Otto Preminger

Preminger was married thrice during his lifetime. His first marriage was to Marion Mill in 1932 and they divorced in 1949.

He married Mary Gardner in 1951 and the two parted ways in 1959.

His third marriage was to Hope Bryce on 28 December 1971. The couple had two children and their marriage lasted till his death. He also had relationships with several actresses.

Otto Preminger was born on 5 December 1905, in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary, in a Jewish family, to Josefa and Markus Preminger. His father was a public prosecutor who was the former Attorney General of the Austria-Hungary. He also had a younger brother, Ingo Preminger.

Inspired by his father, he took up law studies at the University of Vienna. However, while still a teenager, he discovered his passion for acting and began appearing in plays around Vienna.

When he was 17, leading theatre director and his soon-to-be mentor Max Reinhardt assigned him a primary role in a production of Shakespeare's ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’. He delivered an impressive performance.

Otto Preminger soon began to direct plays and garnered critical and popular attention. He started his own stock companies, Die Komodie Theatre and Die Schauspielhaus. By his late 20s, he became one of Europe’s most famous theatre producer-directors. Meanwhile, he also obtained his law degree in 1928.

In 1931, he ventured into film making with the German film ‘Die Grosse Liebe’ (The Great Love). Nevertheless, he remained focused on theatre. In 1933, Reinhardt made him producer-director of the famous Theatre in der Josefstadt.

He moved to the United States of America in 1935 and staged the Broadway play ‘Libel’ (1935–36) before embarking on his Hollywood career. His initial two American B-films were ‘Under Your Spell’ (1936) and ‘Danger—Love at Work’ (1937) for Twentieth Century-Fox.

While shooting ‘Kidnapped’ (1938), he had a major disagreement with Twentieth Century-Fox studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck. As a result, he was removed from the project. Failing to find work with other Hollywood studios, he soon found himself unemployed.

He then decided to return to New York and his first love, the stage. At Broadway he directed several plays, notably ‘Margin for Error’ (1939–40), in which he played the role of a Nazi. He also taught stage direction at Yale University from 1938 to 1941.

‘Laura’ (1944) starred Dana Andrews as a cruel police detective who falls in love with a murder victim (Gene Tierney) during the course of his investigation. The film helped Preminger receive his first Academy Award nomination for best director, and Joseph LaShelle won an Oscar for his cinematography.

‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ (1955), was a steadfast depiction of drug addiction, starring Frank Sinatra as a heroin user. The film defied the Production Code and was released without MPAA’s approval. Adapted from a Nelson Algren novel, the film was a commercial success, and Sinatra received his first and only Oscar nomination in the best actor category.

‘Anatomy of a Murder’ (1959) was a controversial strong courtroom drama with sexually explicit subject matter. Ben Gazzara played the role of a husband who kills a man for supposedly raping his wife (Lee Remick). James Stewart received an Oscar nomination for portraying the defence attorney. The film, one of the best trial movies ever, received seven Academy Award nominations, including that of best picture.