Career Highlights: Judge Hardy and Son, Calling Dr. Kildare, Young Dr. Kildare
First Major Screen Credit: Lady Tubbs (1935)
Biography
A former film cutter for William Fox in Hollywood (Fox at one point accused him of stealing raw film but the subsequent case was settled out of court), Louis Ostrow later became an editor and, later still, a production manager at low-budget Tiffany-Stahl. He became a full-fledged producer with the first Monogram, but resigned in 1934 to join Universal. By the late '30s, Ostrow was producing the first Hardy Family and Dr. Kildare pictures for MGM and was later briefly associated with cult favorite Val Lewton. Always associated with routine entertainment, Ostrow's most notable contributions to film history were probably the hospital drama Life Begins (1935) which he produced and, as executive producer, the seminal horror classic The Cat People (1942). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide