The New and Improved 70 List
by johnahabig | created - 02 Jun 2021 | updated - 15 Jun 2021 | Public
1. Stanley Kubrick
Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...
2. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
3. George Stevens
Director | Giant
George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one of the great American filmmakers, ranking with John Ford, William Wyler and Howard Hawks as a creator of classic Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen ...
4. Buster Keaton
Actor | The General
Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...
5. Leo McCarey
Director | An Affair to Remember
Leo McCarey was born on October 3, 1896 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for An Affair to Remember (1957), Going My Way (1944) and Love Affair (1939). He was married to Virginia Stella Martin. He died on July 5, 1969 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
6. Alan J. Pakula
Producer | Sophie's Choice
Alan J. Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Best Director for All the President's Men (1976) and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice (1982).
He also directed Presumed Innocent (...
7. Satyajit Ray
Writer | Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Late Sukumar Ray was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie ...
8. Hector Babenco
Director | Carandiru
Hector Babenco was born on February 7, 1946 in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a director and writer, known for Carandiru (2003), Pixote (1980) and Foolish Heart (1998). He was married to Bárbara Paz, Xuxa Lopes and Raquel Arnaud. He died on July 13, 2016 in São Paulo, São Paulo, ...
9. Raúl Ruiz
Director | La Telenovela Errante
Chilean director Raúl, or Raoul, Ruiz (1941-2011) was one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers to emerge from 1960s World Cinema, providing more intellectual fun and artistic experimentation, shot for shot, than any filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard. A guerrilla who uncompromisingly ...
10. Charles Walters
Director | Lili
Charles Walters was born on November 17, 1911 in Pasadena, California, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Lili (1953), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and Ask Any Girl (1959). He died on August 13, 1982 in Malibu, California, USA.
11. Irving Cummings
Director | Curly Top
New York-born Irving Cummings began his career as an actor on the Broadway stage in his late teens, and appeared with the legendary Lillian Russell's company. He entered films in 1909 as an actor, and became a very popular leading man in the early 1920s. He began directing at around that time, ...
12. Henry Levin
Director | April Love
A former stage actor and director, Henry Levin had a long and prolific career in films. Entering the business in 1943 as a dialogue director, he graduated to directing features the next year, and turned out films in just about every genre over the next 36 years. His heyday was in the 1960s, when he...
13. Howard Hughes
Billionaire businessman, film producer, film director, and aviator, born in Humble, Texas just north of Houston. He studied at two prestigious institutions of higher learning: Rice University in Houston and California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Inherited his father's machine ...
14. Dalton Trumbo
Writer | Roman Holiday
Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, arguably the most talented, most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10, was born in Montrose, Colorado to Orus Trumbo and his wife, the former Maud Tillery.
Dalton Trumbo was raised at 1124 Gunnison Ave. in ...
15. Will Vinton
Producer | Closed Mondays
Will Vinton was born on November 17, 1947 in McMinnville, Oregon, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Closed Mondays (1974), Return to Oz (1985) and Moonwalker (1988). He was married to Susan Shadburne, Gillian Allred and Bevan Vinton. He died on October 4, 2018 in Portland, Oregon, USA.
16. Stan Brakhage
Director | The Loom
Stan Brakhage was born on January 14, 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was a director and cinematographer, known for The Loom (1986), The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him (2000) and Visions in Meditation (1990). He was married to Marilyn Jull and Jane Wodening. He died on March 9, 2003 in ...
17. Emile de Antonio
Director | In the King of Prussia
The son of a wealthy physician, Emile de Antonio grew up in the tough coal-mining town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and it made a deep impression on him. His sympathies were always with working-class people (although he was a Harvard graduate, he was at times a dock worker, a peddler, the captain of ...
18. Dudley Murphy
Director | Stocks and Blondes
Dudley Murphy was born on July 10, 1897 in Winchester, Massachusetts, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Stocks and Blondes (1928), High Speed Lee (1923) and ...One Third of a Nation... (1939). He was married to Katharine Hawley and Virginia. He died on February 22, 1968 in Mexico City, ...
19. Vijay Anand
Writer | Guide
Vijay Anand was a celebrated filmmaker, writer, editor, and actor in Hindi cinema. Known as "Goldie," the younger brother of filmmaker Chetan Anand and matinée idol Dev Anand, Vijay Anand was born in Gurdaspur, Punjab, India on January 22, 1934 to a father, who was a lawyer. He lost his mother when...
20. Ub Iwerks
Visual_effects | The Birds
Ub Iwerks worked as a commercial artist in Kansas City in 1919 when he met Walt Disney who was in the same profession. When Disney decided to form an animation company, Ub Iwerks was the first employee he had due to his skill at fast drawing as well as being a personal friend.
When Charles Mintz ...
