Hungarian Heritage Review, 1991 (20. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1991-03-01 / 3. szám
HUNGARIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD CIVILIZATION-by-Dr. Francis S. Wagner CINEMATOGRAPHERS: PRODUCERS & DIRECTORS (PART III)-by-Christina Maria T. Wagner Adolph Zukor was born in Hungary January 7, 1873. Orphaned at the age of 7, he ventured to the United States as a 16-year-old with $25 stitched into the lining of his coat. He quickly exchanged his first job of sweeping floors for that of penny arcade entrepreneur in New York City. In short order he founded the Famous Players Film Company in 1913 for the purpose of making films of successful plays such as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Prisoner of Zenda and Tesse of the D'Ubervilles. His first production, The Prisoner of Zenda, was the first feature-length film made in the United States. In 1917 he founded Paramount Pictures. Zukor is responsible for introducing cinema immortals Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., William S. Hart and Pola Negri to audiences throughout the world. Other stars appearing under the Paramount symbol of the snowcapped mountain were Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Maurice Chevalier. Zukor's production of Wings won the very first Academy Award for best picture in 1928, the year the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded. Amoung the early classics supervised by Zukor were the origional Ten Commandments, The Sheik, and The Covered Wagon. He was honored in 1949 with a special Oscar for having rendered inestimable services to the motion picture industry over a period of 40 years. Board chairman emeritus of Paramount Pictures, Inc. he put in a full day's work every day well into his eighties. Adolph Zukor died June 10, 1976 at the age of 103. Joe Pasternak was born in 1901 in Szilagysomlyo. His 30-year career as a top echelon producer included such greats as The Flame of New Orleans (1941) with Marlene Dietrich; the Deanna Durbin-Charles Laughton picture, It Started With Eve (1941); Duchess of Idaho (1950) with Ester Williams and Van Johnson; The Great Caruso (1951) starring Ann Blyth and Mario Lanza; The Merry Widow (1952) with Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas; The Student Prince (1954) starring Ann Blyth and Edmund Purdom; and the comedy, Please Don't Eat the Daises (1960) starring David Niven and Doris Day. Sir Alexander Korda (born Sándor Korda) is perhaps known to most of us as a producer, although he directed films over the period 1927-1948 ... as a matter of fact he directed Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the 1948 production, That Hamilton Woman. Among the pictures Korda produced are The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935) costarring Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon; Knight Without Armor, a 1937 Marlene Dietrich picture; The Thief of Bagdad (1940) with Conrad Veidt; and the 1948 epic, Anna Karenina with Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson. A great deal of Alexander Korda's films were products of Great Britain. Born Ivan Törzs in Budapest on June 12, 1916, Ivan Tors emigrated to the United States in 1940 where he anglicized his name to the present less complex spelling. He rose from Hollywood screenwriter (the hit television series of the recent past, Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges is one of the many feathers in his cap) to world-famed producer of masterful wildlife television shows and motion pictures. Ninety per cent of all animals scenes in Hollywood are domain of his animals. A few of his veteran motion picture stars beloved by a cross-section of audience generations are "Gentle Ben" the bear, "Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion", "Namu the Killer Whale" and "Flipper" the dolphin. Other seasoned alumni and apprentice actors in his ensemble include monkeys, ele-continued next page 16 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW MARCH 1991
