Val Lewton
Val Lewton | |
---|---|
Born | Volodymyr Ivanovich Leventon May 7, 1904 |
Died | March 14, 1951 (aged 46) Los Angeles, California, United States |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1932–1951 |
Spouse | Ruth Knapp |
Children | Val Lewton Nina Lewton |
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Ukrainian-American novelist, film producer and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s. His son, also named Val Lewton, was a painter and exhibition designer.
Lewton was born in
Early life
Lewton was born Volodymyr Ivanovich Hofschneider or Leventon (Russian: Владимир Иванович Левентон,
His mother left his father and moved to Berlin, taking their two children with her. In 1909, they emigrated to the United States as second cabin class passengers on board the SS Amerika, which sailed from Hamburg, 29 April, and arrived in New York, 8 May; they were listed as Anna, Olga and Volodymyr Hofschneider. In America, he eventually changed his name to Wladimir Ivan Lewton, which came to be abbreviated as Val Lewton. Upon arrival in New York, Anna Hofschnedier and her children joined the household of her famous sister, Alla Nazimova, in Rye, New York; she then reverted to her maiden name Lewton and earned her living by writing for the films. She and her children later moved to suburban Port Chester, New York. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in a federal court in Los Angeles as Wladimir Ivan Lewton in June 1941.
In 1920, when Lewton was 16, he lost his job as a society reporter for the Darien-Stamford Review after it was discovered that a story he wrote about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heat wave was a total fabrication. He went on to study journalism at Columbia University and authored 18 works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
Career
In 1932, he wrote the best-selling pulp novel No Bed of Her Own, which was later used for the film No Man of Her Own,[3] with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. In 1933, Lewton clandestinely published Grushenka: Three Times a Woman, an erotic novel whose publication would have subjected Lewton to criminal penalties given the mores of the time. Grushenka purported to be a translation from the Russian and brought from the Soviet Union, but this was a ruse to protect the book's real author.[4]
Lewton worked as a writer at
Though a film of Taras Bulba did not follow, Lewton was hired by MGM to work as a publicist and assistant to Selznick. His first screen credit was "revolutionary sequences arranged by" in David O. Selznick's 1935 version of A Tale of Two Cities. Lewton also worked as an uncredited writer for Selznick's Gone with the Wind, including writing the scene where the camera pulls back to reveal hundreds of wounded soldiers at the Atlanta depot. Lewton also worked for Selznick as a story editor, a scout for discovering literary properties for Selznick's studio, and a go-between with the Hollywood censorship system.
On the documentary The Making of Gone With the Wind, Lewton is described by another Selznick employee as warning that Gone With the Wind was unfilmable and that Selznick would be making "the mistake of his life" trying to make a successful movie of it.
In 1942, Lewton was named head of the horror unit at
Lewton's first production was
Lewton always wrote the final draft of the screenplays for his films, but avoided on-screen co-writing credits except in two cases, The Body Snatcher and Bedlam, for which he used the pseudonym "Carlos Keith," which he had previously used for the novels 4 Wives, A Laughing Woman, This Fool, Passion, and Where the Cobra Sings. After RKO promoted Tourneur to A-films, Lewton gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson.
Between 1945 and 1946, Boris Karloff appeared in three films for RKO produced by Lewton: Isle of the Dead, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam. In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg of the Los Angeles Times, Karloff credited Lewton with saving him from what Karloff saw as the overextended Frankenstein franchise at Universal Pictures. Berg wrote, "Mr. Karloff has great love and respect for Mr. Lewton as the man who rescued him from the living dead and restored, so to speak, his soul."[6]
When RKO head and Lewton supporter
Following his association with Paramount, Lewton worked again for MGM, where he produced the
Death and legacy
Hollywood producer
A number of books and two documentaries on Lewton have been produced. A documentary film,
In May 2017, "The Secret History Of Hollywood", a podcast biopic series by Adam Roche, began an eleven-part season on his life and work – 'Shadows' – featuring Mark Gatiss. In June 2021, it was announced that 'Shadows' was to be turned into a feature film, co-written by Roche and Laeta Kalogridis, with Kalogridis also acting as producer alongside Bradley Fischer.[7]
Filmography
As producer
RKO
- Cat People (1942)
- I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
- The Leopard Man (1943)
- The Seventh Victim (1943)
- The Ghost Ship (1943)
- The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
- Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)
- Youth Runs Wild (1944)
- The Body Snatcher (1945)
- Isle of the Dead (1945)
- Bedlam (1946)
Other
- My Own True Love (1949)
- Please Believe Me (1950)
- Apache Drums (1951)
As writer
- No Man of Her Own (1932, novel No Bed of Her Own)
- The Body Snatcher (1945, as Carlos Keith)
- Isle of the Dead (1945) (uncredited)
- Bedlam (1946, as Carlos Keith)
Other
- A Tale of Two Cities (1935, uncredited second unit director of storming of the Bastille sequence)[8]
- A Star Is Born (1937, uncredited editing assistant)
- The Year's Work (1940, director, as Herbert Kerkow)
Novels
- The Improved Road. (Edinburgh: Collins and Sons, 1924)
- The Cossack Sword (Edinburgh: Collins and Sons, 1926). US edition retitled for publication as Rape of Glory (Mohawk Press, 1931).
