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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner Bros. and became thoroughly entrenched in the studio system. His films during the 1930s and '40s encompassed nearly every genre imaginable and some, including Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945), are considered to be film classics. His brilliance waned in the 1950s when he made a number of mediocre films for studios other than Warner. He directed his last film in 1961, a year before his death at 74.- Actress
- Soundtrack
From the day she was born Martha lived in a world of music. For sure her father was a banker but he was also an amateur pianist. As for her mother, she was a housewife but also a very talented opera singer who had given up her career for the joys of matrimony and motherhood. It does not come as a surprise, under such circumstances, that the little girl's singing capacities were soon discovered. At eight she was already on a scene singing an aria from "The Barber of Seville". A critic attended the show and was impressed by her performance. He introduced her to the director of the Magyar Theater, where she landed her first contract. As of the age of 10 she was hailed as Hungary's "national idol". And it was not long before her triumph became international. An operetta, "Pogasza", was written specially for the crystal-clear-voiced little singer. Among others, she played the role of the doll in "Tales of Hoffmann" and starred in "Das Veilchen vom Montmartre" by Kalman. With the advent of sound films, she found herself very much in demand in the 1930s, bringing her beautiful voice and looks to yet more delighted viewers. It is on the set of "Mein Herz ruft nach dir" that she met Jan Kiepura, another successful opera and operetta singer. Although it was not love at first sight, Jan and Martha gradually fell in love, married two years later, had two sons and were separated only by death with the demise of Jan in 1966. In 1938, the couple fled Austria after its annexation by Hitler and settled down in the South of France first then in the USA. Martha made fewer movies but kept on singing. For instance she co-starred in "The merry Widow" in Broadway for three years with Jan Kiepura. She became an American citizen in the fifties and currently lives in Rye, new York.- Heavyweight Hungarian-born character actor Oscar Beregi Jr.'s best performances were on the small screen, usually as Eastern European or Russian heavies. His stock-in-trade villainy was of a cultured or psychological, rather than physical nature, urbane and intellectual, yet inevitably sinister. His father, matinee idol Oscar Beregi Sr., had appeared on the Hungarian and German stage in Shakespearean roles, as well as acting in films, since 1919. Both Beregis left Hungary in 1939, the father settling in the United States, while the son ran a restaurant in Chile. It took several years for the younger Beregi to be granted a visa to enter the U.S., and then only through the intervention of then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson.
When Beregi finally arrived in America, he spoke little English and worked as a salesman for several years, learning the language, before re-entering the acting profession well into middle age. On the big screen, he was largely restricted to small supporting roles. However, Beregi made the most of the meatier roles offered him in television, such as mob boss Joe Kulak (a character possibly based on real-life mobster Jake Guzik) in eight episodes of The Untouchables (1959). He was also impressively commanding as the scientific criminal mastermind Farwell in Rod Serling's The Rip Van Winkle Caper (1961) and, in the same series, as former SS concentration camp commandant Guenther Lutze, driven to insanity by the ghosts of his former victims in Deaths-Head Revisited (1961). He was also effective in Middle Eastern intrigue (The Third Man (1959)) and in parodying his evil personae in I'm Only Human (1966), Tequila Mockingbird (1969), and Young Frankenstein (1974).
In his spare time, he was a successful breeder of Komondors, a breed of large, white Hungarian sheep dog, considered a living treasure in their native country. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Born on June 16, 1910, sultry, opulent, mole-lipped, Budapest-bred blonde singer/actress Ilona Massey survived an impoverished childhood in Hungary to become a glamorous talent both here and abroad. As a dressmaker's apprentice she managed to scrape up money together for singing lessons and first danced in chorus lines, later earning roles at the Staats Opera.
A statuesque Broadway, radio and night-club performer, Ilona made her debut in the Austrian film Heaven on Earth (1935) before coming to America to duet with Nelson Eddy in a couple of his glossy operettas. In the first, Rosalie (1937), she was secondary to Mr. Eddy and Eleanor Powell, but in the second vehicle, Balalaika (1939), she was the popular baritone's prime co-star.
Billed as "the new Dietrich," Ms. Massey did not live up to the hype as her soprano voice was deemed too light for the screen and her acting talent too slight and mannered. An American citizen in 1946, continued pleasantly moody in non-singing roles in a brief movie career that included such films as the Franz Schubert biopic New Wine (1941); the action adventure International Lady (1941); the double agent Nazi thriller Invisible Agent (1942), the musical comedy Holiday in Mexico (1946), the action drama Northwest Outpost (1947) and the romantic drama Trouble in the Air (1948).
