LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Henry Koster: Universal Studios
built 255 days ago
Koster discovered Abbott and Costello working at a nightclub in New York. He returned to Hollywood and convinced Universal to hire them. Their first picture, which featured the Who's On First? routine, was One Night in the Tropics. The female lead, Peggy Moran, would become Koster's second wife in 1942. When he married Moran, Koster promised her he would put her in every movie he made from then on. He did, but it was her statue.
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Koster's first foray into studio spirituality was The Bishop's Wife (1947), for which he was nominated for a directorial Oscar (he never won one, though he directed six Oscar-winning actors). Despite not wanting to play in the role, Cary Grant glows as an angel sent to help an Episcopalian bishop (played by David Niven) and his wife, played by Loretta Young, who falls for the angel (unaware of his supernatural advantage). Koster's restraint from showing any supernatural miracles (as, say, deMille would have done) add to the humanity of the angel character, as well as to the nobility of the human characters.
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Koster, who was in the midst of directing a film, had already been the subject of anti-Semitism, and knew he had to leave. He lost his temper at an SA officer at his bank during lunch hour, and knocked the officer out. He went directly to the railroad station and left Germany for France, where he was rehired by Bernhardt (who had left earlier). Eventually Koster went to Budapest and met and married Kato Kiraly in 1934. In Budapest he met Joe Pasternak, who represented Universal in Europe, and directed three films for him.
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Koster ging als Filmregisseur nach Wien und drehte u.a. Komödien mit der aus Ungarn stammenden Franziska Gaal. 1936 lernte er Joe Pasternak von Universal kennen, zog in die USA und bekam einen Vertrag für drei Filme als Regisseur. Koster wurde praktisch über Nacht zum Retter des vom Bankrott bedrohten Studios mit dem Streifen Three Smart Girls mit der 14jährigen Deanna Durbin. Durbin war erst kurz vorher zugunsten von Judy Garland von MGM fallengelassen worden. Gemeinsam mit Pasternak produzierten sie bis 1941 noch weitere Filme mit Durbin, so 100 Men and a Girl von 1937, in dem Leopold Stokowski eine Nebenrolle hatte und Mad About Music aus dem folgenden Jahr.
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The end of Koster's career coincided with the demise of the studio system, and with the rise of television. He worked on only one pilot (with Pat Boone, incidentally) and then left the world of moving images for the rest of his life. He took up painting, rendering the portraits of many of the stars he had worked with throughout his career. Koster died in California in 1988, still happily married to Peggy Moran.
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Koster, who'd gone from contract script-writing to directing, by then, found his way to America. Through connections, he got a directing job at the then-struggling Universal Studios. His first movie, the musical comedy Three Smart Girls, was a big success. Koster saved Universal.
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