Joseph Losey

Joseph Walton Losey III (/ˈloʊsi/; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) was an American film and theatre director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom.

Among the most critically and commercially successful were the three films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1971). His 1976 film Monsieur Klein won the César Awards for Best Film and Best Director. Other notable films included The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Eva (1962), King & Country (1964), Modesty Blaise (1966), Figures in a Landscape (1970), A Doll's House (1973), Galileo (1975), and Don Giovanni (1979). Though drubbed by critics and a box office failure, Boom! (1968) was sometimes cited by Losey as his personal favorite, and Tennessee Willams considered it the best movie adaptation of one of his plays. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, both of whom worked with Losey again, Taylor in Secret Ceremony (1968) and Burton in The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).

He was also a four-time nominee for both the Palme d'Or (winning once) and the Golden Lion, and a two-time BAFTA Award nominee.

Joseph Walton Losey III was born on January 14, 1909, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he and Nicholas Ray were high-school classmates at La Crosse Central High School. He attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, beginning as a student of medicine and ending in drama.

Losey became a major figure in New York City political theatre, first directing the controversial failure Little Old Boy in 1933. He declined to direct a staged version of Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, which led Lewis to offer him his first work written for the stage, Jayhawker. Losey directed the show, which had a brief run. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times noted that "The play, being increasingly wordy, presents staging problems that Joe Losey's direction does not always solve. It is hard to tell who is responsible for the obscure parts in the story."

He visited the Soviet Union for several months in 1935, to study the Russian stage. In Moscow he participated in a seminar on film taught by Sergei Eisenstein. He also met Bertolt Brecht and the composer Hanns Eisler, who were visiting Moscow at the time.

In 1936, he directed Triple-A Plowed Under on Broadway, a production of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project. He then directed the second Living Newspaper presentation, Injunction Granted.

Losey served in the U.S. military during World War II and was discharged in 1945. From 1946 to 1947, Losey worked with Bertolt Brecht—who was living in exile in Los Angeles—and Charles Laughton on the preparations for the staging of Brecht's play Galileo (Life of Galileo) which he and Brecht eventually co-directed with Laughton in the title role, and with music by Eisler. The play premiered on July 30, 1947, at the Coronet Theatre in Beverly Hills. On October 30, 1947, Losey accompanied Brecht to Washington D.C. for Brecht's appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Brecht left the US the following day. Losey went on to stage Galileo, again with Laughton in the title role, in New York City where it opened on December 7, 1947, at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. More than 25 years later Losey, in exile in England, directed a film version of Brecht's play Galileo (1975).