Who Am I? February 2025

I was born near Odessa, then part of the tsarist empire, towards the end of the 19th century. When I was a lad the family moved to Kishinev (now called Chisinau), Bessarabia (now called Moldova). Dad was a clothing manufacturer. Even as a young boy I can remember the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 when Jews were massacred following a blood libel accusation that they had murdered two gentile children in order to use their blood to bake matzo.

I developed a love of theater but dad had other ideas for me right after I had reached my teen years. He sent me to Mittweida in eastern Germany to study engineering. I was already fluent in the Russian language but there I also acquired proficiency in German. Truth be told, I wasn’t very interested in engineering. When dad sent me money to come home, I instead booked passage to Hoboken, New Jersey. I arrived during Woodrow Wilson’s first year in office. I was essentially broke and for a while relied on the benevolence of an aunt for support. I also did odd jobs including dishwashing. I finally got a job as a photographer’s assistant which soon led to a job as a theater photographer.

Shortly after the U.S. entered the World War I enlisted in the Signal Corps. I was trained in aerial photography and worked on training films. Later on I edited combat photography. While serving my hitch I made the acquaintance of future Hollywood directors Victor Fleming and Josef Von Sternberg.

A friend got me an entry level position as an assistant editor and cutter in Hollywood. The job also entailed sweeping the floor and being the all around “Gofer.” However, I did get good experience writing scenarios and editing and worked my way up to being a director by getting better assignments. I began in the “silent era” and later made the transition to talkies. I directed an early silent with comedian Marie Prevost which also featured Mary Astor and William Boyd, the future Hopalong Cassidy.

During the course of my long career I worked as a director, at different times, for Warner, Universal, RKO, Paramount, U.A., and Columbia. I’ve directed Gary Cooper, Richard Conte, Akim Tamiroff, Madeleine Carroll, Ronald Colman, Robert Mitchum, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Walter Huston, Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Burgess Meredith, Charles Boyer, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Bing Crosby etc. in over 38 feature films. I worked in different genres – comedy, war films, gangster films, musicals and film noir.

One of my films earned Best Picture and Best Director awards for me. That particular film was one I brought to the big screen from a novel written in the late 1920’s about the ‘Great War’ from the point of view of America’s adversaries. The film is considered to be epic. Some thought it to be a pacifist, anti-war manifesto. Not surprisingly, the film was banned in several countries that had turned to fascism in the 1930’s. All that being said, the film made a strong impression on the public by portraying the hardships of the individual soldiers and the horrors of trench warfare. That film was shot just 3 years after talkies came in and I was lauded for innovating the mounting of cameras on wooden tracks and in the use of aerial tracking which took filmmaking a giant step from the stationary sets of the silent era. Another of my major films was about the newspaper reporting industry and was adapted from a Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play. That film earned me 4 Academy Award nominations. During my long career I befriended the author of “The Grapes of Wrath.” I was later to bring two of his novels to the big screen.

My well received film noir entry marked the debut of Issur Danielovitch on the screen.

I was a founding member of the Director’s Guild. Unlike many Hollywood marriages, mine endured for over 40 years and only ended because of to my dear wife’s death.

I was a member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. During WWII I offered my services to the film industry to promote the allied cause. In that regard I made several pro-Russian films because they were our allies at the time. Those affiliations, along with my alignment with the Committee for the First Amendment got me in hot water and led to a few visits from the F.B.I. to me. HUAC also summoned me for questioning, but not to testify. I wasn’t blacklisted, but rather I was “greylisted.”

When the big Hollywood studios began to decline I directed TV dramas. That’s me in the photo below.

(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What were the given names of my dad and mom? (1c)My cousin was a world class violin virtuoso. What was his name? (2a)What was the author’s name of that late 1920’s ‘Great War’ novel? (2b)What was the name of his novel/the movie on which it was based? (2c)Where was that award-winning movie shot? (3a)My famous yarn about the newspaper reporting business was made into Hollywood movies three times. What were those 3 titles and when were those movies released? (4a)Name one film I directed from a novel written by the author of “The Grapes of Wrath.” (4b)What film of mine brought Issur Danielovitch to the screen? What other name do you know him by? (5)Where exactly is my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located?