For the most part Ilona was called upon to play ladies of mystery and sophisticated temptresses in thrillers and spy intrigues. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) and Love Happy (1949), the latter starring The Marx Brothers, are her best recalled. She appeared on radio as a spy in the Top Secret program and, on TV, co-starred in the espionage series Rendezvous (1952). The ABC mystery-drama had glamorous Ilona as a nightclub owner.
In the mid-50s, in addition to singing appearances on "Cavalcade of Stars," "The Milton Berle Show," "The Robert Q. Lewis Show," The Colgate Comedy Hour" and "The Ken Murray Show" and acting guest spots on such anthologies as "Lux Video Theatre," "Cameo Theatre" and "Studio One in Hollywood," Ilona hosted her own musical program, The Ilona Massey Show (1954), in which she sang classy ballads. By the 1960's she was rarely seen and ended her career with an obscure bit in the film The Cool Ones (1967).
Three marriages ended in divorce, her second being to actor Alan Curtis. 64-year-old Ms. Massey died of cancer on August 20, 1974, and was survived by her fourth husband, (retired) Major Donald Shelton Dawson. She had no children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Oscar-winning actor Paul Lukas was born in Hungary and graduated from the School for Dramatic Arts. In 1916 he went to Kosice (Kassa) to be an actor; in 1918 he became an actor specializing in comedy. For ten years he was the most popular character player and romantic lead of the company. In 1918 he began making movies in Budapest and in the 1920s he began appearing in films in Austria as well. He journeyed to Hollywood in 1927, where he finally settled down. He wasn't untrue to the stage--he played Dr. Rank to Ruth Gordon's Nora in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in the Morosco Theatre in New York in 1937--but concentrated on films until 1948. In the '50s he started appearing on stage more and more, and worked in films and on TV only sporadically.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Hungarian-born Karoly Vidor spent the First World War as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian infantry. Following the armistice, he made his way to Berlin and worked for the German film company Ufa, as editor and assistant director. In 1924, he emigrated to the U.S. and, for several years, earned his living as a singer in Broadway choruses and (at one time) with a Wagnerian troupe. While little detail is extant of this period in his career, it enabled him to accumulate the means with which to finance his own project: an experimental short film entitled The Bridge (1929). On the strength of this, he was signed by MGM to co-direct his first feature film The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). For the remainder of the decade, Vidor worked with relatively undistinguished material at various studios, notably RKO (1935) and Paramount (1936-37). In 1939, he joined Columbia, where he remained under contract until 1948.
Vidor's career is something of an enigma. Never a particularly prolific filmmaker, his output has been variable. It includes a good-looking, but decidedly stodgy romance, The Swan (1956) (starring Grace Kelly in her penultimate screen role); and the interminably dull remake of A Farewell to Arms (1957). On the other side of the ledger is the lavish showbiz biopic of singer Ruth Etting, Love Me or Leave Me (1955), for which Vidor elicited powerhouse performances from his stars Doris Day and James Cagney. Frank Sinatra, also, gave one of his best performances as nightclub entertainer Joe E. Lewis, descending into alcoholism in The Joker Is Wild (1957). Other Vidor standouts are Ladies in Retirement (1941), a gothic Victorian thriller, tautly directed and maintaining its suspense, despite a relatively claustrophobic setting (among the cast, as Lucy the maid, was actress Evelyn Keyes, who became Vidor's third wife in 1944). Finally, two Rita Hayworth vehicles, the breezy musical Cover Girl (1944), and Vidor's principal masterpiece, the archetypal film noir Gilda (1946). This cleverly plotted, morally ambiguous tale of intrigue and ménage-a-trois was one of Columbia's biggest money-earners to date.
Some of the wittier dialogue in "Gilda" was voiced in re-takes, long after primary filming had been completed. The same applies to the two main musical numbers, the show-stopping "Put the Blame on Mame", and "Amado Mio". Yet, under Vidor's direction, all the dramatic and musical elements blended perfectly. The film has an undeniably electric atmosphere, largely due to the chemistry between the three leads. When the same material was later re-worked as Affair in Trinidad (1952) (with a bigger budget), that chemistry was notably absent.
