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Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King

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Foster Hirsch has done a masterful job putting together a study of the life and times of Otto Preminger--a "rebel with a cause," namely the expansion of individual freedom against forces opposed to it. He was a figure from a time when people were serious about arts and culture, and 'adult entertainment' did not mean xxxx-rated porno. A better producer than director of actors, that is Hirsch's main argument, but Preminger still gets points for being a masterful "Noir" auteur, as well as a decent director of social-issue films of the 50s and 60s. He broke censorship taboos, the blacklist, the color-line, and created an overtly pro-Israel classic in Exodus (though not pro-Israel enough for author Leon Uris), and dealt with the Alger Hiss case in Advise and Consent (also pulling punches, to the dismay of Alan Drury). But he made the type of films that, while familiar in the 1950s and 1960s--think of Stanley Kramer, Sam Spiegel, Elia Kazan, and so on--are all but gone today. Serious, thoughtful films, posing philosophical dilemmas in the middle of melodrama.

If Preminger's reach exceeded his grasp, Foster Hirsch makes the case that he deserves credit for trying. There's also material on Preminger's colorful personal life--his illegitimate son by stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Dorothy Dandridge's abortion (Otto's fault per Hirsch), his temper tantrums (Dexedrine use may have been a factor), and his interesting relationship with his brother Ingo (talent agent and producer of Robert Altman's MASH) and his parents (father was former Attorney-General of Austria-Hungary). His final marriage, to Hope, seems to have worked out OK--his son became a doctor in New Jersey and his daughter a lawyer who manages the Preminger business today. His son by Gypsy Rose Lee was responsible for some of Preminger's more peculiar films, such as Skiddoo and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

He directed Porgy & Bess, which was pulled from distribution, as well as Carmen Jones. Laura is his most enduring hit. But many others have withstood the test of time. Preminger's last film, The Human Factor, was written by Tom Stoppard. Foster Hirsch says it is worth another look--like many other Preminger productions.

If you are interested in movie history, America in the 1950s and 1960s, or Viennese refugees and their Kultur, this is the book.

This is a well written book. If you like biography and you like Hollywood, especially the golden age, you will enjoy it. You will be especially interested in the discussion of his classic films. Also Preminger was a leader and ground breaker in elimination of censorship of films and the McCarthy era of blacklisting writers.

Foster Hirsch has done his research and is an organized writer, but his portrait of Otto Preminger never rises above the level of chatty disclosures and sentiments that have been reiterated by others for the last fifty years. Otto the charming man and Otto the abusive director - this we know. Hirsch adds some detail to this story, but little else. The director's double sided reputation is never analyzed, never developed, or even discussed within the context of his independent producer/director position. This fact alone renders Hirsch's achievement slight. The early parts of the book, up through Preminger's years at Fox, hint at a man who's talent is matched by his confidence and vision. Once the groundwork has been set and we enter the truly interesting period of the director's career - as an maker of huge, independent films that in many ways match the studios and challenged the censors - Hirsch falls into the unfortunate formula of listing the a film, telling a little about its production and its critical reception, and that's pretty much it. He also reviews the films, showing time after time he just doesn't get Preminger's vision. I agree with Hirsch when he says that Preminger is a major twentieth century film artist, but that's about the only agreement I have with this book. Preminger deserves the kind of scrutiny that Hitchcock has been awarded; the conditions of his work and the reputation of his personality should be focused and discussed by someone who knows film, understands the industry, and can apply that knowledge to round out our understanding and appreciation of this important director. There is more to Otto than meets the eye. I'm waiting for someone to do the man and the director justice.

This is a great book about a complex, fascinating man/filmmaker. As an avid cinema fan, I've always found Otto's films overly long, self important, and way too episodic. I recently saw Preminger's The Cardinal, and I was surprised at how much I loved the film. I've decided to go over Preminger's work again, and that's one of the main reasons I read this book.

This book is very well written and researched, and gives you a complex, measured portrayal of a great showman. Whether you like Preminger's work or not, he had a brilliant knack for getting great publicity for his films, and tackling then controversial subjects. He made films like The Moon Is Blue (which had pretty saucy sex talk, especially for 1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (about heroin addiction), Advise and Consent (which had a homosexual plot line in it, which was very bold for its time), and Anatomy of a Murder, which is one of the most riveting, complex courtroom dramas ever made.

