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, Design for Living, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be and Heaven Can Wait.
Emil Jannings was a German actor, popular in the 1920s in Hollywood. He was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. As of 2022, Jannings is the only German ever to have won the category.
Jean Gabin was a French actor and singer. Considered a key figure in French cinema, he starred in several classic films including Pépé le Moko (1937), La grande illusion (1937), Le Quai des brumes (1938), La bête humaine (1938), Le jour se lève (1939), and Le plaisir (1952). During his career he had twice won both the Silver Bear for Best Actor from the Berlin International Film Festival and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor from the Venice Film Festival respectively. Gabin was made a member of the Légion d'honneur in recognition of the important role he played in French cinema.
William Dieterle was a German-born actor and film director who emigrated to the United States in 1930 to leave a worsening political situation. He worked in Hollywood primarily as a director for much of his career, becoming a United States citizen in 1937. He moved back to Germany in the late 1950s.
John Alton, born Johann Jacob Altmann, in Sopron, Kingdom of Hungary, was an American cinematographer of Hungarian-German origin. Alton photographed some of the most famous films noir of the classic period and won an Academy Award for the cinematography of An American in Paris (1951), becoming the first Hungarian-born person to do so in the cinematography category.
Harry B. Lachman was an American artist, set designer, and film director.
Nicholas Musuraca, A.S.C. was a motion-picture cinematographer best remembered for his work at RKO Pictures in the 1940s, including many of Val Lewton's series of B-picture horror films.
John Francis Seitz, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer and inventor.
Hans Dreier was a German motion picture art director. He was Paramount Pictures' supervising art director from 1927 until his retirement in 1950, when he was succeeded by Hal Pereira.
John J. Mescall, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He photographed such silent films as Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), but he is best known for his work in the 1930s at Universal Pictures, where he often worked on the films of James Whale. Mescall was famous for his elaborate, some might say grandiose, effective camera movements, in which the camera would often track completely across or around a set, or even one performer. He did not always use these kinds of camera movements, but his most famous films all have them.
Felix Bressart was a German-American actor of stage and screen.
Dale H. "Ted" Tetzlaff was an Academy Award-nominated Hollywood cinematographer active in the 1930s and 1940s.
Bernard Knowles was an English film director, producer, cinematographer and screenwriter. Born in Manchester, Knowles worked with Alfred Hitchcock on numerous occasions before the director emigrated to Hollywood.
Wolfgang Zilzer was a German-American stage and film actor, often under the stage name Paul Andor.
Benedict Bogeaus, was an independent film producer and former owner of General Service Studios.
George Beranger, also known as André Beranger, was an Australian silent film actor and director in Hollywood. He is also sometimes credited under the pseudonym George André de Beranger.
Charles Van Enger was an American cinematographer. In the 1920s Van Enger worked on all the silent films the German director Ernst Lubitsch made for Warner Bros. During the 1930s he worked in the British film industry. His later work was largely on supporting features for Universal Pictures and various independents.
János Székely was a Hungarian writer and screenwriter. His best-known work is the 1949 autobiographical novel Kísértés (Temptation).
Ernő Metzner was a film director and production designer.
Andrew Mazzei (1887–1975) was a French-born British art director who designed the sets for more than sixty films during his career. Mazzei began his career in the late 1920s during the silent era including on the futuristic High Treason. By the 1930s he was working for Gainsborough Pictures, designing backdrops for the critically acclaimed train-set thriller Rome Express in 1932.
