Otto PremingerFilmography

The Hobbit

Synopsis: J.R.R. Tolkien's classic book about the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected adventures came to life in this animated, televised adaptation by Rankin-Bass Productions. Enthusiasts of Tolkien's lengthy and more demanding Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as adult readers of The Hobbit, may be Read More

Hollywood on Trial

Actors: John Huston, Edward Dmytryk, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., Lester Cole, Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Joseph McCarthy

Synopsis: Combining familiar newsreel footage with freshly shot material, David Helpern's Hollywood on Trial is a documentary concerning the "communist witch-hunt" era. In the years following World War II, several ambitious Washington politicos were anxious to dissipate the last traces of Roosevelt's New Read More

Rosebud

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Richard Attenborough, Cliff Gorman, Claude Dauphin, John V. Lindsay

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Joan Hemingway and Paul Bonnecarrere, Rosebud opens with five young women vacationing aboard a luxurious yacht called the Rosebud. All five of the women are the daughters of wealthy and powerful men; one of them is the daughter of an influential American senator. Their vacation Read More

Such Good Friends

Crew: Director, Producer

Synopsis: Based upon the novel by Lois Gould and adapted (under the pseudonym Esther Dale) by Elaine May, Such Good Friends focuses on Julie Messinger (played by Dyan Cannon), a woman with intense, often wild emotions that are held in check beneath a rather conventional façade. After her chauvinistic and Read More

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Liza Minnelli, Ken Howard, Robert Moore, James Coco, Kay Thompson

Synopsis: Upon completing Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, a tearful Liza Minnelli declared publicly that she would never, ever work with tyrannical director Otto Preminger again. Worse luck for her: Junie Moon contains what may well be Minnelli's best non-musical performance. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kellogg Read More

Skidoo

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, Michael Constantine

Synopsis: Producer and director Otto Preminger reportedly experimented with LSD in the late 60's, which inspired him to make this notorious comedy in which Jackie Gleason plays Tony, a mid-level gangster and former hired killer not very happy with his life. He bickers a lot with his wife Flo (Carol Read More

Hurry Sundown

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Diahann Carroll, Faye Dunaway, Robert Hooks

Synopsis: Otto Preminger directed this star-studded adaptation of K.B. Gliden's novel about racial prejudice and emotional unrest in the Deep South. Henry Warren (Michael Caine) is a land owner obsessed with buying up all available land in a Georgia farming town. However, two parcels of land have escaped Read More

Bunny Lake Is Missing

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Martita Hunt

Synopsis: Based on the mystery novel by Marryam Modell (using the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Bunny Lake Is Missing is a bizarre study in motherhood, kindness, enigma, and insanity. Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), an American freshly relocated to England, wishes to drop off her daughter Bunny for the girl's first day Read More

In Harm's Way

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Tom Tryon, Dana Andrews, Paula Prentiss

Synopsis: In Harm's Way, based on James Bassett's novel Harm's Way, has enough plot in it for four movies or a good miniseries (when it was shown on network television in prime time, it was broken into two very full nights). On the morning of December 7, 1941, a heavy cruiser, commanded by Captain Rockwell Read More

The Cardinal

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Tom Tryon, Carol Lynley, Romy Schneider, Dorothy Gish, Maggie McNamara, John Huston, Raf Vallone

Synopsis: Tom Tryon plays the title role in this Otto Preminger version of the Henry Morton Robinson novel. In his matriculation from Monsignor to the College of Cardinals, Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) must undergo several grueling life experiences: standing up to bigots in Georgia, defying Nazis in Read More

Advise and Consent

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney

Synopsis: The first of Allen Drury "all names changed to protect the guilty" political novels, Advise and Consent was brought to the screen by producer/director Otto Preminger. The film hinges upon the appointment of Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) to Secretary of State. Leffingwell has been hand-picked by Read More

Exodus

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb

Synopsis: Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, Exodus is a 212-minute screen adaptation of the best-selling novel by Leon Uris. The film is concerned with the emergence of Israel as an independent nation in 1947. Its first half focuses on the efforts of 611 holocaust survivors to defy the blockade of Read More

Anatomy of a Murder

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell, George C. Scott, Eve Arden, Kathryn Grant

Synopsis: Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Traver (the pseudonym for Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker), Anatomy of a Murder stars James Stewart as seat-of-the-pants Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler. Through the intervention of his alcoholic mentor, Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell) Read More

Porgy and Bess

Crew: Director

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters

Synopsis: A stellar line-up of African-American actors and musical stars helped to bring DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin's classic operetta to this screen in this lavishly-produced adaptation. Porgy (Sidney Poitier) is a crippled man living in the shantytown of Catfish Row who has fallen in love with Bess (Dorothy Dandridge Read More

Bonjour Tristesse

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Jean Seberg, Mylène Demongeot, Geoffrey Horne, Jean Kent, Roland Culver

Synopsis: Francoise Sagan's bittersweet novel Bonjour Tristesse is given a sumptuous Riviera-filmed screen treatment. David Niven plays a wealthy playboy, the father of teenaged libertine-in-the-making Jean Seberg. Seberg tolerates most of her father's mistresses, but doesn't know what to make of the Read More

