict portrayed in "The Vortex." Despite his obvious homosexual lifestyle he was taken to the hearts of the people and soon grew into one of the most popular writer/performers of his time.- Director
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The son of comedian and theatre director Ludwig Brahm, Hans followed in his father's footsteps and began his career on the stages of Vienna, Berlin and Paris. Again, like his father, he graduated to directing and had his first fling with the film business as a dialogue director for a Franco/German co-production, starring his future wife Dolly Haas. Hans went to England in 1934 to escape Nazi persecution (and to avoid being caught up in another war, having spent much of the previous conflagration as a conscript on the Russian Front). After a brief spell as a production supervisor, Brahm made his directing debut with an undistinguished remake of D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1936). A year later, he moved on to the U.S..
Having anglicised his first name to John, he arrived in Hollywood in 1937 and was signed to a three-year contract at Columbia (1937-40), followed by another three years with 20th Century Fox (1941-44). Brahm specialised in suspense thrillers, often with psychological undertones, at times involving madness. His affinity with filming the sinister and the grotesque had much to do with the influence of his uncle Otto, once an influential theatrical producer. Otto introduced his nephew to the dark and fantastic elements of classic German expressionist cinema, including films like Faust (1926). At Fox, Brahm directed two masterpieces back-to-back: the stylish and moody 'Jack the Ripper' look-alike The Lodger (1944); and, in a similar vein, Hangover Square (1945), a gothic melodrama about insanity and murder, set in Victorian London. Both films starred the excellent, sadly short-lived, actor Laird Cregar, whose professionalism and finely-etched performances Brahm greatly appreciated. Much of the credit for the pace and detail of these films belongs to Brahm himself, who meticulously mapped out every scene and camera angle before shooting commenced.
Another of Brahm's films, not in the same league as the aforementioned, but nonetheless quite enjoyable, is The Mad Magician (1954). Something of a precursor to the cycle of low-budget horror films Vincent Price was later to make at American-International, it was shot in the experimental 3-D process. What the picture lacked in a visceral sense, it made up for in period detail and in an enjoyable star performance reminiscent of the earlier House of Wax (1953).
By the mid-1950's, Brahm had segued from films to television, but never strayed far from the macabre. He directed some of the best-loved episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Outer Limits (1963), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and, especially, The Twilight Zone (1959) ("Time Enough at Last" comes to mind, in particular). Brahm retired in 1968. He spent the last years of his life confined to a wheelchair and died in October 1982 at the respectable age of 89.- Director
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Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Director
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Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa. He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14. At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing. In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone). They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris. After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films. In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work. At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.
In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna. After his divorce from von Harbou, he had relationships with many other women, but from about 1931 to his death in 1976, he was close to Lily Latte, who helped him in many ways.- Vera Caspary was born on 13 November 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was a writer, known for Laura (1944), A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and Laura. She was married to Isadore Goldsmith. She died on 13 June 1987 in New York City, New York, USA.
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An American minor leading man of early Depression-era talkies who played earnest, boyish leads, Ohio-born Elliott Nugent would earn more distinction as a writer, producer and director of stage and film after all was said and done. The son of playwright/producer/actor J.C. Nugent, Elliott was born in 1896 and came from pure show business stock, joining his family's vaudeville act, which included both parents and sister Ruth, while still young.
After graduating from Ohio State University Nugent traveled to New York and made his Broadway bow in the George S. Kaufman/Marc Connelly play "Dulcy", in which he enjoyed a personal success. Throughout the 1920s he remained a viable presence on stage, co-authoring and co-starring in nearly ten plays often in tandem with his father.
