Directors

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.

Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in Tocopilla, Chile on February 17, 1929. In 1939 he moved to Santiago where he attended university, was a circus clown and a puppeteer. In 1953 he went to Paris and studied mime with Marcel Marceau. He worked with Maurice Chevalier there and made a short film, La cravate (1957). He also befriended the surrealists Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal, and in 1962 these three created the "Panic Movement" in homage to the mythical god Pan. As part of this group Jodorowsky wrote several books and theatrical pieces. In the later 1960s he directed avant-garde theater in Paris and Mexico City, created the comic strip "Fabulas Panicas", and made his first "real" film, the surrealist love story Fando and Lis (1968), based on a play by Arrabal. In 1971, El Topo (1970) was released and became a cult classic, as did The Holy Mountain (1973). In 1975 he returned to France to begin work on a film that was never made: a colossal adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune", which was to star Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí and others, was to be scored by Pink Floyd, and which brought together the visionary talents of H.R. Giger, Dan O'Bannon, and 'Jean "Moebius' Giraud' (Giger and O'Bannon later collaborated on Alien (1979).) The project's financiers backed out, and "Dune" was eventually filmed by David Lynch. Jodorowsky's next film was 1979's Tusk (1980), a story of a young girl's friendship with an elephant, which quickly faded into obscurity. In the early 1980s he began working with Moebius and other artists on various comic strips, graphic novels and cartoons, and wrote several more books. He returned to film with 1989's Santa Sangre (1989), which was critically acclaimed and widely distributed. In 1990 he directed Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole in the fantasy film The Rainbow Thief (1990). Throughout the 1990s he continued to produce cartoons with a variety of graphic artists and is reportedly to begin work on another film, the long-awaited "Sons Of El Topo", sometime in 2002 or 2003. Jodorowsky's wife Valerie and sons Brontis, Axel and Adan have all at times appeared in his films.

Antonio Margheriti was born on 19 September 1930 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Yor: The Hunter from the Future (1983), Cannibals in the Streets (1980) and The Unnaturals (1969). He died on 4 November 2002 in Monterosi, Lazio, Italy.

Charles Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, to Eliza (Conlon) and Robert Laughton, hotel keepers of Irish and English descent, respectively. He was educated at Stonyhurst (a highly esteemed Jesuit college in England) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal). His first appearance on stage was in 1926. Laughton formed own film company, Mayflower Pictures Corp., with Erich Pommer, in 1937. He became an American citizen 1950. A consummate artist, Laughton achieved great success on stage and film, with many staged readings (particularly of George Bernard Shaw) to his credit. Laughton died in Hollywood, California, aged 63.

Long-faced, emaciated-looking character actor with a thin mustache and an impeccable English accent, Anthony Dawson was typecast in a variety of villainous roles in the 1950s and 1960s.

He was born Anthony Douglas Gillon Dawson in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Ida Violet (Kittel) and Eric Francis Dawson. His father was Scottish and his mother was of German and English descent. Dawson made his greatest impact in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Dial M for Murder (1954). He was excellent as Lesgate, seedy ex-Cambridge classmate of would-be wife murderer Wendice (Ray Milland). In the scene where Wendice blackmails him to commit the killing ("There were times I felt you belonged to me"), he is nervous and visibly torn between fear and avarice. Dawson gave similarly sinister performances in the thriller Midnight Lace (1960), where he menaced hapless Doris Day, and the Terence Fisher-directed Hammer horror The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) as Count Siniestro. In a film by Terence Young, the James Bond classic Dr. No (1962), Dawson played the geologist Prof. R.J.Dent, a henchman of the title character who attempts to assassinate the hero, then finds out to his cost what Bond's "license to kill" really means.

Dawson was also the first screen incarnation of Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (in From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965)), though the viewer only sees his hands stroking a white cat and hears the voice of Austrian actor Eric Pohlmann. A highly capable, immediately recognizable actor, Dawson deserved better roles than came his way after the mid-1960s. He eventually ended up playing small parts in minor Italian films and European co-productions, but should not be confused with the Italian horror director Antonio Margheriti who sometimes used the pseudonym 'Anthomy M. Dawson'.

