Background
Mark Hellinger was born on 21 March 1903 in New York, New York, United States.
Mark Hellinger was born on 21 March 1903 in New York, New York, United States.
His short career as a producer earned Hellinger much respect from his writers and directors, especially Richard Brooks, whose novel, The Producer, is based on Hellinger. It is easy to see in his films a wish to bring authenticity to the crime picture. But his earlier films—more conventional studio works—are much more satisfactory than the attempt to make neo-realist police stories. In other words, Hellinger lived at a time when substantial cinema novelty in America was still dependent on genre. In the streets of New York, Hellinger only dissipated the studio-furnished darkness of the film noir. Where he is interesting is in treating criminals as real, vulnerable people, and not as monolithic archetypes or subverted heroes. Bogart in High Sierra (41, Raoul Walsh) is a turning point for the actor and the genre. While The Killers (46, Robert Siodmak) is a fascinating fusion of Germanic atmosphere, Hemingway’s understatement, and the genre's emphasis on ritual double cross. Especially in its detailed account of a criminal operation, it inaugurated a trend.
Hellinger was a New York journalist of high reputation as wisecracker, drinker, buddy, and Runyon-like man-about-town. He w rote for the theater and had his play Night Conti (32, W. S. Van Dyke) purchased by MGM. He went on to work as a writer on Broadway Bill (34, Frank Capra) and, with Jerry Wald, The Boating Twenties (39, Walsh). In 1940 he joined Hal Wallis at Warners as an associate producer and was engaged on Torrid Zone (40, William Keighley); Brother Orchid (40, Lloyd Bacon); It All Came True (40, William A. Seiter); They Drive by Night (40, Walsh); The Strawberry Blonde (41, Walsh); Manpower (41, Walsh); and High Sierra. He w'ent to Fox to produce Rise and Shine (41, Allan Dwan), and then returned to Warners for Moontide (42, Archie Mavo) and Thank Your Lucky Stars (43, David Butler).
He was a w ar correspondent in the Pacific f rom 1943-45, but, in his last two years, worked at Warners and Universal: The Horn Blows at Midnight (45, Walsh); The Killers; Swell Guy (46, Frank Tuttle); the prison expose Brute Force (47, Jules Dassin); The Two Mrs. Carrolls (47, Peter Godfrey); and the film that was to launch so many TV series, The Naked City (48, Dassin), which Hellinger narrates with the loving wryness of cozy journalese.
When he died, of a massive heart attack, he was on the point of joining Selznick, with plans to film a lot of Hemingway.