Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger (1905-1986) whose Hollywood career spanned the 1930s through the 1970s is popularly remembered for the acclaimed films he directed among which are the classic film noir <i>Laura</i> the social-realist melodrama <i>The Man with the Golden Arm</i> the CinemaScope musical <i>Carmen Jones</i> and the riveting courtroom drama <i>Anatomy of a Murder</i>. As a screen actor he forged an indelible impression as a sadistic Nazi in Billy Wilder's <i>Stalag 17</i> and as the diabolical Mr. Freeze in television's <i>Batman</i>. <p/>He is remembered too for drastically transforming Hollywood's industrial practices. With <i>Exodus</i> Preminger broke the Hollywood blacklist controversially granting screen credit to Dalton Trumbo one of the exiled Hollywood Ten. Preminger a committed liberal consistently shattered Hollywood's conventions. He routinely tackled socially progressive yet risqué subject matter pressing the Production Code's limits of permissibility. He mounted Black-cast musicals at a period of intense racial unrest. And he embraced a string of other taboo topics--heroin addiction rape incest homosexuality--that established his reputation as a trailblazer of adult-centered storytelling an enemy of Hollywood puritanism and a crusader against censorship. <p/> <i>Otto Preminger: Interviews </i>compiles nineteen interviews from across Preminger's career providing fascinating insights into the methods and mindset of a wildly polarizing filmmaker. With remarkable candor Preminger discusses his filmmaking practices his distinctive film style his battles against censorship and the Hollywood blacklist his clashes with film critics and his turbulent relationships with a host of well-known stars from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra to Jane Fonda and John Wayne.