An interesting footnote to Dawson's career are his unpublished memoirs, "Rambling Recollections", in which he vividly recalls meeting Hitchcock after first arriving in Hollywood. This took place at a dinner party given by the director at Perino's Restaurant in Los Angeles. Also present were 'Dial M' co-stars Grace Kelly and English actor John Williams. Dawson later escorted Kelly to her residence at Chateau Marmont, an apartment bloc on Sunset Strip. Dawson then intimated that an affair took place, which, however lasted just until Ray Milland arrived on the scene.

Christian Nyby, the television and movie director who achieved acclaim as a film editor before moving into the director's chair, was born on September 1, 1913, in Los Angeles, California. He made his reputation as a cutter during the 1940s, when he worked with the great helmer Howard Hawks, winning his sole Academy Award nomination for the editing of Hawks' classic Western Red River (1948) (1948). Nyby first collaborated with Hawks as an editor at Warner Bros., on the director's adaptation of his friend Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not (1944) (1944). He edited The Big Sleep (1946), both the original 1944 version and the recut version that put more emphasis on stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that was released in 1946.

In a real-life scenario similar to Robert Wise's cutting of Orson Welles's second masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Nyby had to cut Red River (1948) on his own when director/producer Hawks had to go to Europe to complete another assignment. Nyby had to shorten Hawks' original cut, and also eliminate scenes that producer Howard Hughes thought plagiarized his own Western The Outlaw (1943), which Hawks had worked on. Though the film became regarded as a genre classic in the original Nyby cut, the original cut that Nyby had made under Hawks' supervision survived and was released during the 1960s, further burnishing the reputation of the film.

Nyby moved to the directors' chair for producer Hawks for the sci-fi movie The Thing from Another World (1951). Although The Thing is rightly regarded as a classic, credit for the direction of the film generally is attributed to Hawks as he reportedly was on the set everyday as the producer, and the film bears his "auteurist" stamp. Furthermore, Nyby's subsequent directorial output in film and on TV was mediocre, unlike this, his debut. Some believe the Hawks was ashamed to put his name on such a lowly genre piece (sci-fi was despised, critically, until Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) a generation later, and that film, one of the great classics of cinema, initially engendered hostile reviews from critics). Another theory is that Hawks helmed the film himself but let Nyby, who was on the set learning the ropes of direction, take the director's credit on the picture to receive membership in the Directors Guild. Whatever the truth, "The Thing" -- Nyby's greatest accomplishment as a director -- generally is credited to Hawks in fact or in spirit, so much is his style evident in the picture.

Nyby went on to direct B-movies such as the uninspired ode to the Marine Corps and battlefield sacrifice First to Fight (1967) (1967) and episodic television, never again showing the promise he had as director of "The Thing." He died on September 17, 1993, two weeks after turning 80 years old.

Dario Argento was born in Rome, Italy on September 7 1940. He is the son of producer Salvatore Argento. He began his career as a movie critic for the Rome daily newspaper "Paese Sera". A professional screenwriter by the tender age of 20, he joined Bernardo Bertolucci to write the screenplay for Sergio Leone's epic western "Once Upon A Time In The West" in 1967. Many screenplays later, Argento was signed up by Goffredo Lombardo, head of an Italian film company (Titanus) and made his directing debut in 1970 with "The Bird With The Crystal Plumage". His father Salvatore was the producer on all his films up until "Deep Red" when Claudio Argento took over. He has always taken a great interest in all aspects of film making to ensure that the end results of his films are as near to his original vision as possible. One of the first directors to see the possibilities of the steady cam and the 'luma' crane, he used them npth to their full potential. He even helped compose the music for "Suspiria". Many of his films are considered to be `giallo'. Giallo meaning yellow, which in turn came from the yellow covers of the penny-dreadful horror/thriller paperbacks that were sold in Italy. He has directed 15 films - `The Bird with the Crystal Plumage', 'The Cat O Nine Tails', 'Five Days In Milan', 'Four Flies on Grey Velvet', 'Profondo Rosso', 'Suspiria', `Inferno', 'Tenebrae', 'Phenomena', 'Opera', 'Two Evil Eyes', 'Trauma', 'The Stendhal Syndrome', 'Phantom of the Opera' and 'Non ho sonno'. He has also been involved in producing/writing films for others such as his protege Michele Soavi. Argento has also worked on three series for Italian television. In 1972, 'The Door of Darkness', in 1987 'Giallo' and 'Turno di notte' in 1988. There are also three documentaries on Argento and his films, 'Dario Argento's World of Horror', 'Dario Argento: Master of Horror (Dario Argento's World of Horror 2)' and 'The World of Dario Argento 3'.

