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Otto Preminger: Director Otto Preminger
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Otto Preminger (1905-1986), Hollywood’s first truly independent producer/director, was a controversial, polarizing figure throughout his life. He was famous as a flamboyant, outspoken personality – no filmmaker other than Alfred Hitchcock had a more recognizable public persona. A savvy showman and self-promoter whose frequent on-set tantrums were widely reported, Preminger ... achieved fame on screen playing Nazis ( STALAG 17) and as Mr. Freeze on television’s "Batman". But behind the colorful "characters" he invented and performed with great skill, Preminger was a fearless advocate of free speech. His defiance of the MPAA Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency – he released THE MOON IS BLUE and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM without the Production Code’s Seal of Approval -- struck fatal blows against censorship. He broke the blacklist when he revealed that Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, had written the screenplay for EXODUS.
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Otto Preminger was a Hollywood director, who directed many films during the 1950's and 1960's. Preminger was born in Vienna, Austria and worked as an actor before he began directing films. Some of his most notable films include Carmen Jones, The Moon is Blue, Porgy and Bess and Anatomy of a Murder. Preminger is ... known to have had an affair with actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge.
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From All Movie Guide: Originally a law student, Otto Preminger got his first acting experience with Max Reinhardt's theater company while studying for his degree. He entered the theater as a producer and director, came to America as a director in 1935, and was hired by 20th Century Fox. After leaving the studio for Broadway at the end of the '30s, he returned in the early '40s, specializing in Nazi roles despite his Jewish faith. Preminger got back into the director's chair with Margin for Error, an adaptation of a play that he had directed on Broadway. Laura, based upon the hit novel and play by Vera Caspary, was to have been made by Rouben Mamoulian; but he was fired soon after production began, and Preminger took over finished the film, which went on to become a huge hit. The director's most important subsequent movie at Fox was Forever Amber, which failed at the box office but enhanced his reputation nonetheless.
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In his long career, Otto Preminger directed six outstanding features and many very good ones. He belonged to that select band of directors – Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Elia Kazan – who could work in theatre and cinema alike, and mingle the two forms. His films show the impact of the stage practice he acquired working first for Max Reinhardt and then directing on his own in pre-war Vienna, before he made the transition to Hollywood and to cinema in 1935. During his film career, he developed a liking for long mobile takes, widescreen formats, multi-planar composition and minimal editing. In Hollywood, he became like Alfred Hitchcock a successful European director by starting to produce his own films, and by openly challenging, like his fellow Austrian Billy Wilder the censorship code of the studio system. The six outstanding films, which don’t include the likeable but overrated Laura (1944), are all ones that followed it, spaced evenly over two decades: Fallen Angel (1945), Angel Face (1952), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Bonjour Tristesse (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Bunny Lake is Missing (1965).
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Shadowy film noir from director Otto Preminger finds drifter and aspiring con man Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) setting up an ambitious scam with a spiritualist (John Carradine) and falling for voluptuous waitress Stella (Linda Darnell). Stanton tries to set himself up with Stella by bilking an admirer (Alice Faye) out of her inheritance. When do these plans ever end well? Charles Bickford, Anne Revere, Bruce Cabot, and Percy Kilbride ... star. 97 min. Standard; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital stereo, Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, Spanish; audio commentary; photo gallery; theatrical trailer.
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Otto Preminger was born in 1905 (not 1906, as usually reported), the son of a prosecutor for the Austrian Empire. Otto studied law but wanted to become an actor, and at 17 joined the company of Max Reinhardt. He rose quickly to director, was chosen to take over Reinhardt's theater on the latter's retirement, and was offered, at age 27, the post of the head of the State Theatre in Vienna. He turned it down on learning that a condition of assuming the post was conversion to Catholicism (the Premingers were Jewish, although Otto was not religious).
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Director Otto Preminger