Nugent eventually took his youthful good looks to Hollywood in 1929 and played young protagonists in both light-hearted and dramatic film features. His first starring role was in Wise Girls (1929), which was based on his own 1922 Broadway play "Kempy." The film also co-starred Elliott's wife Norma Lee (1899-1980) and featured his father. Other celluloid leads would include the musical So This Is College (1929) and the Marion Davies comedy Not So Dumb (1930). He went on to provide second leads alongside Lon Chaney and Lila Lee in the crime drama The Unholy Three (1930); The Sins of the Children (1930) starring Robert Montgomery; Leila Hyams (which was co-written by Elliott and J.C. Nugent), and the opulent Greta Garbo/Lewis Stone drama Romance (1930).
Weary of acting in front of the camera, Elliott formulated a second career as a movie director. His work would include those for such top comedians as Bob Hope, Harold Lloyd and Danny Kaye in their lightweight vehicles. Among the many Broadway projects he and father J.C. corroborated or appeared together in were "Kempy" (which also featured sister vaudevillian Ruth) (1922), "The Poor Nut" (1925), "Take My Advice" (1927, a remake of "Kempy" (1927), "Fast Service" (1931), "All in Favor" (1942) and "A Place of Our Own" (1945).
Nugent's behind-the-scenes career was severely hampered by severe chronic alcohol and psychological problems, prompting his retirement in 1957. He subsequently penned an autobiography entitled "Events Leading Up to the Comedy" in 1965. Long out of the limelight, he died in New York City at age 83 in August of 1980. Wife Norma, whom he married back in 1921, died later that December.- Writer
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After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater creative freedom. Drunken Angel (1948) was the first film he made without extensive studio interference, and marked his first collaboration with Toshirô Mifune. In the coming decades, the two would make 16 movies together, and Mifune became as closely associated with Kurosawa's films as was John Wayne with the films of Kurosawa's idol, John Ford. After working in a wide range of genres, Kurosawa made his international breakthrough film Rashomon (1950) in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West. The next few years saw the low-key, touching Ikiru (1952) (Living), the epic Seven Samurai (1954), the barbaric, riveting Shakespeare adaptation Throne of Blood (1957), and a fun pair of samurai comedies Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962). After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide. He survived, and made a small, personal, low-budget picture with Dodes'ka-den (1970), a larger-scale Russian co-production Dersu Uzala (1975) and, with the help of admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the samurai tale Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), which Kurosawa described as a dry run for Ran (1985), an epic adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear." He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991) and Madadayo (1993). Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors (William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky and Evan Hunter) with suspicion - but he's revered by American and European film-makers, who remade Rashomon (1950) as The Outrage (1964), Seven Samurai (1954), as The Magnificent Seven (1960), Yojimbo (1961), as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Hidden Fortress (1958), as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).- Director
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Belonging to an important family clan in Wisconsin, Joseph Losey studied philosophy but was always interested in theater and thus worked together with Bertolt Brecht. After directing some shorts for MGM, he made his first important film, The Boy with Green Hair (1948), for RKO. While he was filming The Prowler (1951) in Italy he was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the congressional committee charged with "rooting out" Communist "subversion" in the motion picture industry. Unwilling to subject himself to the committee's well-known intimidation tactics, Losey decided to seek exile in Great Britain. In the following years he used a pseudonym--"Joseph Walton"--for his films, which were of minor quality. He regained his prestige with the thrillers Chance Meeting (1959), The Concrete Jungle (1960) and Eva (1962). From that point on his films varied between top-quality work like Accident (1967) and much lower-quality projects such as Modesty Blaise (1966), which was a box-office success, and Galileo (1975), which wasn't.- Rafael Sabatini was born near the Adriatic seaport of Ancona, Italy to Anna Trafford, an Englishwoman, and Italian Vincenzo Sabatini, both of whom were well known opera singers. With their careers still in full swing and included much traveling, so baby Rafael was sent to her parents near Liverpool for a stable home life. After seven years they retired from opera and turned to being voice teachers and the boy rejoined them, first in Portugal where they set up their first music school, then back to Italy, where they settled in Milan.
