Donner, Clive Stanley (1926–2010), film and television director, was born on 21 January 1926 at 43 Priory Road, West Hampstead, London, the only son of Alex Donner (1892–1980), concert violinist, and his wife, Deborah, née Taffel (1900–1976), who ran a dress shop. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants. He attended ...
Article
Foreman, Carl (1914–1984), screen writer and film producer and director, was born in Chicago on 23 July 1914, the son of Isidore Foreman and his wife, Fanny, née Rozin. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who had met in America and married in 1913. They had both worked in the tailoring business and succeeded in opening a number of millinery shops in ...
Article
Steve Chibnall
Guest, Val (1911–2006), film director and screenwriter, was born Valmond Maurice Grossmann at 116 Sutherland Avenue, Maida Vale, London, on 11 December 1911, the son of John Simon Grossmann, jute broker, and his wife, Julia Anne Gladys, née Emanuel. His parents were of Jewish descent. He spent his infancy in ...
Article
Harvey, Laurence [real name Hirsch Moses Skikne] (1928–1973), actor and film director, was born on 1 October 1928 in Joniskis, Lithuania, the youngest of the three sons of Orthodox Jewish parents, Ber Skikne (1895/6–1974) and his wife, Ella Zotnickaita (1897/8–1974). In 1929, endeavouring to improve his prospects as a building contractor, his father emigrated to ...
Article
Robert Murphy
Korda, Sir Alexander [real name Sándor László Kellner] (1893–1956), film producer and director, was born on 16 September 1893 in Pusztatúrpásztó, near Túrkeve in Hungary, the eldest of three sons of Henrik Kellner, the steward of an estate leased by the Salgó...
Image
Sir Alexander Korda (1893–1956) by unknown photographer, 1936 [on location filming Rembrandt] Getty Images
Image
Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) by unknown photographer, 1971 Getty Images
Article
David Parkinson
Kubrick, Stanley (1928–1999), film director, was born on 26 July 1928 at the Lying-in Hospital, 307 Second Avenue, Manhattan, New York, the son of Jacques Leonard Kubrick (1901–1985), physician, and Gertrude Perveler (1903–1985), who were both of mid-European Jewish extraction. Conscious of the boy's mediocre academic accomplishments, ...
Article
Robert Murphy
Reisz, Karel (1926–2002), film and theatre director, was born on 21 July 1926 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, the son of Josef Reisz, a Jewish lawyer, and his wife, Frederika. At the age of twelve he joined his older brother Paul as a boarder at ...
Image
Karel Reisz (1926–2002) by Callum Bibby, 1985 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Image
Joseph Rosenthal (1864–1946) self-portrait, 1900 © Joseph Rosenthal; British Film Institute
Article
Stephen Bottomore
Rosenthal, Joseph (1864–1946), cameraman and film director, was born on 7 April 1864 in the Jewish East End of London, the son of Davis Rosenthal, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Mary Lippmann. Joseph began his career as a pharmaceutical chemist at St George's Hospital...
Article
Samuelson, George Berthold [Bertie] (1889–1947), film producer and director, was born on 6 July 1889 at 41 Nevill Street, Southport, the youngest of the five children of Henschel Samuelson, formerly Metzenberg (1829–1889) and his wife, Bertha (1854/5–1918), daughter of Solomon Weile and his wife, ...
Article
Saville [formerly Salberg], Victor Myer (1897–1979), film producer and director, was born on 5 September 1897 at his parents' home, 8 Speedwell Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, the second of the three children of Gabriel Salberg, a fine art and china dealer, and his second wife, ...
Image
Victor Myer Saville (1897–1979) by unknown photographer © reserved; British Film Institute
Article
Brian McFarlane
Schlesinger, John Richard (1926–2003), film and stage director, was born on 16 February 1926 at 53 Hollycroft Avenue, Hampstead, London, the son of Bernard Edward Schlesinger (1896–1984), paediatrician, and his wife, Winifred Henrietta, née Regensburg (1897–1986), who had studied music at Trinity College of Music...
Image
John Richard Schlesinger (1926–2003) by Michael Birt, 1983 © Michael Birt; collection National Portrait Gallery, London
Article
Andrew H. Spicer
Thomas, Ralph Philip (1915–2001), film director, was born on 11 August 1915 at 139 Coltman Street, Kingston upon Hull, the elder son of Samuel Thomas, a commercial traveller for Shell, and his wife, Freda, née Cohen. His brother Gerald Cyril Thomas, also a film director, was born in 1920. The family moved to ...
Article
Robert Murphy
Viertel, Berthold (1885–1953), film and theatre director, was born in Vienna on 28 June 1885, the son of Jewish parents who owned a furniture-making business. He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and became a follower of the radical journalist, playwright, and poet ...