Brilliant, distinguished American director, particularly of Westerns, whose simple, bleak style disguises a complex artistic temperament. The adopted son of a wealthy hardware retailer, Boetticher attended Culver Military Academy and Ohio State University, where he excelled in football and boxing.

Following his schooling Boetticher, something of an adventurer, went to Mexico and transformed himself into a formidable professional matador. His school chum, Hal Roach Jr., used his film connections to get Boetticher minor jobs in the film industry, most importantly the job of technical adviser on the bullfighting romance Blood and Sand (1941). By studying the work of the film's director, Rouben Mamoulian, and from editor Barbara McLean, he gained a thorough grounding in filmmaking.

After an apprenticeship as a studio messenger and assistant director, he was given a chance to direct, first retakes of scenes from other directors' films, then his own low-budget projects. For producer John Wayne Boetticher filmed his first prominent work, a fictionalization of his own experiences in Mexico, Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), although the work was re-edited without Boetticher's approval by his mentor, John Ford (the director's cut was restored several decades later).

Following a number of sprightly but inconsequential programmers in the early 1950s, Boetticher formed a partnership with actor Randolph Scott which, with the participation of producer Harry Joe Brown and writer Burt Kennedy, led to a string of the most memorable Western films of the 1950s, including 7 Men from Now (1956) and The Tall T (1957). He directed a sharp gangster film, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), then, with his wife Debra Paget, left for Mexico to film a monumental documentary on famed matador Carlos Arruza. The travail of the next seven years, which Boetticher detailed in his autobiography "When In Disgrace", included near-fatal illness, divorce, incarceration in jails, hospitals and an insane asylum, and the accidental deaths of Arruza and most of the film crew. The film, Arruza (1971), was both an exquisite documentary and a testament to Boetticher's immutable drive. Though he returned to Hollywood to form a partnership with Audie Murphy, they completed only one film together before Murphy's death in 1971.

Since then Boetticher completed another documentary and had announced several feature films in preparation. He died at age 85.

Although Delmer Daves obtained a law degree at Stanford University, he never had the opportunity to use it; while still in college, he obtained a job as a prop boy on The Covered Wagon (1923) and after graduation was hired by several film companies as a technical advisor on films with a college background. Soon afterward he entered films as an actor, and after appearing in several pictures he began collaborating on screenplays and original stories. He wrote scripts for many of Hollywood's best films of the 1930s and 1940s, including The Petrified Forest (1936), Love Affair (1939) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942). Turning director with the classic Destination Tokyo (1943), Daves often wrote and produced his own pictures. Of the many films he made, the westerns he did were especially close to his heart--as a youth he had spent much time living on reservations with Hopi and Navajo Indians.

Douglas Heyes was born on 22 May 1919 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers (1956), Maverick (1957) and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954). He was married to Joanna Heyes. He died on 8 February 1993 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would be remembered in several films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real life role of journalist and caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds "Cico and Pallina". Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became his real life wife from October 30, 1943, until his death half a century later. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1940 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Rome, Open City (1945) and made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisan (1946). On that film he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work.

