1. George Cooper Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.
26 Facts About George Stevens
1. 2.
George Stevens received two Academy Awards and the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award in 1953.
3.
George Stevens won the Academy Award for Best Director for A Place in the Sun, and Giant.
4.
George Stevens was Oscar-nominated for The Talk of the Town, The More the Merrier, Shane, and The Diary of Anne Frank.
5.
George Stevens had two brothers, Jack, a cinematographer, and writer Aston Stevens.
6.
George Stevens learned about the stage by watching his parents, and himself, acting in plays in San Francisco.
7.
George Stevens helped grant Stan Laurel a film career, as the studio had trouble getting the comedian's blue eyes to register on film, but George Stevens made a successful test of him using panchromatic film.
8.
George Stevens worked as director of photography and a gag writer on 35 Laurel and Hardy short films, such as Bacon Grabbers and Night Owls ; according to Stevens he learned from this experience that comedy could be "graceful and human".
9.
In 1934, George Stevens was hired by RKO Pictures, and he directed the slapstick film Kentucky Kernels, starring Wheeler and Woolsey.
10.
George Stevens served as president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1941 to 1943.
11.
George Stevens directed the romantic comedy The More the Merrier starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn for which he received an Academy Award for Best Director nomination losing to Michael Curtiz for Casablanca.
12.
George Stevens joined the US Army Signal Corps and headed a film unit from 1943 to 1946, under General Dwight D Eisenhower.
13.
George Stevens helped prepare the Duben and Dachau footage and other material for presentation during the Nuremberg Trials; this was released as the hour-long Nazi Concentration Camps.
14.
In 2008, George Stevens's footage was entered into the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as an "essential visual record" of the war.
15.
In 1946, George Stevens resumed his duties as president of the SDG, remaining so until 1948.
16.
In 1950, during the McCarthyist scare and related Hollywood blacklist, Stevens defended Joseph L Mankiewicz from Cecil B DeMille's attempt to recall him as president of the SDG.
17.
George Stevens directed the Western Shane starring Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur, the biographical Holocaust drama The Diary of Anne Frank, and his biblical epic of Jesus, The Greatest Story Ever Told.
18.
George Stevens ended his directing career with the 1970 romantic comedy-drama The Only Game in Town with Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor.
19.
George Stevens died following a heart attack on March 8,1975, on his ranch in Lancaster, California, north of Los Angeles.
20.
George Stevens is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.
21.
The moving image collection of George Stevens is held at the Academy Film Archive.
22.
George Stevens has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1701 Vine Street.
23.
George Stevens won the Academy Award for Best Director twice, in 1951 for A Place in the Sun and in 1956 for Giant.
24.
George Stevens was nominated in 1943 for The More the Merrier, in 1954 for Shane, and in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank.
25.
George Stevens received both the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
26.
George Stevens received the National Board of Review Award for Best Director and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.