1. George Cooper Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.
90 Facts About George Stevens
1. 2.
George Stevens won the Academy Award for Best Director for A Place in the Sun and Giant.
3.
At the age of 17, George Stevens was hired as an assistant cameraman, working on several Western films produced by Hal Roach.
4.
George Stevens next moved to Universal Pictures and then to RKO Pictures.
5.
George Stevens was loaned to MGM to direct Woman of the Year based on Hepburn's suggestion, whereby she was paired with Spencer Tracy for the first time.
6.
George Stevens directed The Talk of the Town and The More the Merrier.
7.
In 1941, the United States entered World War II, in which George Stevens joined the US Army Signal Corps and headed a film unit.
8.
George Stevens returned to Hollywood and directed more serious films, starting with I Remember Mama.
9.
Between 1951 to 1956, George Stevens directed his American Trilogy, which includes A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant.
10.
George Stevens next directed widescreen biographical films, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Greatest Story Ever Told.
11.
George Stevens was born on December 18,1904, in Oakland, California, the son of Landers George Stevens and Georgie Cooper, both stage actors.
12.
George Stevens had two brothers, Jack, a cinematographer, and writer Aston Stevens.
13.
George Stevens learned about the stage by watching his parents, and himself, acting in plays in San Francisco.
14.
At the age of 5, George Stevens made his stage debut in the play Sappho, appearing alongside Nance O'Neill, at the Alcazar Theatre.
15.
Stevens's parents relocated to Sonoma County, California, where Jack and George were enrolled in the Flowery School and then Sonora Union High School.
16.
George Stevens worked as an assistant cameraman on Heroes of the Street, a silent drama directed by William Beaudine.
17.
George Stevens then moved to Ince Studio where he worked on The Destroying Angel and several Westerns, including The Virginian released by Preferred Pictures.
18.
At the age of 17, George Stevens was employed at Hal Roach Studios as an assistant cameraman to Fred Jackman.
19.
The Jackman brothers left Hal Roach Studios, but George Stevens stayed to photograph a series of short comedies starring Laurel and Hardy.
20.
At one point, George Stevens grew tired of directing two-reel gag comedies and refused to direct another film Roach had asked him.
21.
In 1934, George Stevens returned to RKO to direct Bachelor Bait, which he filmed from April 30 to May 18.
22.
George Stevens then re-teamed with Wheeler and Woolsey on The Nitwits.
23.
George Stevens drove over to Hepburn's residence, and in a meeting with Hepburn and Berman, they discussed a range of topics but did not discuss Tarkington's novel.
24.
George Stevens had not yet read the novel, and Hepburn cautioned about having hired him.
25.
George Stevens then read the novel, and within a day, he agreed to direct Alice Adams.
26.
George Stevens was displeased having read two-thirds of Jane Murfin's script adaptation, and promptly hired Mortimer Offner and Dorothy Yost to rewrite it, retaining much of the novel's dialogue.
27.
Hepburn and George Stevens had opposed the ending, though RKO insisted on the happier ending even before George Stevens was hired.
28.
George Stevens looked for nuances and was always delighted when I admired something new.
29.
George Stevens brings her home but is unable to break the news to his college dean father.
30.
George Stevens then hired William Faulkner to adapt the poem into a suitable screenplay.
31.
However, RKO president George Stevens Schaeffer declined to acquire the screen rights to either novel.
32.
George Stevens held precautions about studio president Harry Cohn's reputation for meddling, to which Cohn stipulated he would never interfere with George Stevens during production.
33.
On May 14,1940, George Stevens signed a three-picture deal with Columbia.
34.
That same month, in June 1940, George Stevens acquired the screen rights to Martha Cheavens's story "The Story of a Happy Marriage", which had been published in McCall's magazine.
35.
George Stevens hired Morrie Ryskind to pen the screenplay while Cheavens was hired as a consultant.
36.
George Stevens read the unfinished script and agreed to direct, though he insisted the film be produced at Columbia.
37.
George Stevens served as president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1941 to 1943.
38.
George Stevens returned to Columbia to direct The Talk of the Town.
39.
George Stevens filmed two endings, one where Nora marries Dilg and another where she marries Lightcap.
40.
George Stevens allowed test audiences to determine their preferred ending, and most preferred the former.
41.
Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman wrote a smart and lively script for the film and George Stevens has directed it with the slyness of a first-rate comedy man.
42.
George Stevens held a table reading with the actors, and during filming, he encouraged on-set improvisation and shot extensive coverage for several scenes while filming.
43.
George Stevens won for Best Director at the New York Film Critics Awards.
44.
George Stevens had seen the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will and was provoked to join the Allied forces in World War II.
