Product Description

The first full-scale life of the controversial, greatly admired yet often underrated director/producer who was known as “Otto the Terrible.”

Nothing about Otto Preminger was small, trivial, or self-denying, from his privileged upbringing in Vienna as the son of an improbably successful Jewish lawyer to his work in film and theater in Europe and, later, in America.

His range as a director was remarkable: romantic comedies (The Moon Is Blue); musicals (Carmen Jones; Porgy and Bess); courtroom dramas (The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell; Anatomy of a Murder); adaptations of classic plays (Shaw's Saint Joan, screenplay by Graham Greene); political melodrama (Advise and Consent); war films (In Harm's Way); film noir (Laura; Angel Face; Bunny Lake Is Missing). He directed sweeping sagas (from The Cardinal and Exodus to Hurry Sundown) and small-scale pictures, adapting Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse with Arthur Laurents and Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm.

Foster Hirsch shows us Preminger battling studio head Darryl F. Zanuck; defying and undermining the Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Catholic Legion of Decency, first in 1953 by refusing to remove the words "virgin" and "pregnant" from the dialogue of The Moon Is Blue (he released the film without a Production Code Seal of Approval) and then, two yeras later, when he dared to make The Man with the Golden Arm, about the then-taboo subject of drug addiction. When he made Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, the censors objected to the use of the words "rape," "sperm," "sexual climax," and "penetration." Preminger made one concession (substituting "violation" for "penetration"); the picture was released with the seal, and marked the beginning of the end of the Code.

Hirsch writes about how Preminger was a master of the "invisible" studio-bred approach to filmmaking, the so-called classical Hollywood style (lengthy takes; deep focus; long shots of groups of characters rather than close-ups and reaction shots).

He shows us Preminger, in the 1950s, becoming the industry's leading employer of black performers—his all-black Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess remain landmarks in the history of racial representation on the American screen—and breaking another barrier by shooting a scene in a gay bar for Advise and Consent, a first in American film.

Hirsch tells how Preminger broke the Hollywood blacklist when, in 1960, he credited the screenplay of Exodus to Dalton Trumbo, the most renowed of the Hollywood Ten, and hired more blacklisted talent than anyone else.

We see Preminger's balanced style and steadfast belief in his actors' underacting set against his own hot-tempered personality, and finally we see this European-born director making his magnificent films about the American criminal justice system, Anatomy of a Murder, and about the American political system, Advise and Consent.

Foster Hirsch shows us the man—enraging and endearing—and his brilliant work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #527921 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-16
• Released on: 2007-10-16
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 592 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Meticulously researched with nearly 100 new interviews with family members and co-workers, this epic biography offers a multifaceted portrait of the Viennese-born filmmaker and reappraisal of his films. Preminger's creativity was fueled by abrasion, says Hirsch, so nearly every film boasts testimony from actors who were verbally abused. His explosive rows extended to censors, crew members and studio heads. But Hirsch also reveals the gentler side of Otto the Terrible, protecting fragile stars and doting on his family. With family, Otto was like a marshmallow, and capable of great love in a primal way, says Erik, his son with Gypsy Rose Lee. Film buffs will enjoy the candid looks behind his volatile productions (including Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Hurry Sundown). Historians will appreciate Preminger's belated recognition for breaking the blacklist (he credited Dalton Trumbo for writing Exodus nine months before Kirk Douglas did the same with Spartacus) and dismantling the oppressive censorship board (he released The Moon Is Blue and Man with the Golden Arm without the Production Code's seal of approval). This is a long-overdue critical biography of the temperamental titan with a genius for self-promotion. Photos. (Oct. 21)
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Review


Preminger (1905—1983) could not have asked for a more assiduous or generous biographer than Hirsch (Film/Brooklyn College; Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway, 2002, etc.), who has visited the archives, studied the films, interviewed the principals, walked the ground and read all relevant documents. The result will endure as the definitive life of one of film's most intriguing and volcanic personalities....Executed with the conviction and meticulousness of a Preminger production.
–Kirkus Reviews (starred)


