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 F i l m P e o p l e Sp - Z
Austrian, German and Swiss Film People in Hollywood (Part 6 - Sp-Z)
Also see > An Introduction to how these people are selected
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Sam Spiegel (1903-1985)
was born in Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary, now in Poland. Spiegel studied in Vienna and was a guest lecturer at UCLA and film translator in 1927. After working as a producer in Europe for Universal in Berlin, the Jewish Spiegel was forced out of Germany in 1933. He later became one of America's most influential film producers. In the 1940s and '50s, he worked under the name S.P. Eagle. Some of his films: Tales of Manhattan (1942), African Queen (1952), On the Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971).
Max Steiner (Maximilian Raoul Steiner, 1888-1971)
Austrian film music composer: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Caine Mutiny.
Josef von Sternberg (Jonas Sternberg, 1894-1969)
Austrian director of Morocco (1930, Marlene Dietrich's first Hollywood film), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and other films. Known as the discoverer of Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel, 1930), Sternberg directed six Hollywood films with the German diva. His bitter memoirs were entitled Fun in a Chinese Laundry (1963).
Erich von Stroheim (Erich Oswald Stroheim, 1885-1957)
Austrian actor, director. The son of a Vienna hat maker, Stroheim came to the U.S. in 1908. His classic silent Greed (1923) is considered a masterpiece. Unfortunately it was a seven-hour masterpiece that could not be shown commercially until it was severely cut. His stubborn refusal to make films the way studios wanted forced him to give up directing (he never directed a sound film) and draw on his acting talent. He acted in Five Graves to Cairo, Sunset Boulevard, and other Hollywood films until the 1950s.
WEB LINK > Film100.com - Erich von Stroheim is number 59. (site no longer online)
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Irving Grant Thalberg (1899-1936)
American producer born in New York City to German-Jewish parents. Thalberg ruled MGM for 12 years, producing films like Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and The Good Earth (released in 1937 after his death). The annual Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award has been a part of the Academy Awards since 1937. It honors high “achievement by an individual producer.” F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon was based on Thalberg's short but brilliant life.
WEB LINK > Film100.com - Irving G. Thalberg is number 18. (site no longer online)
Wilhelm (William) Thiele (1890-1975)
The Austrian director of B-films (Tarzan's Triumph) and TV productions ("The Lone Ranger") got his start in Austria and later in Germany at the Ufa studios. In the US he never achieved the reputation and fame he had in Europe, but he is credited with giving Dorothy Lamour her big start with the Hollander song "Moonlight and Shadow" which he put in The Jungle Princess (1936) against the studio's wishes. See the Tarzan Connection for more about his Tarzan films.
Ernst Toch (1887-1954 )
Austrian film music composer
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Edgar G. Ulmer (1900-1972)
Austrian director, screenwriter. After working as an actor and set designer in Austria, Germany and Sweden, Ulmer began his Hollywood career as an assistant director with Carl Laemmle at Universal in 1925. But Ulmer returned to Germany several times to work on films there. His films include: Menschen am Sonntag (Ger., 1929), The Black Cat (1934, considered a classic of the horror genre; Ulmer also co-wrote the screenplay), Bluebeard (1944) and the film noir works Detour (1946) and Ruthless (1948). For several of his early films Ulmer used the pseudonym “John Warner.” Ulmer had a well-deserved reputation for making a lot out of little: “What he could do with nothing...remains an object lesson for directors who complain about tight budgets and schedules.” (Peter Bogdanovich)
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Alida Valli (Alida Maria Altenburger, 1921- )
Italian actress whose father was of Austrian descent. She often went only by the name “Valli” and is perhaps best known for her role in The Third Man (1949), set in post-war Vienna. Her other films include The Paradine Case (1948), The Miracle of the Bells (1948), Walk Softly Stranger (1950), The Castillian (1963), and The Cassandra Crossing (1977). - More
Conrad Veidt (center) in the world's first
horror film: Das Cabinett des Dr. Caligari.
Conrad Veidt (1893-1943)
German actor best known for The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca (as Major Strasser). Veidt was featured in the world's first horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Also see the Casablanca Connection for more about Veidt.
Charles Vidor (1900-1959 )
Hungarian director whose early career was spent in Germany working at the Ufa studios. He came to the US in 1924. Probably best known for directing Gilda (1946), a sexy film noir with Rita Hayworth. Other films: Hans Christian Andersen (1952), A Farewell to Arms (1958).