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated with a degree in drama from Hofstra University, and did graduate work at UCLA in filmmaking. He was training as assistant with filmmaker Roger Corman, working in such capacities as sound-man, dialogue director, associate producer and, eventually, director of Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola's first feature film. During the next four years, Coppola was involved in a variety of script collaborations, including writing an adaptation of "This Property is Condemned" by Tennessee Williams (with Fred Coe and Edith Sommer), and screenplays for Is Paris Burning? (1966) and Patton (1970), the film for which Coppola won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. In 1966, Coppola's 2nd film brought him critical acclaim and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Coppola and George Lucas established American Zoetrope, an independent film production company based in San Francisco. The company's first project was THX 1138 (1971), produced by Coppola and directed by Lucas. Coppola also produced the second film that Lucas directed, American Graffiti (1973), in 1973. This movie got five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. In 1971, Coppola's film The Godfather (1972) became one of the highest-grossing movies in history and brought him an Oscar for writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo The film was a Best Picture Academy Award-winner, and also brought Coppola a Best Director Oscar nomination. Following his work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), Coppola's next film was The Conversation (1974), which was honored with the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and brought Coppola Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. Also released that year, The Godfather Part II (1974), rivaled the success of The Godfather (1972), and won six Academy Awards, bringing Coppola Oscars as a producer, director and writer. Coppola then began work on his most ambitious film, Apocalypse Now (1979), a Vietnam War epic that was inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1993). Released in 1979, the acclaimed film won a Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and two Academy Awards. Also that year, Coppola executive produced the hit The Black Stallion (1979). With George Lucas, Coppola executive produced Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), directed by Akira Kurosawa, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), directed by Paul Schrader and based on the life and writings of Yukio Mishima. Coppola also executive produced such films as The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982) The Black Stallion Returns (1983), Barfly (1987), Wind (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), etc.

He helped to make a star of his nephew, Nicolas Cage. Personal tragedy hit in 1986 when his son Gio died in a boating accident. Francis Ford Coppola is one of America's most erratic, energetic and controversial filmmakers.

Franklin J. Schaffner was one of the most innovative creative minds in the early days of American network television, utilizing a moving camera in the days when most television directors kept the camera static. His eye for visuals was developed in the dozens of live television programs he directed on prestigious shows such as Studio One (1948) and Playhouse 90 (1956), not to mention his work in news and public affairs on "March of Time" and as one of the directors of TV coverage of the 1948 political conventions in Philadelphia. His visual sense came to be one of the important attributes of his work in feature films, such as the trek taken across the desert by the astronauts at the start of Planet of the Apes (1968). In addition to his Oscar and DGA Awards for Patton (1970), Schaffner also won Sylvania Awards in 1953 and 1954, Emmy Awards in 1954, 1955 and 1962 and a Variety Critics Poll Award in 1960.

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.

F.W. Murnau was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air force, surviving several crashes without any severe injuries.

One of Murnau's acclaimed works is the 1922 film Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Although not a commercial success due to copyright issues with Stoker's novel, the film is considered a masterpiece of Expressionist film.

He later emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made three films: Sunrise (1927), 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930). The first of these three is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.

In 1931 Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to make the film Tabu (1931) with documentary film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty, who left after artistic disputes with Murnau, who had to finish the movie on his own. A week prior to the opening of the film Tabu, Murnau died in a Santa Barbara hospital from injuries he had received in an automobile accident that occurred along the Pacific Coast Highway near Rincon Beach, southeast of Santa Barbara. Only 11 people attended his funeral. Among them were Robert J. Flaherty, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo and Fritz Lang, who delivered the eulogy.

Of the 21 films Murnau directed, eight are considered to be completely lost.

In July 2015 Murnau's grave was broken into, the remains disturbed and the skull removed by persons unknown. Wax residue was reportedly found at the site, leading some to speculate that candles had been lit, perhaps with an occult or ceremonial significance. As this disturbance was not an isolated incident, the cemetery managers are considering sealing the grave.

George Pal was born on February 1, 1908, in Cegled, Austria-Hungary. Later, when he was still a child, his stage-entertainer parents divorced, and he was raised by his grandparents.

In 1928, Pal graduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts with a degree in Architecture and highly developed drawing skills. There were no opportunities for an Architect when he left the University, so, putting his other talents to work, he found employment at Hunnia Films in Budapest. Later on, through his films, Pal became an architect of worlds, but first...

At Hunnia, Pal drew lobby posters and created embellished titles for silent movies. He also quickly learned the craft of motion picture cartooning.