By early adolescence Rafael had already been a voracious reader, with a particular fondness for romantic historical novels. He was schooled at Zug, Switzerland, but by 17 years of age he was well versed in some six languages and decided it was time to make his way in the world. His father stepped in and determined that Rafael's linguistic skill was best served in international commerce, so he was sent back to Liverpool in 1892--a logical decision, since he had family there and the city was Great Britain's largest commercial port. His knowledge of Portuguese came in especially useful in his company's dealings in Brazil, but after four years of business, Rafael's interest in writing was bubbling to the top. He was writing his own romance stories, which he believed to be more interesting than just reading the works of others. All of this work was in English, as he considered the best literature of the world to be in that language. Some of his work was submitted by an acquaintance to an editor and, and wound up being accepted and published by a Liverpool publisher. By 1899 he was selling short stories regularly to prominent magazines: Person's, London, and Royal. He also had a translation job as well, and by 1905 with two novels published, he decided to devote full time to writing. That same year he married Ruth Goad Dixon, the daughter of a Liverpool paper merchant. At that point Sabatini moved to London, the publishing hub of Britain.
Rafael produced, in addition to about a novel a year, a steady stream of short stories. By the time he published his first really interesting swashbuckler, "The Sea Hawk", in 1915 he had completed 12 novels and, although comfortable in his new living, he was not the success he had envisioned. Though he had a modest and loyal following and his historical research was of a high degree, Sabatini's earlier work could be rather uneven in subject matter, of special interest to him but not the public. For instance, his supposed illegitimacy may have led to his half-dozen books dealing with the illegitimate despot Cesare Borgia of early 16th-century Italy. He also sometimes hampered himself with heavy-handed historical constraints, dragged out with extraneous philosophizing, as well as stilted dialog--but some of these faults were characteristic of 19th- and early 20th-century novel writing style. He managed another novel for 1917, but through most of World War I he was working in as a translator for the British intelligence service--evidently of great import to the war effort (he had finally become a British citizen, due in no small part to Italy's continued threats to conscript him into the army).
Sabatini returned to his writing after the war but nothing was forthcoming until 1921. He had been writing professionally for nearly 25 years when he finished "Scaramouche" and tried, but failed, to interest several American publishers in it. It was, however, picked up in England for publishing, and then in America as well. The story of Andre Moreau in the period of the French Revolution became a runaway best-seller internationally. After the success of "Scaramouche", Sabatini was ready with a second to his 1-2 punch. In 1922 "Captain Blood" was published, to even greater success. Suddenly his earlier works were being rushed into reprints, the most popular being "The Sea Hawk". Although the growing silent-film industry had already used six of his stories for films, they quickly started optioning the new best sellers for production. "Scaramouche" was turned into Scaramouche (1923) and followed by The Sea Hawk (1924) which hewed to the book's many turns, something the 1940 Errol Flynn version didn't do, opting for pretty much an entirely new screenplay, but was nonetheless extremely popular. The 1935 remake of "Captain Blood", also starring Flynn (Captain Blood (1935)), stuck the novel's story and was just as popular. The "Scaramouche" remake (Scaramouche (1952)) starred Stewart Granger and was a big hit.
By 1925 Sabatini had achieved his dream of success--he was rich and still filled with ideas and the will to write still more novels. There was time to rest, especially in his much beloved Wales--fishing was one of his favorite pastimes--but he also loved to ski. There was tragedy ahead, however. The Sabatinis' only son Rafael-Angelo (born in 1909 and nicknamed Binkie), busy with college, was given a new car by his parents in 1927. They were all due to go north to Scotland for a vacation, when the son and his mother went for a drive and the car was involved in an accident. Ruth Sabatini was thrown from the vehicle and knocked unconscious and was unable to remember what had happened, but Rafael-Angelo was fatally injured. Sabatini, returning from taking a friend to the railway station in Gloucester, happened on the accident and found his wife and son lying by the side of the road. The son died after arrival back at their rented estate of Brockweir House. The parents were devastated, and Sabatini went into a depression that stopped all writing. He started again a year later, and it would provide him enough to enable him to complete another novel, "The Hounds of God". Thereafter the novel-a-year work ethic would continue until 1941. However, his relationship with his wife was already strained by the time of their son's death, and they divorced in 1931. That year he also did a sequel to "Scaramouche"--"Scaramouche the Kingmaker". Sabatini turned to a new domesticated tranquility, having finally moved to Wales near Hay-on-Wye and refurbishing a fine old home called Clock Mill, complete with its own stream and stocked with trout.