In 1948, Vidor fell out with studio boss Harry Cohn, taking him to court for alleged verbal abuse and exploitation. He wanted out of his contract. Having just married Doris Warner, daughter of Warner Brothers president Harry M. Warner, Vidor sensed opportunities in working at a more prestigious studio. Cohn wasn't going to let him go quietly. It was pretty much all over, when actor Steven Geray testified, that he had himself been on the receiving end of invective at the hands of Vidor on the set of "Gilda". Glenn Ford, who thought Vidor opportunistic, then went on the stand, relating, that Cohn routinely used foul language on everyone around him, rather than aiming at any individual in particular. The fact that Vidor was not the easiest man to get along with, became evident during filming of the Liszt biopic Song Without End (1960). Both his stars (Dirk Bogarde and Capucine) found him to be ill-tempered and erratic. However, since Vidor died before the film was completed (George Cukor taking over), other factors may have played a part. In the final analysis, for "Gilda" alone, Charles Vidor deserves a niche in Hollywood heaven.- Magda Gabor was born on 11 June 1914 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. She was an actress, known for Mai lányok (1937), Tokaji rapszódia (1937) and The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950). She was married to Tibor Heltai, George Sanders, Tony Gallucci, Sidney R. Warren, William Rankin and Jan de Bichovsky. She died on 6 June 1997 in Palm Springs, California, USA.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
The great American escape artist and magician Houdini (immortalized by a memorable performance by Tony Curtis in the eponymous 1953 film) was born Erich Weiss on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, though he often gave his birthplace as Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was raised. One of five brothers and one daughter born to rabbi Samuel Weiss and his wife Cecilia, the future Houdini was four years old when his parents emigrated to the U.S., where Weiss, as "Harry Houdini", became one of the major celebrities of the first age dominated by the mass media.
His boyhood was spent in poverty and, when he was 17, he conjured up a magic act with his friend Jack Hayman, in order to escape the poverty and anonymity of manual labor which would likely have been his lot in life. Young Erich had been fascinated with magic since he was a young lad, when he was in the audience of a magic show put on by a traveling magician named Dr. Lynch. Billing themselves as the "Houdini Bros." in tribute to French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Erich Weiss became an entertainer, though it took him some seven years to catch on.
Weiss and Hayman specialized in the Crate Escape (eventually known as Metamorphosis or The Substitution Trunk), and Houdini's brother Theodore replaced Hayman when he became uninterested in the act. Eventually, Theodore -- billed as Hardeen -- was replaced by Wilhemina Rahner (known as Bess), the woman "Harry Houdini" would eventually marry. The marriage on June 22, 1894 caused a conflict with his Jewish family as Bess was a Roman Catholic. They married in secret, then again at a synagogue and in a Catholic church to please both of their families.
While developing his act, Houdini was not above the old carny trick of posing as a spirit medium, making the rounds of the town clerk's office and nearby cemeteries in order to provide "messages from beyond". In 1896, while visiting a doctor friend in Nova Scotia, he saw his first strait jacket, which gave him the idea of developing an act in which he would escape from it.
Houdini finally hit the big-time when he was 24 years old with his Challenge Act in 1898, while he was making the rounds of vaudeville. Houdini's Challenge Act consisted of him escaping from a pair of handcuffs produced by an audience member. Eventually, this evolved into escapes from strait jackets, boxes, crates, safes, and other instruments and devices (such as his Water Torture Cell), as well as from jail cells. Houdini was also adept at escaping from being "buried alive". Hand-cuffed and strait-jacketed, he could escape while being hung upside down from a crane, or while lowered from a bridge, or even make his escape from padlocked crates lowered into a river.
Houdini also became famous as a debunker of mediums and "experts" of the paranormal, but this was done in hope he could find an actual medium that could communicate with the dead so that he could communicate with his beloved mother Cecilia after she passed away. He became quite famous in the ragtime age of the first quarter of the last century, even appearing in motion pictures produced by his own company.
Harry Houdini, the greatest magician ever produced by America, died in Detroit, Michigan during a national tour. The cause of death officially was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. His death came nine days after having been punched in the stomach during the Canadian leg of the tour by J. Gordon Whitehead, a McGill University student who was testing Houdini's famed ability to take body blows. Always the trouper, Houdini had soldiered on despite stomach pains. (Early during the tour, he had broken an ankle but did not let it stop him or the tour.) His wife Bess, to whom Houdini left his half-million dollar estate, collected a double indemnity on his life insurance policy, as the blow was considered to have shortened the great magician's life and contributed to his premature death at the age of 52.
