László Benedek
Hungarian-born film director
László Benedek (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈlaːsloː ˈbɛnɛdɛk]; March 5, 1905 – March 11, 1992; sometimes Laslo Benedek) was a Hungarian-born film director and cinematographer, most notable for directing The Wild One (1953).
He gained recognition for his direction of the film version of Death of a Salesman (1951), for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and a Best Director nomination from the Directors Guild of America. However, it was for his directorial efforts on his next project that Benedek is best remembered. His motorcycle gang film The Wild One (1953) caused a storm of controversy and was banned in the United Kingdom until 1968.
Biography
Early life and European career
He was born in Budapest; his half-brother was George Gerbner. Benedek intended to be a psychiatrist and studied at Vienna and Berlin. He worked in the film industry to pay his bills and ended up deciding to focus on that instead.
In Germany, Benedek was cinematographer on The Mistress (1927). He was assistant director on The Great Longing (1929), directed by Steve Sekely, and edited and assisted directed The Man Who Murdered (1931) for director Curtis Bernhardt. He worked at UFA for Joe Pasternak until 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “László Benedek” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.