Background
Laslo Benedek was born on 5 March 1907 in Budapest.
Laslo Benedek was born on 5 March 1907 in Budapest.
Benedek never settled, and he seemed as uneasy with the solemn allegory of Death of a Salesman as with the rampant motor-bike horniness of The Wild One. It is too willing to be a motorized Western; too preoccupied with surly youth to catch the real urban baroque of shining motor-bikes and leather. And if, unlike Michael Curtiz, Benedek has never managed to adapt Hungarianness to Hollywood, he has not been much happier elsewhere.
The French and German films are dull, and he later divided his time between American TV, a documentary study of whales and the hardly released Night Visitor. Benedek was a writer and photographer who worked as cameraman and editor in Germany in the 1930s: Der Mann der den Mord Beging (31, Kurt Bernhardt).
He was one of several odd talents who gathered round Joe Pasternak and Universal in Berlin. Moving from Paris to London, he scripted Secret of Stamboul (36, Andrew Marton). In 1937 he went to Hollywood and to MGM’s montage department. Thereafter, he became a production assistant to Pasternak who produced his first film, a musical starring Sinatra and Ann Miller.