21. Robert Clampett
Director | Time for Beany
Born in San Diego, California, the young Robert Clampett was monumentally moved as a child by the film The Lost World (1925), inspiring him to create a sea-serpent sock-puppet that he used in puppet shows to entertain the neighborhood kids. This led him to create a stuffed Mickey Mouse toy, which ...
22. James Young Deer
Director | Lieutenant Daring RN and the Water Rats
James Young Deer was born on April 1, 1876 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Lieutenant Daring RN and the Water Rats (1924), Tragedies of the Osage Hills (1926) and The Stranger (1920). He was married to Helen Gilchrist, Anomine Paige and Red Wing. He ...
23. Robert Milton
Writer | The Land of Hope
Robert Milton was born on January 24, 1885 in Dinaburgh, Russia. He was a director and writer, known for The Land of Hope (1921), Charming Sinners (1929) and Devotion (1931). He was married to Joan. He died on January 13, 1956 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
24. Ben Hecht
Writer | Notorious
Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's and Broadway's greatest writers, won an Oscar for best original story for Underworld (1927) at the first Academy Awards in 1929 and had a hand in the writing of many classic films. He was nominated five more times for the best writing Oscar, winning (along with writing...
25. Tyrone Guthrie
Actor | Vessel of Wrath
Tyrone Guthrie was born on July 2, 1900 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Beachcomber (1938), Oedipus Rex (1957) and BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950). He was married to Judith Bretherton. He died on May 15, 1971 in Dublin, Ireland.
26. Max Reinhardt
Director | Sumurûn
Max Reinhardt was from an Austrian merchant family (surname officially changed from the family name Goldmann to Reinhardt in 1904), and even as a boy, after his family moved to Vienna, he haunted the "Hofburg Theater" and tried to see every play. In 1890 he studied at the Sulkowsky Theater in ...
27. Tengiz Abuladze
Director | Monanieba
'Tengiz Abuladze' studied theatrical direction af the Chota Rustaveli Theatre Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, and film- making at the VGIK Cinematography Institute, graduating in 1953, when he joined Georgia Film Studios as a director. He made documentaries before making his feature debut in 1958. ...
28. Leonid Gaidai
Director | Operatsiya 'Y' i drugie priklyucheniya Shurika
Leonid Iovich Gaidai was born on January 30, 1923, in the town of Svobodny, Amur region of Siberia, USSR. He was the third child in the family of a railroad worker. His father, named Iov Isidorovich Gaidai, was exiled to Siberia from Poltava, Ukraine. His mother, named Maria Ivanovna Lubimova, came...
29. Elem Klimov
Director | Idi i smotri
Elem Klimov was born on July 9, 1933 in Stalingrad, Nizhne-Volzhskiy kray, RSFSR, USSR [now Volgograd, Volgogradskaya oblast, Russia]. He was a director and actor, known for Come and See (1985), Rasputin (1981) and Pokhozhdeniya zubnogo vracha (1965). He was married to Larisa Shepitko. He died on ...
30. Ernst Marischka
Writer | Der veruntreute Himmel
Ernst Marischka was born on January 2, 1893 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was a writer and director, known for Embezzled Heaven (1958), Sissi - Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin (1957) and Sissi - Die junge Kaiserin (1956). He was married to Lilly Marischka. He died on May 12, 1963 in ...
31. Mikhail Romm
Director | Russkiy vopros
Mikhail Romm was born in 1901, into a Russian-Jewish family, in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russia. He served in the Red Army in 1918-21 as an Inspector of the Special Forces for Food Supplies. He was in charge of confiscations of bread and food from the wealthier farmers (kulaks) in Central ...
32. Claude Miller
Writer | Garde à vue
Claude Miller was born on February 20, 1942 in Paris, France. He was a writer and director, known for The Grilling (1981), L'effrontée (1985) and The Little Thief (1988). He was married to Annie Miller. He died on April 4, 2012 in Paris, France.
33. Harun Farocki
Director | Memories
The German film director, screenwriter and media artist Harun Farocki was born on the 9th January 1944 in Nový Jicín [Neutitschein], at that time a part of Czechoslovakia annexed by the Third Reich. He was the son of an immigrated Indian doctor and a German woman. Farocki first studied Theatre, ...
34. Zalman King
Producer | Nine 1/2 Weeks
Zalman King was born on May 23, 1942 in Trenton, New Jersey, USA. He was a producer and director, known for 9½ Weeks (1986), Galaxy of Terror (1981) and In God's Hands (1998). He was married to Patricia Louisianna Knop. He died on February 3, 2012 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
35. Helmut Dietl
Writer | Schtonk
Helmut Dietl was born on June 22, 1944 in Bad Wiessee, Bavaria, Germany. He was a writer and director, known for Schtonk (1992), Rossini (1997) and Monaco Franze - Der ewige Stenz (1983). He was married to Tamara Dietl, Barbara Valentin and Karin Dietl-Wichmann. He died on March 30, 2015 in Munich,...
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