Volkswagen, aka “Herbie”
German car. Obviously not a person, but certainly very personified, the car known as “Herbie” in Disney's The Love Bug (1969)—starring Dean Jones, Buddy Hackett and Michelle Lee—came from Germany. Actually, several specially-rigged VWs were used in filming The Love Bug in San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Virginia City, Nevada. Herbie proved to be quite popular, and “he” continued his adventures in three sequels: Herbie Rides Again (1974), Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo (1977) and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). However, none was as big at the box office as the original, which grossed over $23 million and was the second biggest film of 1969. A new made-for-TV version - in which Dean Jones appears - aired in 1997. Herbie's latest appearance is in Herbie Fully Loaded (2005). (For trivia buffs: At no time in the original Love Bug does anyone ever refer to the car by its brand name.) - DVD > The Love Bug (1969, Spec. Ed.) VHS VIDEO > The Love Bug (1969)
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Franz Waxman (Wachsmann, 1906-1967)
German film music composer who won Oscars for his scores for Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).
Paul Wegener (1874-1948)
German actor and director. Born in East Prussia, Wegener became a well-known actor on the Berlin stage with Max Reinhardt and the Deutsches Theater around 1906. He appeared in only one US film (The Magician, 1926), and that was filmed in France. His importance has more to do with the influence of some of his early silent films, particularly The Golem, based on a Jewish legend about a protector made of clay who comes to life in time of need. Wegener both directed and appeared in three different versions of this film (1914, 1917, 1920). Oddly for a man who had earlier filmed Jewish tales, Wegener made several propaganda films for the Third Reich.
WEB LINK > Paul Wegener Information by E. H. Larson.
Oskar Werner (Oskar Josef Bschliessmayer, 1922-1984)
Austrian actor, born in Vienna, whose career began at Vienna's famous Burgtheater. Because his heart was primarily in live theater and he was choosy about his roles, Werner's cinematic reputation is based on his outstanding work in very few films. In 1948 he appeared in a notable post-war Austrian film, Der Engel mit der Posaune, which was remade in Britain by Alexander Korda as Angel with the Trumpet with Werner (which got him fired from the Burgtheater). He tore up a two-year old contract with Fox in front of studio executives in 1953, but his film career was revived with the success of the French Jules et Jim in 1961. His other films include Decision Before Dawn (1951), Ship of Fools (1965, also featuring Heinz Rühmann), The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), and Fahrenheit 451 (1966).
Bernhard Wicki (1919- )
Austrian/Swiss actor, director. Wicki directed the German segments of The Longest Day (1962). His only other Hollywood film was The Saboteur (1965, aka Morituri). Wicki is also known for his classic German anti-war film Die Brücke (The Bridge, 1959). Wicki appeared in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984).
Robert Wiene (1881-1938)
German director. Although he never made a Hollywood film, Wiene's 1919 Das Cabinett des Dr. Caligari was the world's first horror film and a classic of German Expressionism. (Also see Conrad Veidt.) Wiene later directed Orlacs Hände (The Hands of Orlac, 1925), a true horror film (also featuring Veidt) that was re-made in Hollywood by German director Karl Freund as Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre, in 1960 as a British-French production, and again by Hollywood in 1962 as Hands of a Stranger.
William Wyler (1902-1981)
Swiss-American director
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Hans Zimmer (1958- )
German film music composer (Rain Man, The Lion King, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor and other films)
Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997)
Austrian director who won Oscars for That Mothers Might Live (1938, short), From Here to Eternity (1953) and A Man for All Seasons (1966). He came to Hollywood in 1929 after working in Germany's film industry. Many of Zinnemann's films are considered Hollywood classics. His additional work includes the classic western High Noon (1952), Oklahoma! (1955), The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Julia (1977, Meryl Streep's first film role). Zinnemann published his autobiography, A Life in the Movies, in 1992.
Peter Zinner (1919- )
Austrian film editor with an Academy Award for The Deer Hunter (1978). He edited other films such as An Officer and a Gentleman, The Hunt for Red October and the TV movies "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance." The versatile Zinner also did the musical arrangements for classics like Quo Vadis and Singing in the Rain.
Adolph Zukor (1873-1976)
The founder of the “most European” Hollywood studio - Paramount - lived to be 103!
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