45.
On June 30,1943, George Stevens was transferred to Iran.
46.
George Stevens landed in London where he received orders from US General Dwight D Eisenhower to recruit forty-five people for the Special Coverage Unit.
47.
George Stevens obtained permission for his unit to ride with the French, as they documented the liberation of Paris.
48.
Fatigued, the Americans retreated, of which George Stevens observed "the stunned look on the faces" of soldiers in his journal on his fortieth birthday.
49.
In January 1945, George Stevens was pulled away to London to help supervise the war documentary The True Glory directed by Garson Kanin and Carol Reed.
50.
George Stevens then ventured southwards to Dachau, located outside of Munich.
51.
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.
52.
George Stevens returned to the United States aboard the RMS Queen Mary.
53.
Back in Los Angeles, George Stevens retired from the US Army in March 1946 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
54.
In 1944, Frank Capra approached George Stevens to join his new independent production company, Liberty Films.
55.
George Stevens held off on the decision, and while he was in France, he met with Harry Cohn and promised he would rejoin Columbia Pictures when he returned.
56.
However, George Stevens reneged on his promise and joined Liberty Films.
57.
George Stevens held a 25 percent ownership of the company's shares.
58.
At Liberty Films, George Stevens developed a comedy titled One Big Happy Family which was to star Ingrid Bergman.
59.
Beforehand, due to contractual obligations, George Stevens had been loaned to RKO to direct I Remember Mama.
60.
George Stevens had seen the play, which starred Mady Christians, and connected with the material.
61.
George Stevens had first read Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy during its first year of publication.
62.
George Stevens reread the novel in 1945 and approached Paramount Pictures, which had produced a 1931 filmed version, about a new adaptation.
63.
Frustrated, George Stevens filed a lawsuit accusing Paramount violating his studio contract.
64.
The film won six Academy Awards, including George Stevens who was awarded the Best Director Oscar.
65.
Henry Ginsberg, Paramount's head of production, then sent a memo to George Stevens, asking if he was interested in directing Shane as a possible Alan Ladd vehicle.
66.
However, both actors dropped out thus George Stevens picked Alan Ladd after looking at a list of Paramount's contract players.
67.
In February 1952, as he was editing Shane, George Stevens formed an independent production company, Giant Productions.
68.
George Stevens hired Ivan Moffat and Fred Guiol to write preliminary treatments and eventually a 350-paged first draft screenplay was written.
69.
George Stevens was the recipient of the year's Screen Directors Guild Award for Best Feature Film.
70.
In 1954, George Stevens learned that Twentieth Century-Fox had held the film rights to The Diary of Anne Frank.
71.
George Stevens hired Tony van Renterghem as a technical advisor.
72.
In 1958, while filming The Diary of Anne Frank, George Stevens became aware that that Fox held the screen rights to Fulton Oursler's 1949 novel The Greatest Story Ever Told.
73.
George Stevens founded an independent company, named after the novel, to film the novel.
74.
In 1960, George Stevens collaborated with Ivan Moffat and James Lee Barrett on the script, and then hired Carl Sandburg to revise the script.
75.
However, George Stevens decided to film near Page, Arizona and around the Glen Canyon upwards to Utah.
76.
Concerned that production had fell behind schedule, George Stevens allowed David Lean and Jean Negulesco to shoot interior scenes representing Jerusalem at the Desilu Culver Studios.
77.
Later that same year, George Stevens filed a $2 million lawsuit against NBC and Paramount, charging them of "mutilation and dismemberment" when they had aired A Place in the Sun with television commercials.
78.
George Stevens had made a contractual provision with Liberty Films, which allowed him to control the film's editing.
79.
That same month, a federal judge sided with George Stevens, barring NBC from televising the film.
80.
George Stevens then asked Beatty to assume the role, which Beatty immediately agreed without reading the script.
81.
George Stevens falls in love with Joe Grady, a frustrated musician and compulsive gambler who dreams of escaping Las Vegas for success in New York City.
82.
In 1970, George Stevens was appointed as the president of the jury at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival.
83.
On March 8,1975, George Stevens died of a heart attack on his ranch in Lancaster, California, north of Los Angeles, at the age of 70.
84.
George Stevens is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.
85.
The moving image collection of George Stevens is held at the Academy Film Archive.
86.
George Stevens has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1701 Vine Street.
87.
George Stevens won the Academy Award for Best Director twice, in 1951 for A Place in the Sun and in 1956 for Giant.
88.
George Stevens was nominated in 1943 for The More the Merrier, in 1954 for Shane, and in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank.
89.
George Stevens received both the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
90.
George Stevens received the National Board of Review Award for Best Director and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.