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Val Lewton
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Russian-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 Yalta, Imperial Russia, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1909. He began his career as a writer, producing novels, including the best-selling pulp novel No Bed of Her Own. Lewton worked as a writer and publicist for MGM before being named head of RKO's horror unit in 1942. His first production, Cat People, became a top moneymaker for RKO that year. Lewton produced several successful films, often writing the final draft of the screenplays himself. He gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson and worked with Boris Karloff, who credited Lewton with saving his career. After leaving RKO, Lewton worked for Paramount and MGM, producing various films. His life and work have inspired books, documentaries, and an upcoming feature film.
Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Hofschneider or Leventon (Russian: Владимир Иванович Левентон, Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Левентон, both with surname Leventon) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Anna "Nina" Leventon, a pharmacist's daughter. The family converted to Christianity. He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova.
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 City, 8 May; they were listed as Anna, Olga, and Vladimir 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 Hofschneider and her children joined the household of her famous sister, Alla Nazimova, in Rye, New York; she then reverted a version of her maiden name, Lewton, and earned her living by writing for the films. Her children and she later moved to suburban Port Chester, New York. Val 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 a story he wrote about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heat wave was found to be a total fabrication. He went on to study journalism at Columbia University and authored 18 works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
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, 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.
Lewton worked as a writer at MGM's publicity office in New York City, providing novelizations of popular movies for serialization in magazines, which were sometimes later collected into book form. He also wrote promotional copy. He quit this position after the success of No Bed of Her Own, but when three later novels that same year failed to succeed, he journeyed to Hollywood for a job writing a screen treatment of Gogol's Taras Bulba for David O. Selznick. The connection for this job came through Lewton's mother, Nina.
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.
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Val Lewton
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Russian-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 Yalta, Imperial Russia, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1909. He began his career as a writer, producing novels, including the best-selling pulp novel No Bed of Her Own. Lewton worked as a writer and publicist for MGM before being named head of RKO's horror unit in 1942. His first production, Cat People, became a top moneymaker for RKO that year. Lewton produced several successful films, often writing the final draft of the screenplays himself. He gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson and worked with Boris Karloff, who credited Lewton with saving his career. After leaving RKO, Lewton worked for Paramount and MGM, producing various films. His life and work have inspired books, documentaries, and an upcoming feature film.
Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Hofschneider or Leventon (Russian: Владимир Иванович Левентон, Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Левентон, both with surname Leventon) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Anna "Nina" Leventon, a pharmacist's daughter. The family converted to Christianity. He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova.
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 City, 8 May; they were listed as Anna, Olga, and Vladimir 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 Hofschneider and her children joined the household of her famous sister, Alla Nazimova, in Rye, New York; she then reverted a version of her maiden name, Lewton, and earned her living by writing for the films. Her children and she later moved to suburban Port Chester, New York. Val 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 a story he wrote about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heat wave was found to be a total fabrication. He went on to study journalism at Columbia University and authored 18 works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
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, 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.
Lewton worked as a writer at MGM's publicity office in New York City, providing novelizations of popular movies for serialization in magazines, which were sometimes later collected into book form. He also wrote promotional copy. He quit this position after the success of No Bed of Her Own, but when three later novels that same year failed to succeed, he journeyed to Hollywood for a job writing a screen treatment of Gogol's Taras Bulba for David O. Selznick. The connection for this job came through Lewton's mother, Nina.
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.