The date of his death was October 31, 1926 -- Halloween, one of three days (October 31-November 2) of Samhain, the Celtic New Year, when the veil between the living and the dead allegedly is at its thinnest and the living can make contact with the dead. Annually on Halloween from 1927 to 1937, Bess held a séance to try to contact her departed husband. She did not succeed, though she helped keep the memory of her husband alive in the American consciousness. Even today, magicians worldwide conduct séances on Halloween in an effort to contact the late escapologist.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following year, Rózsa had much of his own chamber music performed, as well as his 'Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song' and his 'Symphony and Serenade for Small Orchestra'. However, he soon became disenchanted with meagre wages for playing classical music in concert. Attempting to change his financial situation, Rózsa managed to secure a contract with Pathe records to compose music for use in intermissions between movies. This was to be his first step in entering the more lucrative field of film composition. In 1935, Rózsa went to London after being invited by the Hungarian Legation to write the music for a ballet. The resulting work, 'Hungaria', so impressed the director Jacques Feyder that he set up a meeting with fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, who then commissioned him to write an opulent score for the romantic drama Knight Without Armor (1937). Rózsa later recalled having to learn to write music for films 'the hard way': "I bought one German and one Russian book on the technique of film music and everything I learned from these books was absolutely wrong! But then I had long conferences with Muir Mathieson, who was the music director and conductor for Korda, and somehow I learned."
While writing the score for The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Rózsa relocated to Hollywood where he remained gainfully employed over the next four decades. An expert at orchestration and counterpoint with a great flair for the dramatic, he often concentrated on the psychological aspects of a film. One of his innovations was the use of a theremin for the famous dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) which accompanies Salvador Dalí's transcendental nightmare images. Few composers have managed to convey suspense and tension as powerfully as Rózsa with his eerily haunting scores for some of the Golden Era's best films noir (Double Indemnity (1944), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Killers (1946), The Naked City (1948)) or his lush, stirring music for spectacular epics (Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), El Cid (1961)). In addition to winning three Oscars for his film work, Rózsa also continued as a prolific composer of classical music, including Violin and Piano Concertos, a Concerto for String Orchestra, a Sinfonia Concertante and Notturno Ungherese (influenced, respectively, by Stravinsky and Bartók). In 1945, he was appointed Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California where also lectured on the subject for many years.- Director
- Writer
- Production Designer
He was born in 1917 and between the two World War he finished his primary and secondary school. After them he graduated in the College of Fine Arts, which helped him later to be a production-designer. He liked to learn and joined the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. He bacame a director and actor. In the beginning of his career he was a production-designer, actor and he directed in theatres. He liked illustration and made many book illustrations. After the 2nd WW he was the main director of the Magyar Theatre, and in 1947 he was the member of the National Theatre. In 1950 he got a job in the Film Factory as an art director. Occasionally he wrote scripts. His first film Vihar (1952) is filmed in a Hungarian village. At the height of his career he made the internationally renowned film Merry-Go-Round (1956). He died in heart-attack when he was 77.- Actor
- Writer
Guy Deghy was born on 11 October 1912 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was an actor and writer, known for Secret Agent (1964), March or Die (1977) and Danger Tomorrow (1960). He was married to Mary Hooper and Patricia Wighton. He died on 25 February 1992 in London, England, UK.- Actress
Hungarian-born Lili Darvas (pronounced 'Darvash') was a major star first in Budapest, then on the German stage with Max Reinhardt's theatre company during the 1920s, touring Europe with plays by Goethe, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Shaw. She received her education at the Budapest Lyceum and made her acting debut at the age of 20 as Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet".
In 1926, she married playwright Ferenc Molnár who wrote several plays for her, including "Olympia" and "Delilah". The following year she made her Broadway debut as Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The union was childless but happy, and lasted until Molnar's death in 1952.
Lili was of Jewish background and was forced to flee Europe after the German annexation of Austria in 1938, using her Hungarian passport to escape to Switzerland. Later, on the advice of actor Walter Slezak, she hired a tutor to perfect her English language skills. Although she was known for her fine acting range she never lost her Hungarian accent which limited her to playing women of continental background. In 1944, she became an American citizen.
In the course of the succeeding three decades she enjoyed many a success on the New York stage, including a starring role in "Waltz of the Toreadors" (1958) and as Sigmund Freud's domineering mother Amalie in "The Far Country" (1961). She was nominated for a Tony Award in one of her last roles as Best Supporting or Featured Actress in Lorraine Hansberry's "Les Blancs".
On screen, she appeared in the big budget MGM musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). Following her husband's death in 1952, Lili acted increasingly in radio and early television anthology drama. On television, she was best-known for her role as the grandmother of the character played by Bill Mumy in "Long Distance Call", an episode of the iconic television series The Twilight Zone (1959).- More on cause of death: Eric Feldary died of burns suffered when a gas explosion wrecked his West Hollywood home. Feldary, 55, was taken to a hospital with second and third degree burns over more than 50 per cent of his body. A sheriff's deputy who investigated the blast said Feldary told him he forgot to close the valve of a gas heater the night before. When he struck a match in the morning the roof was blown off and the 5-room House was lifted from its foundation, the officer said. A neighbor, Leslie Warner, 57, heard the explosion and rushed out to see Feldary running from the house, his clothing afire. Warner extinguished the flames with a garden hose and summoned the fire department. Feldary was born in Budapest. Before coming to Hollywood he was well known in Hungary as a fencer, and enacted such roles several times in Hollywood.
