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Lewis Milestone

 
Director: Lewis Milestone
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  • Born: Sep 30, 1895 in Kishinew, Ukraine, Russia
  • Died: Sep 25, 1980 in Los Angeles, California
  • Occupation: Director, Writer
  • Active: '20s-'50s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
  • Career Highlights: All Quiet on the Western Front, The Kid Brother, Of Mice and Men
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Home Stretch (1921)

Biography

Lewis Milestone (born Lewis Milstein in the Ukraine) came to the U.S. as a teenager, and while in the Army during World War I was an assistant director on training films. In Hollywood, he began working as an editor, and after writing and assistant directing in the early 1920s, he helmed his first feature for producer Howard Hughes, Seven Sinners (1925). Milestone's comedy Two Arabian Knights (1927) was widely admired, but the director didn't hit his stride until 1930 with All Quiet on the Western Front, his landmark adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's war novel. In the '30s Milestone scored major achievements in several genres, including comedy (The Front Page [1931]), musical (Hallelujah, I'm a Bum [1933]), and espionage (The General Died at Dawn [1936]); he capped the decade with his classic drama Of Mice And Men (1939), adaptated from John Steinbeck's novella. Notable among his work of the 1940s and '50s are the war films Edge of Darkness (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), A Walk in the Sun (1946), and Pork Chop Hill (1959); The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers (1946), a stylish noir; and the Steinbeck adaptation The Red Pony (1949). Milestone began directing for television in the mid-'50s, and his film output quickly dropped off; after presiding over the Rat Pack in Ocean's 11 (1960) and Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), his only other '60s credits are two films he started but which were completed and signed by others, PT 109 (1963) and The Dirty Game. ~ All Movie Guide
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Wikipedia: Lewis Milestone
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Lewis Milestone (born Lev Milstein) (September 30, 1895 – September 25, 1980) was an Academy Award-winning motion picture director. He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights (1927), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The General Died at Dawn (1936), Of Mice and Men (1940), Ocean's Eleven (1960), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Milestone was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Imperial Russia (now Chişinău), Moldova). He came to the United States in 1912 just prior to World War I.[1] Milestone held a number of odd jobs before enlisting in the U.S. Signal Corps, where he worked as an assistant director on Army training films during the war. In 1919 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

After the war he went to Hollywood, where he first worked as a film cutter, and later as an assistant director. Howard Hughes promoted Milestone to director, and one of his early efforts, the 1928 film Two Arabian Knights, won him an Oscar in the first Academy Award ceremony. He also directed The Racket, an early gangster film, and later helped Hughes direct scenes for his aviation saga Hell's Angels (for which he never received credit).

Milestone won his second Academy Award for All Quiet on the Western Front, a harrowing screen adaptation of the antiwar novel by Erich Maria Remarque. His next, The Front Page, brought the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play to the screen. It earned him another Oscar nomination. His work during the 1930s and 1940s was always easily identifiable by its lighting and imaginative use of fluid camera. He worked extensively in television from the mid 1950s.

Lewis Milestone's final request before he died in 1980 was for Universal Studios to restore All Quiet on the Western Front to its original length. That request would eventually be granted nearly two decades later by Universal and other film preservation companies, and this restored version is what is widely seen today on television and home video. Milestone is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Contents

Academy Award nominations

Filmography as a director

References

  1. ^ U.S. Census, 1930, State of California, County of Los Angeles, enumeration district 825, p. 21-B, family 587.

External links

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Academy Award for Best Director

Frank Borzage (1927) · Lewis Milestone (1928) · Frank Lloyd (1929) · Lewis Milestone (1930) · Norman Taurog (1931) · Frank Borzage (1932) · Frank Lloyd (1933) · Frank Capra (1934) · John Ford (1935) · Frank Capra (1936) · Leo McCarey (1937) · Frank Capra (1938) · Victor Fleming (1939) · John Ford (1940)

Complete List · (1927–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Director. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lewis Milestone".  Read more

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