In 1935 he married the sculptress Christine Goad, the wife of his first wife's brother. They were a happy couple, spending each January in Adelboden, Switzerland, for skiing. He finished a two-volume set of stories centering on his Captain Blood character called "Chivalry" in 1935. By the late 1930s the clouds of war in Europe especially disturbed Sabatini. He suffered through yet another tragedy when his new wife's son, Lancelot, flew over their house the day he received his RAF pilot's wings. The plane went out of control and crashed in flames across the Wye in a field right before their eyes. Sabatini wrote no more novels until 1944, for by this time he was developing what appeared to be stomach cancer. He managed one more novel in 1949, his 31st. He died on one last trip to Adelboden in 1950 and was buried there. On his headstone his wife had written the first lines from Scaramouche: "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." It made a very fitting epitaph. There have been 21 adaptations of his works for the screen, both in film and on TV. His writings also included eight collections of short novels/stories, six non-fiction books and many short stories, some of which are lost. - Writer
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The illegitimate son of a Danish farmer and his Swedish housekeeper, Carl Theodor Dreyer was born in Copenhagen on the 3th of February, 1889. He spent his early years in various foster homes before being adopted by the Dreyers at the age of two. Contrary to popular belief (perhaps nourished by the fact that his films often deal with religious themes) Dreyer did not receive a strict Lutheran upbringing, but was raised in a household that embraced modern ideas: in his spare time the adoptive father was an avid photographer, and the Dreyers voted for The Danish Social Democrates. When he was baptized the reasoning was culturally, not religiously motivated. Dreyer's childhood was an unhappy one. He did not feel his adoptive parents' love (especially the mother), and longed for his biological mother, whom he never knew.
After working as a journalist, he entered the film industry, and advanced from reading scripts to directing films himself. In the silent era his output was large, but it quickly diminished with the arrival of the talkie. In his lifetime he was recognized as being a fanatical perfectionist amongst producers, and thus difficult to work with. His career was dogged by problems with the financing of his films, which led to large gaps in his output - and after the critics, too, denounced Vampyr (1932), he returned to journalism in 1932, and became a cinema manager in 1952 - though he still made features up to the mid- 1960s, a few years before his death. His films are typically slow, intense studies of human psychology, usually of people undergoing extreme personal or religious crises. He is now regarded as the greatest director ever to emerge from Denmark.- Director
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The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and then director. The Proletkult's director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, became a big influence on Eisenstein, introducing him to the concept of biomechanics, or conditioned spontaneity. Eisenstein furthered Meyerhold's theory with his own "montage of attractions"--a sequence of pictures whose total emotion effect is greater than the sum of its parts. He later theorized that this style of editing worked in a similar fashion to Marx's dialectic. Though Eisenstein wanted to make films for the common man, his intense use of symbolism and metaphor in what he called "intellectual montage" sometimes lost his audience. Though he made only seven films in his career, he and his theoretical writings demonstrated how film could move beyond its nineteenth-century predecessor--Victorian theatre-- to create abstract concepts with concrete images.- Anthony Mithradas was born on 3 November 1913 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, British India. He was a director, known for Dayalan (1941), Pizhaikkum Vazhi (1948) and Duppathage Duka (1956). He died on 20 February 2017 in Chennai, India.