Austrian-born Otto Preminger came to Hollywood from the stage in the 1930s with plans to direct, but after a falling-out with 20th Century-Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck, was forced to support himself as an actor for a time during World War II.  After replacing director Rouben Mamoulian behind the camera of LAURA (1944) however, Preminger's directorial career was back on track, and he went on to make some three-dozen films, earning three Academy Award nominations in the process.  Known as a filmmaker with a penchant for being notoriously tough on his actors, Preminger showed a special talent for film-noir crime dramas at Fox in the 1940s, before tackling controversial and frequently taboo subjects such as race, drug addiction and rape in several independent films of the 1950s and '60s.

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Multimedia Clips:

• "Laura" (clip) from LAURA (1944) by David Raksin (a .MP3 file).
• "Original Theatrical Trailer" from LAURA (1944) with Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Dana Andrews and more (a .MOV file).
• "Main Title: Amber" (clip) from FOREVER AMBER (1947) by David Raksin (a .MP3 file).
• "River of No Return" (clip) from RIVER OF NO RETURN (1954) sung by Marilyn Monroe and chorus (a .MP3 file).
• "Frankie Machine" (clip) from THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955) by Elmer Bernstein (a .MP2 file courtesy Rhino Records).
• "Main Title" (clip) from EXODUS (1960) by Ernest Gold (a .MP3 file).

(For help opening any of the multimedia files, visit the plug-ins page.)

Further Reading:

• Who the devil made it: conversations with Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh interviewed by Peter Bogdanovich (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
• Preminger: An Autobiography by Otto Preminger (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1977).
• Behind the scenes of Otto Preminger; an unauthorized biography by Willi Frischauer (New York: William Morrow, 1974).
• The cinema of Otto Preminger by Gerald Pratley (New York: Castle Books, 1971).
• All I Want is Everything by Marion Mill Preminger (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1957).

More Preminger Links:

• Columbia Oral History: Dana Andrews on Otto Preminger
• TVNow's monthly Otto Preminger schedule -when his films will be on TV.
• Greatest Films: LAURA
• A review of LAURA by Brian Koller

Awards | Image Credits