Gene Gutowski

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Gene Gutowski born as Eugeniusz Bardach (July 26 1925 in Lvov, Ukraine (then Poland))
Son of Julius Bardach (Lawyer) and Anna Bardach (Concert Pianist).

Gene Gutowski is most known as a Polish-American film producer having produced many of Roman Polanski's films.

Formative Years

Son of Julius and Anna Bardach, Gene Bardach and his family lived in Rawa Ruska from 1933 until the beginning of war in 1939 when the Bardach family moved to Lvov where under Soviet occupation Gene Bardach began his studies as sculptor at the Institute of Plastic Arts.

In 1941 the Germans occupied Lvov and a year later his entire family who has lived there for generations was killed, Gene escaped to Warsaw where he took on the 'Gutowski' name. He first worked for a photographer and later as an employee of the Junkers factory at Okecie Airport, secretly removing Luftwaffe radio-transmitter for delivery to the Polish underground army (Armia Krajowa) Escaping from the Gestapo at 18 he became the head of a construction company working for the Organisation Todt in Riga, Latvia and was later evacuated to Germany at the end of 1944.

At the end of war in May of 1945, again escaping from the advancing Soviet army, Gene Gutowski joined the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps. Worked as Special Agent out of the Garmish Partenkirchen office until March of 1947 when he married an American State Department employee, Zillah Rhoades and moved with her to New York.

After working for a few years as fashion illustrator, Gene Gutowski has become a TV and film producer and with a few low budget productions to his name moved to London in 1960 to produce Station Six Sahara and to join forces with Roman Polanski in 1963. In a creative partnership they made Repulsion, Cul-De-Sac and The Fearless Vampire Killers, until Polanski went on to move to Hollywood under contract to Paramount in 1967.

Pursuing separate paths though remaining close friends, Gutowski and Polanski joined forces again to produce together THE PIANIST an Oscar winning film. Residing in Warsaw, Gene Gutowski has staged several plays and also has written and published his autobiography Od Holocastu do Hollywood (From Holocaust to Hollywood).

Filmography

- Station Six-Sahara "1962" (Producer)
- Repulsion "1965" (Producer)
- Passion Flower Hotel "1965" (Producer)
- Cul-de-Sac (film) "1966" (Producer)
- The Fearless Vampire Killers "1967" (Producer)
- A Day at the Beach "1970" (Producer)
- The Adventures of Gerard"1968" (Writer/Producer)
- Romance of a Horsethief "1970" (Producer)
- The Pianist (2002 film) (Co-Producer)
- Doubt: A Parable "2007" (Producer)

References and external links

• IMDB profile
• Autobiography Summary