Background
He was born as Witold Bardach in Lwow (then Poland. Now Ukraine) in 1925, the son of Juliusz Bardach (lawyer) and Anna Bardach née Garfunkel (concert pianist).
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Gene Gutowski
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Gene Gutowski’s name is associated with some of the great films of the 20th Century: the Oscar-winning masterpiece "The Pianist" and classic films like "Repulsion", "Cul-de-Sac" and "The Fearless Vampire Killers". From 1933 until the beginning of the war in 1939, the Bardach family lived in Rawa Ruska. Then, moved to Lwow, where under Soviet occupation Witold began his studies as sculptor at the Institute of Fine Arts under Professor
Marian Wnuk.
In 1941 the Germans occupied Lwow and a year later his entire family, who had lived there for generations, was killed. Witold escaped to Warsaw where he first worked for a photographer and later as an employee of the Junkers factory at Okecie Airport (Warsaw Chopin Airport), secretly removing Luftwaffe radio-transmitters for delivery to the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa). In order to escape from the Gestapo at 18 years old, he took on the name “Eugene (Eugeniusz) Gutowski” and left Warsaw for Riga, Latvia where he became the head of a construction company working for the Organization Todt.
He was later evacuated to Germany at the end of 1944.
After working for a few years as fashion illustrator, Gene Gutowski became a television and film producer with a few low budget productions to his name, including the television series I Spy. He moved to London in 1960 to produce Station Six Sahara.
lieutenant was there that he joined forces with Roman Polanski in 1963. In a fruitful creative partnership they made Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966) and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), until Polanski moved to Hollywood under contract to Paramount in 1967.
In 1970 Gutowski wrote the script for and produced The Adventures of Gerard, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, and then produced A Day at the Beach (1970) and Romance of a Horsethief (1971).
Remaining close friends over the years, Gutowski and Polanski joined forces again to produce together The Pianist (2002), a multiple Oscar winning film. Gene has also staged several plays, including Passion Flower Hotel (1965), Death and the Maiden (1992) and Doubt: A Parable (2007). In 2004 he published his Polish autobiography "Od Holocaustu do Hollywood" (From Holocaust to Hollywood), of which an English-language edition "With Balls and Chutzpah: A Story of Survival" was published in the United States. in 2011.
