- Born
- Died
- Birth nameVladimir Leventon
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Born in Russian Empire in 1904, Lewton moved with his mother and sister to Berlin in 1906, then to USA in 1909. He wrote for newspapers, magazines, novels, pornography, etc.- often using pseudonyms to disguise their origin (the name Val Lewton was one such pseudonym, used first for some novels in the 1930's, then revived later in his career to take writing credit for two movies). In 1933, he got a job with David O. Selznick where he spent many years as a story editor and jack-of-all-trades. Then in 1942, RKO hired him to head their new horror unit, where he made many famous and well-respected B-movies, for very low costs and high profits. In 1946, he "graduated" to A-movies, but increasing health problems, trouble working with big-money Hollywood, and other factors combined to force him to produce only three more movies before his death in 1951.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ken Yousten <kyousten@bev.net>
- SpouseRuth Knapp(1929 - March 14, 1951) (his death, 2 children)
- Wrote several scenes for Gone with the Wind (1939), such as the Atlanta depot sequence. Then, as a joke, he included an outrageously expensive scene with an elaborate elevator shot of hundreds of wounded soldiers. David O. Selznick read it and loved it so much, he had it put in the film.
- Although he spent many years in the business, and achieved a certain level of success, there is no known motion picture footage of him nor is there any known recordings of his voice.
- Although two of his most famous films concerned cats--Cat People (1942) and The Curse of the Cat People (1944)--he in fact suffered from ailurophobia, a morbid fear of cats. He came up with the idea for "Curse of the Cat People" when he was swimming in a lake one night, saw some cats sitting on the shore staring at him, panicked and almost drowned.
- Lost his job as a reporter for the Darien-Stamford Review after it was discovered that a story about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heat wave was a total fabrication.
- Was a story teller from birth. At 14, during intervals of a basketball game at a local recreation hall he would get up and recite speeches from "Cyrano de Bergerac" until he was arrested.
- [in a letter to his sister] You shouldn't get mad at the New York reviewers. Actually, it's very difficult for a reviewer to give something called I Walked with a Zombie (1943) a good review.
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