The book shows how Otto became one of the biggest powerhouses in Hollywood during his heyday, his shooting methods (he shot very lean and came in under budget, something Hollywood loves), his relationships with actors (he got along wonderfully with Patricia Neal and John Wayne, and was constantly at the throat with Faye Dunaway and Dyan Cannon), and his dedication to family and to liberal politics. Otto helped smash the blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay for Exodus, and insisted on him using his real name. While some of Otto's work is a bit dated and not as shocking as it used to be, it's still extremely well made and head and shoulders above other "message" films of the era (particularly films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which is rather painful to watch nowadays).

The book has none of the intellectual, film professor talk on what his films mean, and that's always welcome. It's an absolutely fascinating portrait of a very complicated, polarising filmmaker, one whose films still invoke strong reactions from people today.

"The director of the movies The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder and Carmen Jones was a genius. Hirsch tells all including Preminger's determination to film movies about African Americans with Carmen Jones and gays in Advise and Consent."

Hirsch's book is an absolutely first-rate biography of a filmmaker that makes fascinating reading whether one is a Preminger fan or not.

When you deal with Otto Preminger there's possibly too much story to possibly deal with in one volume. One might ask for a whole book just on the relationship betwen Preimnger and his Marshalltown, Iowa, discovery, the late Jean Seberg, for their back and forth intimacy, the sense that they ruined each other in a way, is something Foster Hirsch works up perfectly, and for once he seems to have informants in all the right places and with the proper combination of critical judgment and insider information. One is encouraged to think of SAINT JOAN and BONJOUR TRISTESSE--back to back flops for wounded Preminger--as two sides of a single coin, a coin with a profile of short haired Seberg on each side. You're left thinking of her as a proto Edie Sedgwick, Preminger as an irascible Warhol, and the St. Joan-Tristeese one two punch as their own "Inner and Outer Space."

Preminger's affair with Dorothy Dandridge might equally well have been expanded. Hirsch credits Preminger as a sort of civil rights pioneer, pointing to Avon Long's ooften overlooked turn in CENTENNIAL SUMMER as just the sort of music number which Hollywood should be proud of, instead of apologizing for. For every step forward, however, that Preminger seemed to make--placing Duke Ellington on the piano bench alongside James Stewart, for example, in ANATOMY OF A MURDER, or trying to hire Martin Luther King to play a senator in ADVISE AND CONSENT, he takes two steps back. I suppose he should have encouraged Dandridge to take the part of Tuptim in Walter Lang's THE KING AND I--it might have helped preserve her illusion of serious stardom for more than a minute. And speaking of which, how bad can PORGY AND BESS be? Gershwin estate, release your shroud of silence over this film! It just isn't right to keep it from us, let us judge for ourselves how shrill and self serving Sammy Davis Jr can be, how miscast Sidney Poutier.

Big books could be written on so many chapters here--the supplanting of Lubitsch, the Gene Tierney spiral of madness and deceit; the Gypsy Rose Lee affair that led to the birth of their son, Erik Lee Preminger. The big, serious films of constitutional critique each need more pages than Hirsch can possibly give them, even in the deluxe sort of Knopf movie bio glossy treatment he gets here. For goodness sake, for a Preminger fan, THE CARDINAL all by itself could use a complete encyclopedia, just for the way the man played up his little Viennese starling Romy Schneider, her quickeyed grace so sumptuous and moving against Tom Tryon's need to be bigger, need to blow himself up. Though I must say this is the most complete treatment, in and out, that THE CARDINAL is ever likely to get.

What I dislike is Hirsch's need to have something to say about everyone in his path, and he is often vicious as Clifton Webb, which would be fine if you shared his bile and hated his targets as much as he must. Why the hate for the late Ira Levin (who worked with Preminger on the screenplay for BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING), why dismiss a great novelist as a "mediocre" hack, it's just gratuitous sniping, and it leaves you wondering why--perhaps an ill Levin refused the biographer an interview? Jackie Gleason is "humor-free" here, while Groucho Marx os "gross, uncouth, extremely unpleasant." Kim Cattrall will want to go into hiding after the full scale attach Hirsch mounts on her. Not that I'm a great fan of Kim Cattrall, but still! Give the girl a break! As for Dyan Cannon, well, I wasn't there, but neither was Hirsch and he paints her as worse than Grendel's grandmother. And Romy Schneider? I refuse to believe that "Romy really was an awful person," "highstrung and arrogant," etc and an impossible demon. No way Jose! Even Ursula Andress comes off as a shrew, and there's no evidence Preminger ever spoke to her, so it seems that Hirsch just delights trashing all these women just because it's easy.

