22 Facts About Arnold Laven

Arnold Laven was an American film and television director and producer.

Arnold Laven was one of the founders and principals of the American film and television production company Levy-Gardner-Laven.

Arnold Laven was born in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in the late 1930s.

Arnold Laven got his start in the entertainment business working as a mail room messenger at Warner Bros.

Arnold Laven described the First Motion Picture Unit as "the best film school in the world," because participants learned all aspects of the movie industry.

Arnold Laven even had the opportunity to work briefly in front of the camera as an extra in the pilot training short, Live and Learn.

Arnold Laven worked on such films as William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives and Fred Zinnemann's Teresa.

In September 1951, Laven formed a production company with Jules V Levy and Arthur Gardner, both of whom he had met while working in the First Motion Picture Unit.

Arnold Laven directed, and Adam Williams was cast as a gardener who murdered women with his garden shears.

The trio's second feature was Vice Squad, a 1953 detective drama directed by Laven and starring Edward G Robinson and Adam Williams.

In 1956, Arnold Laven went out on his own to direct The Rack, a drama starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin about a soldier who is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy after spending two years in a North Korean prison camp.

In 1957, Levy-Gardner-Arnold Laven team turned their focus to the popular science fiction and monster genres.

Arnold Laven received directing and producing credits on The Monster That Challenged the World, a feature about an army of giant mollusks that emerge from the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley.

In 1962, Arnold Laven cast Connors in the title role of the biographical film, Geronimo, which Arnold Laven directed and produced.

Arnold Laven's directing credits in the western genre included The Glory Guys, a 1965 feature written by Sam Peckinpah about George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment, and Rough Night in Jericho, a 1967 western film starring Dean Martin, George Peppard, and Jean Simmons.

In 1968, Arnold Laven became one of the first directors to be confronted with cutting a scene under the newly introduced MPAA ratings system.

The film was Sam Whiskey, a western directed by Arnold Laven and starring Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson as characters trying to recover $250,000 in gold bars from a steamboat wreck.

When faced with the prospect of an "R" rating, Arnold Laven substituted a tighter shot of Dickinson from the shoulders up to avoid the "R" rating.

Arnold Laven was presented one of the Golden Boot Awards in 1992 for his contributions to western cinema.

Arnold Laven was active for more than 30 years as a director of episodic television.

On September 13,2009, Arnold Laven died from complications of pneumonia at the Tarzana Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley.

Arnold Laven was survived by his wife, the former Wallace Earl Sparks, a daughter and a son.