Saint Joan

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, Richard Todd, Anton Walbrook, John Gielgud

Synopsis: After an extensive talent search, producer-director Otto Preminger selected a 17-year-old unknown from Iowa, Jean Seberg, to play Joan of Arc, a role traditionally portrayed by actresses twice to three times Seberg's age. Seberg is cast opposite such venerable pros as Richard Todd (as Dunois), Anton Walbrook Read More

The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger, Elizabeth Montgomery

Synopsis: In this 1955 Otto Preminger film, Gary Cooper stars as World War I hero Brigadier General Billy Mitchell. The film recounts Mitchell's efforts to prove the viability of a strong air force. The hidebound military higher-ups refuse to finance aviation any further, figuring that the strength of the Read More

The Man With the Golden Arm

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin

Synopsis: When Otto Preminger was willing to release his drug-addiction drama Man With the Golden Arm without the sanction of a Production Code seal, it proved to be yet another nail in the coffin of that censorial dinosaur. Based on the novel by Nelson Algren, the film stars Frank Sinatra as Frankie Read More

Tonight at 8:30

Crew: Director, Producer

Carmen Jones

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Olga James, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll

Synopsis: In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein Jr. took Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, rewrote the lyrics, changed the characters from 19th century Spaniards to World War II-era African-Americans, switched the locale to a Southern military base, and the result was Carmen Jones. Dorothy Dandridge stars as Carmen Jones Read More

River of No Return

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe, Rory Calhoun, Tommy Rettig, Murvyn Vye

Synopsis: Director Otto Preminger's only western, River of No Return is set in Canada during the 19th century Gold Rush. Farmer Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum) is released from prison after serving a sentence for shooting a man in the back to protect a friend. He arrives in a small town to retrieve his young Read More

Angel Face

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, Herbert Marshall, Leon Ames

Synopsis:
Jean Simmons' fascinating interpretation of an uncharacteristic role is the main drawing card of Otto Preminger's Angel Face. The daughter of Charles Treymayne (Herbert Marshall), who remarried a wealthy woman (Barbara O'Neil), Diane Treymayne's (Simmons) angelic countenance masks an unbridled Read More

Stalag 17

Actors: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck

Synopsis: The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours Read More

The Moon Is Blue

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: William Holden, David Niven, Maggie McNamara, Tom Tully, Dawn Addams

Synopsis: This is the story of a chaste young TV-commercial actress (Maggie McNamara) who is romanced by a playboy architect (William Holden). Despite all sorts of temptations, the girl refuses the architect's invitation to become his mistress, holding out for marriage or nothing. Meanwhile, middle-aged Read More

The 13th Letter

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Linda Darnell, Charles Boyer, Michael Rennie, Constance Smith, Françoise Rosay

Synopsis: A remake of the French Le Corbeau ("The Raven"), The Thirteenth Letter is a film noir in a curious setting -- a rural village deep in Quebec, seemingly sleepy and typical. Dr. Laurent (Charles Boyer) returns from a medical convention in Montreal, anxious to see his much younger wife, Cora Read More

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, Bert Freed, Karl Malden, Tom Tully

Synopsis: Dana Andrews is brutal metropolitan police detective Dixon, who despises all criminals because his father had been one. When the cops pick up two-bit gambler Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) as a murder suspect, Dixon subjects Paine to the third degree -- and accidentally kills him. In disposing of the Read More

Whirlpool

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, Charles Bickford, Eduard Franz, Barbara O'Neil

Synopsis: In this compelling and unusual psychological melodrama Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney), a woman tormented by her secret kleptomania seeks help from a unscrupulous hypnotist David Korvo (Jose Ferrer). Although she is married to a successful psychiatrist (Richard Conte), and has no need to steal the Read More

The Fan

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Madeleine Carroll, George Sanders, Richard Greene, Martita Hunt

Synopsis: In this revised adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous comedy of manners, Lady Windermere's Fan, the middle-aged but still beautiful Mrs. Erlynne (Madeleine Carroll), well-known for her romantic adventures, has cast her eye upon Lord Windermere (Richard Greene), who is married to Lady Windermere (Jeanne Crain Read More

That Lady in Ermine

Crew: Director

Actors: Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Cesar Romero, Walter Abel, Reginald Gardiner

Synopsis: That Lady in Ermine tells two parallel stories, both taking place in the small Mittel-European duchy of Bergamo, but one set in the 19th century and the other in the 16th. In 1861, the Countess Angelina (Betty Grable) and her newlywed husband, Baron Mario, have just entered the bridal chamber when Read More

Forever Amber

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Ball, Linda Darnell, Cornel Wilde, Edmund Breon, Leo G. Carroll, Richard Greene, George Sanders, Robert Coote, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: They said it couldn't be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor's "notorious", bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor's novel, but the end result Read More

Daisy Kenyon

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, Art Baker, Griff Barnett, Henry Fonda, Ruth Warrick, John Davidson, Martha Stewart

