Background
Fred Zinnemann was born on April 29, 1907 in Austria. Emigrated to the United States, 1929, naturalized, 1937. Son of Oskar and Anna (Feiwel) Zinnemann.
(Excerpt from a Southwestern art exhibition at Gilcrease M...)
Excerpt from a Southwestern art exhibition at Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1983. A total of 72 plates are included in this book.
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(The challenge every man faces...the fight every man can w...)
The challenge every man faces...the fight every man can win! From movies and television, to print media and the Internet, men are constantly faced with the assault of sensual images. It is impossible to avoid such temptations... but, thankfully, not impossible to confront them and gain victory over them! Millions have found Every Man’s Battle the single greatest resource for overcoming the struggle and remaining strong in the face of temptation. With extensive updates for a new generation, this phenomenal bestseller shares the stories of dozens who have escaped the trap of sexual immorality and presents a practical, detailed plan for any man who desires sexual integrity. Includes a comprehensive workbook and a special section for women, designed to help them understand and support the men they love.
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(Can any young man escape the lure of sexual temptation in...)
Can any young man escape the lure of sexual temptation in today's world? You're surrounded by sex constantly--in movies, on TV, video games, music, the Internet. Is it any wonder that it feels impossible to stay sexually pure? How do men survive the relentless battle against the onslaught of lust? With powerful ammunition. The authors of the hard-hitting mega-bestseller Every Man’s Battle know the temptations young men face every day. The fact is, you can achieve victory over sexual compromise. Every Young Man’s Battle shows you how to rise above today's debased, self-seeking culture by examining God's standard, training your eyes and mind, cleaning up your thought life, and developing a plan. With extensive updates for a new generation of men, this is the award-winning guide to practical resistance. Bottom line: these strategies are biblical and they have worked for millions of men. Experience real hope for living the way God designed. Enter the battle. Includes comprehensive workbook for individual and group study.
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(From Here To Eternity [Sheet music] Fred Ranger (Author)...)
From Here To Eternity [Sheet music] Fred Ranger (Author), Bob Wells (Author), Burt Lancaster (Contributor), Montgomery Clift (Contributor), Debra Kerr (Contributor), Donna Reed (Contributor), Frank Sinatra (Contributor)
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(An autobiography of the film director Fred Zinnemann, who...)
An autobiography of the film director Fred Zinnemann, whose career spans the 65-year history of the talking movie. Famous for giving Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Meryl Streep their first film parts, his credits include "High Noon", "From Here to Eternity" and "Oklahoma".
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Fred Zinnemann was born on April 29, 1907 in Austria. Emigrated to the United States, 1929, naturalized, 1937. Son of Oskar and Anna (Feiwel) Zinnemann.
Student law, Vienna University, 1927. Student, School Cinematography, Paris, France, 1928. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Durham University, United Kingdom, 1994.
Zinnemann’s first assignments for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), with which he signed in 1937, were installments in the Crime Does Not Pay series and short subjects such as That Mothers Might Live (1938), a study of a 19th-century Hungarian physician’s pioneering efforts in hospital sanitization, which won an Academy Award for best one-reel short subject. The director’s first B-films for the studio were Kid Glove Killer (1942), a mystery that starred Van Heflin as a police chemist who solves a murder, and Eyes in the Night (also 1942), in which Edward Arnold played a blind detective. The Seventh Cross (1944) followed; a taut thriller, it featured Spencer Tracy as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
MGM then assigned Zinnemann to Little Mr. Jim and My Brother Talks to Horses (both 1947), a pair of comedic vehicles for child star Butch Jenkins. Zinnemann’s next project, The Search (1948), was considerably more prestigious. The first film shot in Germany following the conclusion of World War II, it was the moving story of an American soldier (played by Montgomery Clift, in his second film) stationed in Berlin who tries to adopt a nine-year-old concentration-camp survivor and apparent orphan whose mother is scouring the war-torn city hoping to find him. Ivan Jandl, the nonprofessional actor who played the orphan, received a a special Academy Award, and Zinnemann (best director) and Clift (best actor) also were nominated. Act of Violence (1948) was much darker. In it Robert Ryan played a disabled army veteran who seeks revenge on a former officer who betrayed his platoon while being held as a prisoner of war.
The Men (1950), written by Carl Foreman and produced by Stanley Kramer, also dealt with crippled war veterans, but this time the emphasis was not on vengeance but on the long, laborious process of healing. Marlon Brando, in his film debut, gave a powerhouse performance as a paraplegic vet whose bitterness over his injury threatens to poison the entire ward and drive away his loyal fiancée (Teresa Wright). Zinnemann’s next film, Teresa (1951)—the story of an Italian war bride who encounters prejudice when she accompanies her U.S. soldier husband home—introduced another set of Hollywood newcomers, Pier Angeli (in the title role), Rod Steiger, and Ralph Meeker.
Another Kramer production, the distinctly unconventional western High Noon (1952), proved to be one of Zinnemann’s most prominent contributions to film history. In one of his most iconic roles, an aging Gary Cooper played a highly principled town marshal whose retirement and wedding (to Grace Kelly) are interrupted by the imminent return of a notorious gunman seeking revenge on the marshal, who had sent him to prison. Unlike the typical marshal in a movie western, Cooper’s Will Kane, anxious, conflicted, and afraid, seeks help from his deputy and other townspeople only to be left to face the threat on his own. (This desertion under pressure was widely interpreted as analogous to the behaviour of some in the Hollywood community during the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of communist activity.) Unbowed, Kane, a man of conscience, stays to fulfill what he sees as his responsibility rather than fleeing. Partly because Cooper had a bleeding ulcer during filming and was in excruciating pain, the anguish the marshal suffers is palpable throughout the 85 minutes of the story’s fictional action, which corresponds directly to the film’s running time, a device that is used to exciting effect. Cooper’s memorable performance earned him an Academy Award for best actor, and Zinnemann’s direction, Foreman’s screenplay, and the film all were nominated.