- The Fateful Star Murder (with Herbert Kerkow) (1931). Based on the Starr Faithfullmurder case.
- Where the Cobra Sings (Macaulay Publishing Co, 1932; published under the pseudonym 'Cosmo Forbes')
- No Bed of Her Own. (Vanguard Press, 1932). Translated into nine languages and published in 12 countries. German title: Rose Mahoney: Her Depression. Included on the list of books burned by Hitler's orders. Reissued by Triangle Books in the late 1940s.
- Four Wives (Vanguard Press, 1933) (as by "Carlos Keith")
- Yearly Lease (Vanguard Press, 1933)
- A Laughing Woman (Vanguard Press, 1933) (as by "Carlos Keith")
- This Fool Passion (Vanguard Press, 1933) (as by "Carlos Keith")
Short stories
- "The Bagheeta". Weird Tales (July 1930). Reprint in Marvin Kaye, ed., Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies (1988). "Lewton's characteristic phobia of cats, and his fear-the-dark horror techniques, are to be found, intact, in 'The Bagheeta'."[9] p. 20.
Unmade Films
- Blackbeard the Pirate with Boris Karloff from a script by Ardel Wray and Mark Robson - originally meant to follow Bedlam at RKO - Karloff would play Captain Aguilar, an American pirate operating out of Charleston
- Die Gently Stranger by David Tutaeff, a thriller set in Stockholm, developed for RKO
- Father Malachy’s Miracle story about a Roman Catholic priest set in Edinburgh, developed for RKO
- If This Be Known - murder story to star Dick Powell developed at RKO
- The Lawyer aka The Biggest Thief in Paris adaptation of Ferenc Molnar play, a comedy about the partnership of a thief and a lawyer who depend upon one another’s skill for success - to star Robert Cummings and Marion Carr and directed by William Cameron Menzies - to be made by RKO in 1946 but cancelled
- None So Blind - psychological thriller adapted by Michael Hogan from a novel by Mitchell Wilson to be directed by Jean Renoir, scheduled to start at RKO in 1946 but postponed then cancelled
- A Mask for Lucrezia - developed at Paramount, script by Michael Hogan and Ardel Wray, became Bride of Vengeance and made without Lewton
- Cricket on the Hearth adaptation of Charles Dickens story developed at Paramount
- Wild Oranges - adaptation of Joseph Hergesheimer’s book, which had been filmed by King Vidor - developed at MGM
- Ticonderoga - thriller set during the American Revolutionary War from script by Lewton, considered by Universal for filming before Lewton was assigned Apache Drums
References
- ^ "The prince of Poverty Row | Film". The Guardian. London. April 7, 2006. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
- ^ Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, 2007 documentary by Martin Scorsese
- ^ Mary A. Lacy. "Val Lewton – A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress". Library of Congress (loc.gov). Retrieved January 9, 2008.
- ^ "Paris Olympia Press | A Collectors Blog | Page 2". February 5, 2021.
- ^ "Scope and Content Notes | Val Lewton org". vallewton.org. Retrieved April 11, 2020.
- ^ Louis Berg (May 12, 1946). "Farewell to Monsters" (PDF). Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 20, 2009. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
- ^ "New Republic Pictures & Laeta Kalogridis Option Adam Roche Podcast 'The Secret History Of Hollywood'". Deadline. June 10, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
- ^ "A Tale of Two Cities (1935)".
- ^ Edmund G. Bansak. Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co,1995.
Further reading
Edmund G. Bansak. Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1995.
External links
- Val Lewton at IMDb
- Val Lewton at AllMovie
- Val Lewton at the TCM Movie Database
- Val Lewton Bibliography (via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center)
- Val Lewton B Unit tribute site
- Val Lewton at Find A Grave
- Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton - Bright Lights Film Journal
- The Thinking Man's Exploitation Shockers - Part One / Part Two - career retrospective at Greenbriar Picture Shows
- Val Lewton, a shadowy retrospective - Den of Geek
- Martin Scorsese Presents: Val Lewton – The Man in the Shadows at IMDb
- Martin Scorsese Presents: Val Lewton – The Man in the Shadows at the TCM Movie Database
- Martin Scorsese Presents: Val Lewton – The Man in the Shadows - The Shelf review