Otto Preminger (1906 - 1986)
Related: Vienna - American cinema - Austria - film - director
Films: Bonjour Tristesse (1954)
Biography
Otto Ludwig Preminger (December 5, 1906 - April 23, 1986) was a film director. Born in Vienna, of assimilated Jewish ancestry, he worked with Max Reinhardt before emigrating to America. At first he directed and acted for 20th Century Fox, his Austrian accent typecasting him as a screen Nazi.
After the war, he became one of the most consistent Hollywood directors of the 1950s and early 1960s - delivering intelligent and entertaining films, often literary adaptations, albeit rather melodramatic or heavy-going on occasion.
Notable films include Anatomy of a Murder with James Stewart and Ben Gazzara, Advise and Consent with an on-form Charles Laughton, and Bonjour Tritesse with David Niven and Deborah Kerr.
Through a relationship with Gypsy Rose Lee he had one child, the screenwriter Eric Lee Preminger.
Otto Preminger died in 1986 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Preminger [Nov 2004]
The production code and foreign films [...]
At the forefront of challenges to the code was director Otto Preminger, whose films violated the code repeatedly in the 1950s. He made The Moon is Blue in 1953, and it was released without a certificate of approval. He also made The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), which dealt with the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and Anatomy of a Murder (1959) which dealt with rape. Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code and, since they were successful, hastened its abandonment. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_Code#The_1950s_and_early_1960s [Nov 2004]The Moon Is Blue
The Moon Is Blue is a 1953 comedy film by Otto Preminger which tells the story of a young girl who tries to play two playboy suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage. It stars William Holden, David Niven, Maggie McNamara, Dawn Addams and Hardy Krüger.
The movie was adapted by F. Hugh Herbert from his play. It was directed by Otto Preminger.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Maggie McNamara), Best Film Editing and Best Music, Song (Herschel Burke Gilbert and Sylvia Fine for "The Moon Is Blue").
The film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for its plot in which a young girl makes fun of her parents' concerns for her virtue. It was the first film to use the words "virgin", "seduce" and "mistress" since the enactment of strict Production Code of Hollywood.
The film was filmed in an English language version and a German language version. In the German version (called Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach), the stars are Johanna Matz, Hardy Krüger, Johannes Heesters and Tom Tull. Krüger and Matz have small roles in the English language version, and Holden and McNamara play the same roles in the German version. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_Blue [May 2005]
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