Fred Zinnemann

Alfred Zinnemann (April 29, 1907 – March 14, 1997) was an American film director and producer. He won four Academy Awards for directing and producing films in various genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir and play adaptations. He began his career in Europe before emigrating to the US, where he specialized in shorts before making 25 feature films during his 50-year career.

He was among the first directors to insist on using authentic locations and for mixing stars with non-professional actors to give his films more realism. Within the film industry, he was considered a maverick for taking risks and thereby creating unique films, with many of his stories being dramas about lone and principled individuals tested by tragic events. According to one historian^[who?], Zinnemann's style demonstrated his sense of "psychological realism and his apparent determination to make worthwhile pictures that are nevertheless highly entertaining."^{[citation needed]}

Among his films were The Search (1948), The Men (1950), High Noon (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Oklahoma! (1955), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sundowners (1960), A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Day of the Jackal (1973), and Julia (1977). His films received 65 Oscar nominations, winning 24; Zinnemann himself was nominated for ten, and won Best Director for From Here to Eternity (1953), Best Picture and Best Director for A Man for All Seasons (1966), and Best Documentary, Short Subjects for Benjy (1951).

Zinnemann directed and introduced a number of stars in their American film debuts, including Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Pier Angeli, Julie Harris, Brandon deWilde, Montgomery Clift, Shirley Jones and Meryl Streep. He directed 19 actors to Oscar nominations, including Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Audrey Hepburn, Glynis Johns, Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Gary Cooper and Maximilian Schell.

In Austria, discrimination had been part of life since time immemorial. It was always there, oppressive, often snide, sometimes hostile, seldom violent. It was in the air and one sensed it at all levels, in school, at work and in society. A Jew was an outsider, a threat to the country's culture. Born in Austria-Hungary (now Poland), and raised as an Austrian, he would still never truly belong.

Zinnemann was born in Rzeszów (then part of the Austrian Empire), the son of Anna (Feiwel) and Oskar Zinnemann, a doctor. His parents were Austrian Jews. He had one younger brother.

Zinnemann grew up in Vienna during the First World War, during much of which his father served as a combat medic with the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Eastern Front. Zinnemann later recalled that his father was severely traumatized by his war experiences and often suffered from nightmares.

While growing up in the First Austrian Republic, which had been formed as a rump state of a fallen Empire in 1918 and which he later described as, "a tiny, defeated, impoverished country", Zinnemann wanted to become a musician, but went on to graduate with a law degree from the University of Vienna in 1927.