Zinnemann followed this triumph with The Member of the Wedding (1952), an adaptation of a lauded Broadway production (by way of Carson McCullers’s coming-of-age novel of the same name). It used five members of the original cast, including Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, and Brandon deWilde.
Zinnemann’s next project, From Here to Eternity (1953), the screen version of James Jones’s enormously successful best seller about a group of U.S. soldiers in Hawaii on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, was among the most-anticipated film releases of the early 1950s. The star-studded cast included Clift as a rebellious private, Frank Sinatra as his charming but luckless wise-guy buddy, Burt Lancaster as their sympathetic sergeant, Deborah Kerr as the sergeant’s mistress and wife of his commanding officer, and Ernest Borgnine as the loathsome military jailer Fatso. The film was a huge hit and won eight Academy Awards, including best picture, best director (Zinnemann), best supporting actor (Sinatra), best supporting actress (Donna Reed as Clift’s love interest), best screenplay (Daniel Taradash), and best black-and-white cinematography (Burnett Guffey). Clift and Lancaster were also nominated, for best actor, as was Kerr, for best actress.
Zinnemann chose to film Oklahoma! (1955), his adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s hit 1943 Broadway musical of the same name, on location in Arizona. The most expensive musical produced to that time, Oklahoma! was a departure from Zinnemann’s usual fare, but he was well served by leads Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and the film was generally successful with audiences and critics alike. More in the vein of Zinnemann’s usual subject matter was the low-budget, high-intensity drama A Hatful of Rain (1957), which starred Don Murray as a heroin addict whose pain is shared by his wife (Eva Marie Saint) and brother (Anthony Franciosa). Zinnemann then began what seemed a perfect project for a director of his sensibility—adapting Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea. In the midst of filming, however, he withdrew, leaving The Old Man and the Sea (1958), with Spencer Tracy, to be finished by John Sturges, who received the directing credit. Zinnemann’s last film of the decade, the earnest and probing The Nun’s Story (1959), starred Audrey Hepburn in an Academy Award-nominated (for best actress) portrayal of a nun who braves the terrors of a mental hospital in Belgium, the rigours of the Belgian Congo, and the brutality of the Nazis before finally leaving her order to join the Resistance. Zinnemann (best director) and the film were also nominated for Academy Awards.
The Sundowners (1960) was set in 1920s Australia and shot on location, with Kerr and Robert Mitchum as a husband and wife who set off with their teenage son to drive a thousand sheep a thousand miles. Zinnemann deftly conveyed this story of quiet heroism (from John Cleary’s novel of the same name) and in the process earned another Academy Award nomination as best director. Also nominated were Kerr (best actress), Glynis Johns (best supporting actress), the screenplay, and the film. Behold a Pale Horse (1964) was less successful, with some critics believing that Gregory Peck had been miscast as a Loyalist Spanish Civil War hero who, 20 years after that conflict ended, is still waging an ideological battle with a militia captain (Anthony Quinn). A Man for All Seasons (1966), from Robert Bolt’s acclaimed play about the trials of Sir Thomas More and adapted by Bolt himself, presented perils of its own, but Zinnemann navigated them with great skill, creating another masterwork. A Man for All Seasons starred Paul Scofield (repeating his stage role) as the intractable, devout More, who tacitly refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the annulment of the marriage of King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) to Catherine of Aragon or the king’s assumption of the leadership of the Catholic Church in England and ultimately loses his life for doing so. The stellar cast also included Orson Welles, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, John Hurt, and Susannah York. The film was a runaway success at that year’s Academy Awards, winning in six categories, including best picture, best actor (Scofield), and best screenplay based on another medium (Bolt). Zinnemann again was honoured as best director.
It took Zinnemann seven years to make his next film, the suspenseful but chilly political thriller The Day of the Jackal (1973), from Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 best-selling novel of the same name about a plot to assassinate French Pres. Charles de Gaulle. Edward Fox played the meticulously prepared assassin. Julia (1977), a much warmer film based on a portion of playwright Lillian Hellman’s memoirs, starred Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as the title character, a noble activist who enlists her friend Hellman to aid in her efforts against the Nazis. Jason Robards played Hellman’s friend and lover Dashiell Hammett, and Meryl Streep made her film debut in a small part. Although some critics felt that the film lacked dramatic power, it was a success at the box office and earned 11 Academy Award nominations, including best picture and another best director nomination for Zinnemann. Robards (best supporting actor), Redgrave (best supporting actress), and Alvin Sargent’s screenplay won.
Zinnemann took another five years to mount his final production, Five Days One Summer (1982), an investigation of a complex May-December romance set in 1933. It starred Sean Connery as a physician who is climbing in the Swiss Alps with a young woman who may or may not be his wife.
(From Here To Eternity [Sheet music] Fred Ranger (Author)...)
(Can any young man escape the lure of sexual temptation in...)
(An autobiography of the film director Fred Zinnemann, who...)
(Excerpt from a Southwestern art exhibition at Gilcrease M...)
(The challenge every man faces...the fight every man can w...)
(THE SEARCH: Montgomery Clift, Aline MacMahon, Jarmila Nov...)
(Buy High Noon: Read 617 Movies & TV Reviews - Amazon.com)
Co-founder, honorary trustee Artists' Rights Foundation, 1994. Fellow British Academy Film and television (Fellowship award 1978), British Film Institute. Member Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Film Institute (co-founder 1961, former trustee).
Married Renee Bartlett, October 9, 1936. 1 child, Tim.