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Paul Hörbiger was born on 29 April 1894 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was an actor and producer, known for The Third Man (1949), Three Girls Around Schubert (1936) and Königswalzer (1935). He was married to Josefa Gettke. He died on 5 March 1981 in Vienna, Austria.- Oscar Beregi Sr. was born on 24 January 1876 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was an actor, known for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), Kísértetek vonata (1933) and Camille (1926). He was married to Piroska Lázár and Amália Adler. He died on 18 October 1965 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Editor
Laslo Benedek was brought to Hollywood from Hungary--where he had been a writer, editor and photographer--by MGM, and his first few films were undistinguished programmers. His third, however, was quite a bit better: Death of a Salesman (1951), the screen version of Arthur Miller's classic play. Although trashed by critics at the time for, among other things, its "staginess" (Benedek said that he wanted to keep the work's theatricality intact), overlooked is the fact that Benedek drew out convincing, evocative performances from Kevin McCarthy, Cameron Mitchell, Fredric March and Mildred Dunnock.
Benedek's next film, however, is the one he'll be remembered for: The Wild One (1953). This granddaddy of all biker flicks is amusingly tame--some might even say lame--by today's standards, but it caused quite a commotion in its day (it was banned in England and was railed against by conservative religious and social pressure groups in the US as yet one more example of how Hollywood was "corrupting the youth of America"). The film is actually not all that much, being rather slow-going and the "bikers" coming across more like bratty teenagers than dangerous rampaging hoods, but it struck a chord with young people and parents alike--for different reasons, of course--and was far and away the most successful film of Benedek's career.- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
- Cinematographer
Robert Capa was born on 22 October 1913 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a cinematographer, known for Temptation (1946), Paris Cavalcade of Fashions (1948) and The 400 Million (1939). He died on 25 May 1954 in Thai Binh, Vietnam.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Ernest Laszlo, the Academy Award-winning cinematographer best known for his creative collaborations with directors Robert Aldrich and Stanley Kramer, was born on April 23, 1898, in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After emigrating to the US, he worked as a camera operator on Wings (1927). He made his debut as a director of photography on The Pace That Kills (1928). Before hooking up with Kramer, his most notable collaboration was with Aldrich, for whom he shot 11 films, including Vera Cruz (1954), the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Big Knife (1955). Other memorable films he shot include Two Years Before the Mast (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Stalag 17 (1953) and Logan's Run (1976). He also shot M (1951), Joseph Losey's remake of M (1931), which was re-envisioned as an urban film noir set in Los Angeles.
After 30 years as a director of photography, Laszlo was honored with his first Oscar nomination in 1961 for shooting Inherit the Wind (1960) for Stanley Kramer. He was subsequently Oscar-nominated for the cinematography on Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Ship of Fools (1965), for which he finally won his Oscar. His final film, The Domino Principle (1977), also was shot for Kramer.
From 1972 to '74 Ernest Laszlo served as the president of the American Society of Cinematographers. He died on January 6, 1984.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Ladislao Vajda was born on 18 August 1906 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958), The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) and Mi tío Jacinto (1956). He died on 25 March 1965 in Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
George Tabori was born on 24 May 1914 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a writer and actor, known for Frohes Fest (1981), Chance Meeting (1954) and I Confess (1953). He was married to Ursula Höpfner, Ursula Grützmacher-Tabori, Viveca Lindfors and Hannah Freund. He died on 23 July 2007 in Berlin, Germany.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Steve Sekely was born on 25 February 1899 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for Boy, the Noszty (1938), Die große Sehnsucht (1930) and The Fabulous Suzanne (1946). He was married to Klára Makoldy and Irén Ágay. He died on 9 March 1979 in Palm Springs, California, USA.- Miklós László was born on 5 May 1903 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a writer and actor, known for The Shop Around the Corner (1940), You've Got Mail (1998) and In the Good Old Summertime (1949). He was married to Florence Herrman. He died on 19 April 1973 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Edward Teller was born on 15 January 1908 in Budapest, Hungary, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was married to Augusta Maria Harkanyi. He died on 9 September 2003 in Palo Alto, California, USA.
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ján Kadár was born on 1 April 1918 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for The Shop on Main Street (1965), Smrt si ríká Engelchen (1963) and Obzalovaný (1964). He died on 1 June 1979 in Los Angeles, California, USA.