Meticulously researched with nearly 100 new interviews with family members and co-workers, this epic biography offers a multifaceted portrait of the Viennese-born filmmaker and reappraisal of his films...Film buffs will enjoy the candid looks behind his volatile productions (including Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Hurry Sundown). Historians will appreciate Preminger's belated recognition for breaking the blacklist....This is a long-overdue critical biography of the temperamental titan with a genius for self-promotion.
–Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Foster Hirsch is a professor of film at Brooklyn College and the author of sixteen books on film and theater, including The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio, and Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

AN OUTSTANDING BIOGRAPHY OF AN OUTSTANDING IMPRESSARIO
Foster Hirsch has done a masterful job putting together a study of the life and times of Otto Preminger--a "rebel with a cause," namely the expansion of individual freedom against forces opposed to it. He was a figure from a time when people were serious about arts and culture, and 'adult entertainment' did not mean xxxx-rated porno. A better producer than director of actors, that is Hirsch's main argument, but Preminger still gets points for being a masterful "Noir" auteur, as well as a decent director of social-issue films of the 50s and 60s. He broke censorship taboos, the blacklist, the color-line, and created an overtly pro-Israel classic in Exodus (though not pro-Israel enough for author Leon Uris), and dealt with the Alger Hiss case in Advise and Consent (also pulling punches, to the dismay of Alan Drury). But he made the type of films that, while familiar in the 1950s and 1960s--think of Stanley Kramer, Sam Spiegel, Elia Kazan, and so on--are all but gone today. Serious, thoughtful films, posing philosophical dilemmas in the middle of melodrama.

If Preminger's reach exceeded his grasp, Foster Hirsch makes the case that he deserves credit for trying. There's also material on Preminger's colorful personal life--his illegitimate son by stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Dorothy Dandridge's abortion (Otto's fault per Hirsch), his temper tantrums (Dexedrine use may have been a factor), and his interesting relationship with his brother Ingo (talent agent and producer of Robert Altman's MASH) and his parents (father was former Attorney-General of Austria-Hungary). His final marriage, to Hope, seems to have worked out OK--his son became a doctor in New Jersey and his daughter a lawyer who manages the Preminger business today. His son by Gypsy Rose Lee was responsible for some of Preminger's more peculiar films, such as Skiddoo and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

He directed Porgy & Bess, which was pulled from distribution, as well as Carmen Jones. Laura is his most enduring hit. But many others have withstood the test of time. Preminger's last film, The Human Factor, was written by Tom Stoppard. Foster Hirsch says it is worth another look--like many other Preminger productions.

If you are interested in movie history, America in the 1950s and 1960s, or Viennese refugees and their Kultur, this is the book.

If you are interested in Hollywood
This is a well written book. If you like biography and you like Hollywood, especially the golden age, you will enjoy it. You will be especially interested in the discussion of his classic films. Also Preminger was a leader and ground breaker in elimination of censorship of films and the McCarthy era of blacklisting writers.

A great introduction to a complex, fascinating individual...
This is a great book about a complex, fascinating man/filmmaker. As an avid cinema fan, I've always found Otto's films overly long, self important, and way too episodic. I recently saw Preminger's The Cardinal, and I was surprised at how much I loved the film. I've decided to go over Preminger's work again, and that's one of the main reasons I read this book.

This book is very well written and researched, and gives you a complex, measured portrayal of a great showman. Whether you like Preminger's work or not, he had a brilliant knack for getting great publicity for his films, and tackling then controversial subjects. He made films like The Moon Is Blue (which had pretty saucy sex talk, especially for 1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (about heroin addiction), Advise and Consent (which had a homosexual plot line in it, which was very bold for its time), and Anatomy of a Murder, which is one of the most riveting, complex courtroom dramas ever made.

The book shows how Otto became one of the biggest powerhouses in Hollywood during his heyday, his shooting methods (he shot very lean and came in under budget, something Hollywood loves), his relationships with actors (he got along wonderfully with Patricia Neal and John Wayne, and was constantly at the throat with Faye Dunaway and Dyan Cannon), and his dedication to family and to liberal politics. Otto helped smash the blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay for Exodus, and insisted on him using his real name. While some of Otto's work is a bit dated and not as shocking as it used to be, it's still extremely well made and head and shoulders above other "message" films of the era (particularly films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which is rather painful to watch nowadays).

The book has none of the intellectual, film professor talk on what his films mean, and that's always welcome. It's an absolutely fascinating portrait of a very complicated, polarising filmmaker, one whose films still invoke strong reactions from people today.