Synopsis: Daisy Kenyon stars Joan Crawford as the eponymous heroine, a Manhattan commercial artist. Daisy is torn between two men: a handsome, married attorney (Dana Andrews) and an unmarried Henry Fonda. Deciding to do the "right thing", Daisy marries Fonda, but carries a torch for the dashing Andrews. Read More

Centennial Summer

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Louis Austin, Jeanne Crain, Cornel Wilde, Rodney Bell, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Clancy Cooper, Constance Bennett

Synopsis: Otto Preminger directed this romantic musical (something of a change of pace for the rather serious-minded director) set in Philadephia in 1876. The upcoming Centennial Exposition is the talk of the town, and sisters Julia (Jeanne Crain) and Edith (Linda Darnell) find themselves romantic rivals Read More

Fallen Angel

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford, Anne Revere

Synopsis: Otto Preminger directed this stylish film noir exercise, intended as a follow-up to his surprise hit Laura. Kicked off a bus traveling cross-country for not being able to come up with the fare, down-and-out press agent Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) ends up in Walton, a small coastal town in Read More

Where Do We Go from Here?

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn

Synopsis: In this engagingly silly musical fantasy from the waning days of WW2, Fred MacMurray stars as Bill, who wants to serve his country but has been classified 4-F. While working at a local USO, Bill falls in love with the fickle Lucilla (June Haver, soon to be Mrs. Fred MacMurray), never realizing Read More

A Royal Scandal

Crew: Director

Actors: Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Coburn, Anne Baxter, William Eythe, Vincent Price

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch was the original director for A Royal Scandal, but illness forced him to bow out; his replacement was Otto Preminger, who did his utmost to retain the "Lubitsch touch." Based on a play by Lajos Biro and Melchior Lengyel, the film dwells upon a fictional incident in the life of Read More

Laura

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson

Synopsis: This adaptation of Vera Caspary's suspense novel was begun by director Rouben Mamoulien and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but thanks to a complex series of backstage intrigues and hostilities, the film was ultimately credited to director Otto Preminger and cameraman Joseph LaShelle (who won an Read More

In the Meantime, Darling

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Frank Latimore, Eugene Pallette, Mary Nash, Stanley Prager

Synopsis: In this wartime comedy, a spoiled socialite attempts to endure army life after marrying a lieutenant. The constant traveling and inadequate quarters are almost more than she can bear. That she cannot get along with the other soldier's wives makes matters worse. When her husband's unit is placed on Read More

Margin for Error

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Bennett, Otto Preminger, Carl Esmond, Howard Freeman

Synopsis: Clare Booth Luce's once-timely stage comedy Margin for Error was indifferently transferred to the screen in 1943. Milton Berle stars as Moe Finkelstein, a Jewish Brooklyn policeman assigned to guard Nazi consul Karl Baumer (Otto Preminger) in pre-WW II New York. Baumer is not only an anti-Semitic Read More

The Pied Piper

Actors: Monty Woolley, Anne Baxter, Roddy McDowall, Otto Preminger, Peggy Ann Garner, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: Monty Woolley plays an irascible Englishman who insists that he dislikes children. While on a vacation in France, the Nazis invade the country. Reluctantly, Woolley agrees to transport several French children into England. As the flight to freedom becomes more treacherous, Woolley grows fonder of Read More

They Got Me Covered

Actors: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Lenore Aubert, Otto Preminger, Eduardo Ciannelli

Synopsis: Bob Hope's first starring vehicle for producer Sam Goldwyn borrows the title of Bob's 1942 autobiography They Got Me Covered and very little else. Co-scripted by Leonard Q. Ross (aka Leo Rosten), Leonard Spigelgass and Harry Kurnitz (among many others!), the film casts Hope as Robert Kittredge Read More

Danger: Love at Work

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Sothern, Jack Haley, Mary Boland, John Carradine

Synopsis: An airy screwball comedy, Danger--Love at Work explores the lives of a wealthy but wacky family. Ann Sothern plays the daughter, the only remotely "normal" member of the clan. Poor Jack Haley enters the scene as a feckless attorney who tries to get the family to finalize an important land deal. Read More

Under Your Spell

Crew: Director

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Wendy Barrie, Gregory Ratoff, Arthur Treacher, Gregory Gaye

Synopsis: Otto Preminger was able to make his directorial debut on Under Your Spell solely because Darryl Zanuck couldn't care less about the film's quality; it was a contractual obligation film for Lawrence Tibbett, who was proving a washout as a film star. In Spell, Tibbett plays Anthony Allen, a world Read More

Die Grosse Liebe

Crew: Director

Actors: Hansi Niese, Attila Hoerbiger, Ferdinand Mayerhofer, Betty Bird, Hans Olden

Synopsis: Otto Preminger made his film directorial debut with the Austro-German Die Grose Liebe (The Great Love) Returning from WWI, young Franz (Attila Horbiger) has no relatives and thus really has nowhere to go. He wanders aimlessly around Europe for a decade, finally settling down in Vienna. During his Read More