Background
Born to a Berlin tailor on January 29, 1892, Lubitsch was stagestruck from early youth.
Born to a Berlin tailor on January 29, 1892, Lubitsch was stagestruck from early youth.
While acting as his father’s bookkeeper, he apprenticed himself to comedian Victor Arnold, who later introduced him to the director Max Reinhardt. Accepted by the latter in 1911, Lubitsch’s greatest success while with Reinhardt was as the hunchback clown in Sumurun (the film version of which Lubitsch was later to star in and direct in 1920). By 1913 he had become a film comedian, playing a Jewish character known as Meyer in a long-running series.
He directed his first comedies the following year, and in 1918 turned to serious historical epics. While his comedies of the 1920s, such as Kolheissels Tochter, were enormously popular in Germany, it was his more serious films with Emil Jannings and Pola Negri (Carmen. MadameDubarry, and AnneBoleyn) that brought him worldwide fame. It was this fame that led Mary Pickford to bring him to the United States in 1923 to direct her in Rosita.
Shortly after arriving in America, Lubitsch hit upon the type of witty social comedy for which he is best remembered. The “Lubitsch touch," a little twist given to an often slightly risqué but familiar situation, was already an expression in currency in the late 1920s. Lubitsch’s touch was effective on a number offrants; both critically and commercially his rate of success was consistently high.
The greatest part of Lubitsch’s American career was spent at Paramount, where he also spent a year in the mid-1930s as head of production. The undeniable attraction of his own name on a film was usually combined with that of high-powered stars: the team of Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier that he created, Marlene Dietrich, and one memorable comedy, Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo. Other well-known films included The Love Parade, Trouble in Paradise, and The Merry Widow.
During the war he attacked Nazism with laughter in To Be Or Noi To Be, but his subsequent productions were attended by poor health. In 1947, while filming That Lady i.n Ermine, his lirst musical in over a decade, Lubitsch died of a heart attack.
Quotes from others about the person
NO MORE LUBITSCH FILMS
After Lubitsch’s funeral, his friends Billy Wilder and William Wyler were walking sadly to their car. Finally, to break the silence, Wilder said, “No more Lubitsch.” Wyler answered, “Worse than that — no more Lubitsch films.”