born Dec. 5, 1906, Vienna, Austria
died April 23, 1986, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Austrian-born U.S. film director.
While studying law in his native Vienna, he worked with Libel on Broadway. Invited to Hollywood, he made the successful thriller Laura (1944), which helped establish {{link=film noir">film noir . Forming his own production company, he defied Hollywood's Production Code with a series of controversial films and brought about the relaxation of censorship regulations. His landmark films include The Moon Is Blue (1953); the all-African American Carmen Jones (1954); and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), a tale of drug addiction. His later films include Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Exodus (1960), The Cardinal (1963), and Hurry Sundown (1967). He also worked as a character actor, most notably in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 (1953).