In 1930, George married Elisabeth Josepha (Zsoka) Grandjean, with whom he later had two sons, David (born, 1937) and Peter (born, 1941). Seeking work with better pay, the young couple moved to Berlin, a center for film innovation. Pal's talents were soon noticed.

From 1931-1932, Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist. These "puppets" without strings would later evolve into animated characters made of wood who would have names and star in their own films.

When the Nazi regime installed itself in Germany, George and Zsoka left for Prague for a short time. Then it was on to Paris where they received an invitation from Sies Neuman, head of Philips Radio's advertising, to move to Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, and work there. Before long, he had his own studio and made commercials for Dutch, English, and American firms.

It was in Eindhoven that George and American film maker, Dave Bader, invented a name for the three-dimensional cartoons that George was also now producing: "Puppetoons." George made many films in Holland, including "The Ship of the Ether." He changed his last name from Marczincsak to Pal, and, in 1937, George and Zsoka's first son, David, was born.

During the 1930s, George and Zsoka applied for an American emigration visa, only to be told each time that the small Hungarian quota was filled. Then, in 1939, the American consulate granted a visa for them and their young son to leave for New York.

First, Pal made a solo trip to New York. Not long after arriving, Columbia University offered him a lectureship on the process of making stop-motion films. Coincidentally, Barney Baliban, the president of Paramount Pictures' New York office, saw one of Pal's Puppetoon films at a party. He was so impressed by it that he contacted Pal and offered him a contract to make them for Paramount, either in New York or at their animation studio in Florida.

Pal returned to Holland and made arrangements for his family to leave Europe and move to America. Then, Frank Freeman, the President of Paramount Studios in Hollywood offered him a studio of his own and a staff of 25 film makers. The Pals arrived in New York early in 1940 and were soon settled in Beverly Hills, California.

In 1941, George and Zsoka's second son, Peter, was born.

From 1941 to 1947, Pal created more than 40 Puppetoon films, and received a special Academy Award in 1943. His studio staffers included Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren. He was also close friends with animation producer, Walter Lantz, as well as film pioneer, Walt Disney.

From 1948 to 1949, he began work on his first full-length motion pictures that combined live action with special photographic and sound effects. In the 1950s and 1960s, six of his films received Academy Awards. He worked with many gifted talents, including: director Byron Haskin; writers Robert A. Heinlein, Barré Lyndon, and David Duncan; cinematographers George Barnes, and Paul Vogel; visual-effects masters Gordon Jennings and his crew at Paramount, plus A. Arnold Gillespie, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren at MGM.

Pal also worked with sound-effects wizards Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren, Franklin Milton, and Van Allen James; art directors Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira, Ernst Fegté, and William Ferrari; film editors Everett Douglas and George Tomasini; composers Leith Stevens and Russell Garcia; space artist Chesley Bonestell; many animation craftsmen, including his son, David Pal, (who brought the elves to life in "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm") and Don Sahlin who would later go on to design the original Muppet characters; plus countless actors and actresses, many of whom are remembered to this day.

Throughout the 1970s, Pal worked on several film proposals, but only one was distributed. He passed away on May 2, 1980 while working on "The Voyage of the Berg" for AIP Filmways. It was never finished, but his other films endure.

George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; by all indications, though, he was very successful. The director of the groundbreaking "Living Dead" films was born February 4, 1940 ,in New York City to Ann (Dvorsky) and Jorge Romero. His father was born in Spain and raised in Cuba, and his mother was Lithuanian. He grew up in New York until attending the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

After graduation he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and his friends formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly $10,000 apiece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time: Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black-and-white on a budget of just over $100,000, Romero's vision, combined with a solid script written by him and his "Image" co-founder John A. Russo (along with what was then considered an excess of gore), enabled the film to earn back far more than what it cost; it became a cult classic by the early 1970s and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States in 1999. Romero's next films were a little more low-key but less successful, including The Affair (1971), The Crazies (1973), Season of the Witch (1972) (where he met future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1977). Though not as acclaimed as "Night of the Living Dead" or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues--usually horror-related--at the microscopic level. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around, Romero's favorite city of Pittsburgh.

