History Made Every Day™

Director Otto Preminger dies at the age of 80. Preminger, a Jew who fled Austria before World War II, often played Nazis on stage and screen. As a director, he challenged cinema censorship in the United States.

Born in Vienna, Preminger began producing plays during law school. After finishing his law degree, he decided instead to pursue theater. He directed his first film, The Great Love, in 1931 and a highly acclaimed play, Libel, in 1935. These and other successes made him one of Europe's most famous filmmakers before he was 30.

In 1935, Preminger left Austria for the United States, as the Eastern European climate became increasingly uncomfortable for Jews. In the United States, he directed Broadway plays, then moved to Hollywood, but had a falling out with 20th Century Fox mogul Darryl Zanuck and was fired as director just a few weeks into the filming of Kidnapped (1938).

Preminger returned to Broadway as actor and director. In the early '40s, he cast himself as a Nazi in the play Margin for Error. Asked to play the role in the1943 film version, produced by 20th Century Fox, he agreed-on the condition he could direct as well. Zanuck was off with the army making documentary films, so no one objected. Preminger was still around later in the year, directing noir mystery Laura (1944), when Zanuck returned. He allowed Preminger to stay on as director only because an early look at the film led him to believe the film would fail. Instead, it became a box office smash.

In the 1950s, Preminger promoted the use of wide-screen technology with films like Carmen Jones in 1954. He also directed the hit Anatomy of a Murder in 1959 and Exodus in 1960. Throughout his career, he challenged the repressive Hays Code, which placed strict limitations on the language and content of movies. In 1953, he directed The Moon Is Blue, adapted from a stage play he had also directed, and refused to cut the forbidden words "virgin" and "pregnant." The film was denied the Production Code Seal of Approval and condemned by the Catholic Church and conservative groups. Nonetheless, the comedy was a hit with audiences. In 1955, he dared to treat the taboo subject of heroin addiction in The Man with the Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra, and his 1959 hit, Anatomy of a Murder, featured the frank discussion of the crime of rape.

Preminger, a reputed tyrant on the set, sometimes terrorized his actors, and a few Hollywood stars refused to work with or even speak to him. He was married three times. In 1971, after famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee died, Preminger revealed he was the father of her 26-year-old son, Erik Kirkland, whom he then adopted. Kirkland changed his name to Eric Lee Preminger and became a screenwriter.