Thank You Mr. Hirsch for " Otto Preminger: The Man who would be King". I really enjoyed the section regarding the "Hurry Sundown" location shooting. WOW! And now it is finally on DVD.Hurry Sundown

I cannot believe that this author lied on Dorothy Dandridge the way he did, he says that during the filming of Porgy and Bess Dorothy had issues working with two dark skinned actors Sidney Poitier and Brock Peters. He says that Dorothy did not want to follow Otto's orders to rub Sidney Poiters head, but he fails to mention that black actors hated that gesture because it was a racist belief that you should stroke a n***er's head for good luck, I have seen several candid' s of Dorothy sitting on Sidney 's lap laughing with her arms around him. You can even google the photos to see for yourself.

He also says that Dorothy called the director to have him replace Brock Peters, because he was so black, but Brock Peters has gone on record to say that Otto called him and told him this because he wanted to provoke a more violent response during the rape scene in Porgy and Bess, Brock said he never felt any dissension from Dorothy and they even shared a plane ride together, exchanged phone numbers and became lifelong friends.


I really hate how all these myths about Dorothy and her issues with black men have spread, if you read her autobiography she even says herself that she received more heart aches from the white men she dated and the love of her life was her first husband Harold Nicholas.

Much like Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger got scant credit for being a fervently public Hollywood liberal. He's probably more deserving of said credit, however, despite his fearsome reputation as "Otto the Terrible," the bullying, Teutonic-accented autocrat. Preminger stood up against the forces of artistic censorship, made strenuous efforts to promote black talent, and took on challenging subjects and themes almost as a matter of course, especially after he became an independent filmmaker in the late 1940s. In this excellent biography, Hirsch sets to brushing off Preminger's slightly soiled reputation and makes a convincing case that his subject, while wildly inconsistent and prone to frequent missteps, did indeed make several movies that transcend their time periods and whatever evanescent controversies they excited at the moment of release.

Paradoxically, Preminger, so prone to towering tantrums on the set, essayed a "cool" style on film. ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959) and ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962) tackle such hot-button topics as rape, murder, and homosexuality with a detached approach that refuses to pass judgment and gives the audience credit for being able to make up its own mind. LAURA (1944), a memorable film noir, is generally regarded as Otto's finest work and is indeed splendid, but the previously mentioned films are, IMHO, every bit as good. Hirsch carefully details the stories of these films and Preminger's other works, making sure to give credit where credit is due, even when the task seems hopeless, as when he takes up HURRY SUNDOWN (1967) and SKIDOO (1968), Otto's two most notorious flops. HURRY SUNDOWN, a heavy-handed and lumberingly self-righteous sermon on greed and racism in the 1940s Deep South, is, I believe, one instance in which Preminger wore his liberalism too transparently on his sleeve. Strong opinions on free speech and civil rights Preminger may have had, but he (unlike numerous Hollywood mavens of today) recognized the folly of writing off a large portion of one's audience in the name of ideological purity and, first and foremost, sought to put on a good show, albeit one with a point to make. SUNDOWN and its bizarre follow-up SKIDOO, Preminger's ham-fisted attempt to ride the wave of the hippie movement, were clear signs that he was losing his touch, pandering to rather than challenging his viewers. Hirsch does manage to mine nuggets of worth out of these piles of dross, but even he seems to lose heart when tackling Preminger's films of the 1970s, though he does give Otto's financially troubled last film, THE HUMAN FACTOR (1979), decent marks. Overall, I think that Hirsch is fair in his assessment of Preminger's oeuvre.

When discussing Preminger himself, Hirsch doesn't skimp on the gory details of Otto's legendary browbeatings, but he lets us see the director's softer side as well. Preminger comes across to me as a man who prized control above all else; it's only natural that he became one of the first truly successful independent producer/directors. Had his control of his temper matched his ability to ride herd on his productions, he would probably be a legendary figure today. (At least he had a healthy sense of humor about his reputation, never better seen than in this memorable acting turn.) It's not precisely a rehabilitation, but Hirsch's bio does a fine job of setting Preminger's career and accomplishments in their proper perspective.