In 1978 he returned to the zombie genre with the one film of his that would top the success of "Night of the Living Dead"--Dawn of the Dead (1978). He managed to divorce the franchise from Image Ten, which screwed up the copyright on the original and allowed the film to enter into public domain, with the result that Romero and his original investors were not entitled to any profits from the film's video releases. Shot in the Monroeville (PA) Mall during late-night hours, the film told the tale of four people who escape a zombie outbreak and lock themselves up inside what they think is paradise before the solitude makes them victims of their own, and a biker gang's, greed. Made on a budget of just $1.5 million, the film earned over $40 million worldwide and was named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2003. It also marked Romero's first work with brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini. After 1978, Romero and Savini teamed up many times. The success of "Dawn of the Dead" led to bigger budgets and better casts for the filmmaker. First was Knightriders (1981), where he first worked with an up-and-coming Ed Harris. Then came perhaps his most Hollywood-like film, Creepshow (1982), which marked the first--but not the last--time Romero adapted a work by famed horror novelist Stephen King. With many major stars and big-studio distribution, it was a moderate success and spawned a sequel, which was also written by Romero.

The decline of Romero's career came in the late 1980s. His last widely-released film was the next "Dead" film, Day of the Dead (1985). Derided by critics, it did not take in much at the box office, either. His latest two efforts were The Dark Half (1993) (another Stephen King adaptation) and Bruiser (2000). Even the Romero-penned/Tom Savini-directed remake of Romero's first film, Night of the Living Dead (1990), was a box-office failure. Pigeon-holed solely as a horror director and with his latest films no longer achieving the success of his earlier "Dead" films, Romero has not worked much since, much to the chagrin of his following. In 2005, 19 years after "Day of the Dead", with major-studio distribution he returned to his most famous series and horror sub-genre it created with Land of the Dead (2005), a further exploration of the destruction of modern society by the undead, that received generally positive reviews. He directed two more "Dead" films, Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009).

George died on July 16, 2017, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was 77.

Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist (1973)) and worked on making his own short films. At the age of 21, del Toro executive produced his first feature, Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1985). Del Toro spent almost 10 years as a makeup supervisor, and formed his own company, Necropia in the early 1980s. He also produced and directed Mexican television programs at this time, and taught film.

Del Toro got his first big break when Cronos (1992) won nine Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), then went on to win the International Critics Week Prize at Cannes. Following this success, del Toro made his first Hollywood film, Mimic (1997), starring Mira Sorvino.

Del Toro had some unfortunate experiences working with a demanding Hollywood studio on Mimic (1997), and returned to Mexico to form his own production company, The Tequila Gang.

Next for del Toro, was The Devil's Backbone (2001), a Spanish Civil War ghost story. The film was hailed by critics and audiences alike, and del Toro decided to give Hollywood another try. In 2002, he directed the Wesley Snipes vampire sequel, Blade II (2002).

On a roll, Del Toro followed up Blade II (2002) with another successful comic-book inspired film, Hellboy (2004), starring one of Del Toro's favorite actors, Ron Perlman.

Del Toro is divorced, has a daughter and a son and lives in Los Angeles and Toronto.

Hal Ashby was born the fourth and youngest child in a Mormon household, in Ogden, Utah, to Eileen Ireta (Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, on September 2, 1929. His father was a dairy farmer. After a rough childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all before he was 19, he decided to leave Utah for California. A Californian employment office found him a printing press job at Universal Studios. Within a few years, he was an assistant film editor at various other studios. One of his pals while at MGM was a young messenger named Jack Nicholson. He moved up to being a full fledged editor on The Loved One (1965) and started editing the films of director Norman Jewison.

A highlight of his film editing career was winning an Oscar for the landmark In the Heat of the Night (1967). Itching to become a director, Jewison gave him a script he was too busy to work on called The Landlord (1970). It became Ashby's first film as a director. From there he delivered a series of well-acted, intelligent human scaled dramas that included The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). Great reviews and Oscar nominations became common on Ashby films.

