Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austrian-American theatre and film director, film producer, and actor. He directed more than 35 feature films in a five-decade career after leaving the theatre. He first gained attention for film noir mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945), while in the 1950s and 1960s, he directed high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these later films pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with themes which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction, rape and homosexuality. He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. He also had several acting roles.
The Smiling Lieutenant is a 1931 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins, and released by Paramount Pictures.
The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy-drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan. The screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson based on the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László. Eschewing regional politics in the years leading up to World War II, the film is about two employees at a leathergoods shop in Budapest who can barely stand each other, not realizing they are falling in love as anonymous correspondents through their letters.
Trouble in Paradise is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, and Herbert Marshall. Based on the 1931 play The Honest Finder by Hungarian playwright László Aladár, the lead characters are a gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket who join forces to con a beautiful woman who is the owner of a perfume company. In 1991, Trouble in Paradise was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch". Among his best known works are Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943).
Elizabeth Ruth Grable was an American actress, pin-up girl, dancer, model and singer.
Samson Raphaelson was an American playwright, screenwriter and fiction writer.
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, also known as The Student Prince and Old Heidelberg, is a 1927 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer silent drama film based on the 1901 play Old Heidelberg by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and stars Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer.
Angel is a 1937 American romantic drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas with Edward Everett Horton, Laura Hope Crews and Herbert Mundin. The screenplay by Samson Raphaelson and an uncredited Frederick Lonsdale was based on an adaptation by Guy Bolton and Russell Medcraft from the play Angyal by Melchior Lengyel. The music score was by Frederick Hollander with additional music by Gioacchino Rossini from The Barber of Seville. The cinematography was by Charles Lang and the costume design by Travis Banton. The film was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Dorothy Spencer, known as Dot Spencer, was an American film editor with 75 feature film credits from a career that spanned more than 50 years. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing on four occasions, she is remembered for editing three of director John Ford's best known movies, including Stagecoach (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946), which film critic Roger Ebert called "Ford's greatest Western".
Bride of the Regiment is a 1930 American pre-Code musical film directed by John Francis Dillon and filmed entirely in Technicolor. The screenplay by Ray Harris and Humphrey Pearson is based on the book of the 1922 stage musical The Lady in Ermine by Frederick Lonsdale and Cyrus Wood, which had been adapted from the 1919 operetta Die Frau im Hermelin by Rudolph Schanzer and Ernst Welisch. The story is a remake of a 1927 First National silent film, The Lady in Ermine, that starred Corinne Griffith. It was later remade by 20th Century-Fox as That Lady in Ermine (1948) starring Betty Grable and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Monte Carlo is a 1930 American pre-Code musical comedy film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It co-stars Jack Buchanan as a French Count Rudolph Falliere masquerading as a hairdresser and Jeanette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara. The film is notable for introducing the song "Beyond the Blue Horizon", which was written for the film and is first performed by MacDonald and a chorus on the soundtrack as she escapes on the train through he countryside. Monte Carlo was hailed by critics as a masterpiece of the newly emerging musical film genre. The screenplay was based on the Booth Tarkington novel Monsieur Beaucaire.
A Royal Scandal, also known as Czarina, is a 1945 American comedy-drama film directed by Otto Preminger, produced by Ernst Lubitsch. about the lovelife of Russian empress Catherine the Great. It stars Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Coburn, Anne Baxter and William Eythe. The film was based on the play Die Zarin by Lajos Bíró and Melchior Lengyel.
Rosita is a 1923 silent American historical comedy drama film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Mary Pickford. The film is based upon an 1872 opera Don César de Bazan by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe Dumanoir.
Design for Living is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a screenplay by Ben Hecht, based on the 1932 play of the same name by Noël Coward. Starring Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins, the film is about a woman who cannot decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship.
Broken Lullaby is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda is based on the 1930 play L'homme que j'ai tué by Maurice Rostand and its 1931 English-language adaptation, The Man I Killed, by Reginald Berkeley.
The Lady in Ermine is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film directed by James Flood and produced by and starring Corinne Griffith, and distributed by First National Pictures. The film is now considered a lost film.
The King Steps Out is a 1936 American musical comedy film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Grace Moore, Franchot Tone and Walter Connolly. It is based on the early years of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as "Sisi" or "Sissi", and her courtship and marriage to Franz Joseph I of Austria, after he was initially engaged to her older sister Duchess Helene in Bavaria. The film is set from 1852 to 1854.
Ernst Welisch was an Austrian playwright and theatre director. He is primarily known for the numerous operetta librettos that he wrote for composers such as Leo Fall, Jean Gilbert, Emmerich Kálmán, and Ralph Benatzky. Welisch was born in Vienna, but spent most of his career in Berlin. In the 1930s he returned to Vienna where he died shortly before the premiere of his last work, Venedig in Wien.
RudolfSchanzer was an Austrian playwright and journalist. He is primarily known for the numerous operetta librettos that he wrote for composers such as Leo Fall, Jean Gilbert, Emmerich Kálmán, and Ralph Benatzky. He was born in Vienna and died in Italy where he committed suicide after his arrest by the Gestapo.