Ashby was always a maverick and a contrary person and success proved difficult for Ashby to handle. He became unreliable due to his dependence on drugs and a reclusive lifestyle. He actually collapsed while making The Rolling Stones concert film Let's Spend the Night Together (1982) in Arizona. Although he recovered, he was never the same after that. He began taking too much time in post production on his films and actually had a couple of his later projects taken away from him to be edited by others. He tried to straighten himself out, but in the 1980s, he was considered by many to be unemployable. Just when he felt he was turning a corner in his life, he developed cancer that spread to his liver and colon. He died on December 27, 1988. Actor Sean Penn dedicated his first film as a director, The Indian Runner (1991) to Ashby and John Cassavetes, even though Penn was never directed by either one. Because he did not have a set visual style, many mistake this for no style at all. His career is not discussed as often as the careers of some of his contemporaries.

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador was born on 4 July 1935 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was a writer and director, known for Who Can Kill a Child? (1976), The House That Screamed (1969) and Historias para no dormir (1966). He was married to Diana Nauta and Adriana Gardiazábal. He died on 7 June 2019 in Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not until The Light That Failed (1939) that she got a chance to get better parts. In most of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) and High Sierra (1941), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them. She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Colman, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson. She made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging from Pillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer in The Man I Love (1946). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles. She left Warner Brothers in 1947 and became a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when director Elmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man's Bette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man's Don Siegel. The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to television where she directed episodes in shows such as The Untouchables (1959) and The Fugitive (1963). In the seventies, she made guest appearances on various television show and appeared in small parts in a few movies.

Jack Arnold reigns supreme as one of the great directors of 1950s science-fiction features. His films are distinguished by moody black and white cinematography, solid acting, smart, thoughtful scripts, snappy pacing, a genuine heartfelt enthusiasm for the genre and plenty of eerie atmosphere.

Arnold was born on October 14, 1912, in New Haven, Connecticut. He began his show business career as an actor in both on- and off-Broadway stage productions in the late 1930s and early 1940s; among the plays he appeared in are "The Time of Your Life," "Juke Box Jenny," "Blind Alibi," "China Passage," and "We're on the Jury." Arnold served in the US Army in the Signal Corps during World War II. He apprenticed under famous documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty. Following his tour of duty Jack started making short films and documentaries. One short, With These Hands (1950), was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature. Arnold made his theatrical movie debut with the B picture Girls in the Night (1953). He then did his first foray into the science-fiction genre: the supremely spooky It Came from Outer Space (1953). Jack achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity with Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), a scary yet poetic reworking of "Beauty and the Beast". Revenge of the Creature (1955) was a worthy sequel. Tarantula (1955) was likewise a lot of fun. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) rates highly as Arnold's crowning cinematic achievement; it's an intelligent and entertaining classic that's lost none of its potency throughout the years.

Arnold's final two genre entries were the enjoyable Monster on the Campus (1958) and the offbeat The Space Children (1958). His other movies are a pretty varied and interesting bunch, including the hugely successful The Mouse That Roared (1959) (which helped to establish Peter Sellers as an international star), the teen exploitation gem High School Confidential! (1958), the superior Audie Murphy western No Name on the Bullet (1959), the goofy comedy Hello Down There (1969) and the silly softcore romp The Bunny Caper (1974).

In addition to his film work, Arnold also directed episodes of such TV shows as Science Fiction Theatre (1955), Peter Gunn (1958), Perry Mason (1957), Rawhide (1959), Gilligan's Island (1964), Mod Squad (1968), Wonder Woman (1975), The Love Boat (1977), The Bionic Woman (1976) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979).

The father of producer/casting director Susan Arnold, Jack Arnold died at age 79 on March 17, 1992.

Jack Bernhard was born on 28 November 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Decoy (1946), Unknown Island (1948) and Man Made Monster (1941). He was married to Jean Gillie. He died on 30 March 1997 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

Jack Clayton was born on 1 March 1921 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK. He was a producer and assistant director, known for The Innocents (1961), Our Mother's House (1967) and The Great Gatsby (1974). He was married to Haya Harareet, Katherine Kath and Christine Norden. He died on 26 February 1995 in Slough, Berkshire, England, UK.

Jean Rollin was born on 3 November 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Night of the Hunted (1980). He was married to Simone Rollin. He died on 15 December 2010 in Paris, France.