67 Facts About Jules Dassin

Julius Dassin was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor.

Jules Dassin was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Directors' Guild.

Jules Dassin received a Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Du rififi chez les hommes.

Jules Dassin's parents were both Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Russian empire.

In 1915, when Julius was three years old, the Jules Dassin family moved to Harlem, New York.

Jules Dassin learned to play the piano at a young age.

Jules Dassin started acting professionally in 1926, at the age of fourteen, with the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York City.

Jules Dassin spent time in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Switzerland and Greece, working odd jobs to sustain himself.

Jules Dassin later joined up with the Artef Players, a Yiddish Proletarian Theater company in 1937, serving as an actor, set designer, set builder, stage director and even ticket salesman.

Since the pay was poor with Artef Players, Jules Dassin formed a theatre troupe to tour the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills as summer stock.

Jules Dassin acted in a movie scripted and directed by Jack Skurnick, which was shown to a small group at a space that Skurnick rented in New York but was never exhibited beyond that.

Jules Dassin then wrote sketches for radio, at times directing his own radio plays, and became a stage director and producer.

In early 1940, Jules Dassin staged and directed the play Medicine Show for producer Martin Gabel, starring Isabel Bonner, Philip Bourneuf and Norman Lloyd.

In June 1940, Jules Dassin was signed to a term contract with Hollywood film studio RKO Radio Pictures as a director.

Jules Dassin was immediately assigned as an assistant director to learn the motion picture business, working under Garson Kanin on They Knew What They Wanted and Alfred Hitchcock on Mr and Mrs Smith, both starring Carole Lombard and both under the supervision of producer Harry E Edington.

Jules Dassin returned to radio work in Hollywood, presenting his previously adapted Gogol story The Overcoat for a repeat performance on The Kate Smith Hour, this time starring Henry Hull, which was broadcast live on January 3,1941.

Jules Dassin was one of the several actors who formed the Actors' Laboratory Theatre.

Jules Dassin told the studio that he would direct any film for free; the studio instead offered to pay him to direct a short film.

Jules Dassin made his directorial debut with a short film of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.

Jules Dassin followed with the romantic comedy The Affairs of Martha, starring Marsha Hunt and Richard Carlson, and under the supervision of producer Irving Starr.

When released in mid-1942, the film was a moderate success and again Jules Dassin was highlighted in the reviews.

Jules Dassin was notified of this new assignment on May 19,1942, and the press reported that he had been promoted to become an "A movie" director.

Jules Dassin was employed by Frank Tuttle as one of the lecturers for Hollywood School for Writers' new film directing class, along with Fred Zinnemann, Irving Pichel and Laszlo Benedek.

In March 1943, Jules Dassin joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In September 1943, after several months without a project, Jules Dassin took over the directorial duties on a comedy film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost.

Jules Dassin's recovery took several months, postponing the films' production indefinitely.

When Jules Dassin finally returned to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in mid-1945, Peters had undergone another series of surgeries, which put her in a wheelchair.

When Secrets in the Dark was first postponed in early April 1944, Jules Dassin started acting in night plays at the Actors' Laboratory Theatre as part of the War Charities benefits.

In May 1944, Jules Dassin teamed up with Arthur Lubin to set up the Soldier Shows Stock Company, a project to put on plays featuring wounded war veterans at Torney General Hospital in Palm Springs, California.

In June 1944, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced that Jules Dassin had been assigned to direct the company's 20th Anniversary film, Some of the Best.

Jules Dassin took over the directorial duties from Fred Zinnemann, and had anticipated casting Susan Peters in the lead.

Jules Dassin was finally released from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer once his exclusive five-year contract expired in November 1946.

The producer had an existing financing and distribution deal with Universal-International Pictures, where Jules Dassin was set to direct one of Hollywood's biggest new stars, Burt Lancaster, in a violent prison film noir, Brute Force.

Jules Dassin employed a total of thirteen actors with whom he had worked at the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, including Hume Cronyn, Howard Duff, Roman Bohnen, Whit Bissell, Art Smith, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, Charles McGraw, Will Lee, Ray Teal, Crane Whitley, Kenneth Patterson and James O'Rear.

Less than a year after its release, Jules Dassin revealed that he did not like the film.

In early May 1947, Jules Dassin was announced as the director of Hellinger's next production, The Naked City Jules Dassin planned to push the realism and documentary-style filming technique of the police story flic further by shooting it entirely on location in New York City.

Jules Dassin held contracts with actors Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Don Taylor and Howard Duff, and with cinematographer William Daniels.

In late December 1947, before Bogart, Selznick and Marie had decided upon continuing the Mark Hellinger Productions firm, Jules Dassin took the opportunity of his non-exclusive contract to partner with stage actor and producer Luther Adler in an independent film venture.

In February 1948, Jules Dassin was approached by theatre producer Mike Todd, who was planning to venture into the film producing business.

Jules Dassin, who had promised to direct, was the only director Goddard wanted.

Goddard was set to play the lead in the film and reportedly insisted that Jules Dassin be hired to direct.

Contrary to an often-quoted 1958 article in Time magazine, Jules Dassin was not blacklisted because of a sole denunciation from a witness at a congressional hearing.

Jules Dassin's name had been mentioned a number of times, at various hearings of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, and by different witnesses, as early as 1947.

On October 22,1947, while Jules Dassin was still working on The Naked City, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer chief supervisor and executive producer James Kevin McGuinness testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Jules Dassin described an event at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941, shortly after Dassin had joined the studio, when an attempt was made to halt the production of Tennessee Johnson, a biographical picture about the life of former United States President Andrew Johnson.

Jules Dassin was then presented with a petition, signed by Dassin, Ring Lardner Jr.

In 1948 and 1949, Jules Dassin's name was connected with at least three Communist-front organizations.

Jules Dassin was unofficially blacklisted by Hollywood during the production and was not allowed back on the studio property to edit the film nor oversee the musical scoring.

Jules Dassin was however replaced by Richard Sale after pressure from Hollywood politics.

Jules Dassin was named as one of the seven directors, along with Frank Tuttle, Herbert Biberman, John Berry, Bernard Vorhaus and Dmytryk himself, who were present at a Communist meeting at Berry's house, for the purpose of electing themselves on the board of directors of the Screen Directors' Guild.

Jules Dassin testified that, during the 1930s and 1940s, a group of seven Communists existed within the Screen Directors' Guild.

Jules Dassin was again named as one of the seven Communist directors, along with Herbert Bieberman, Edward Dmytryk, Bernard Vorhaus, John Berry, Michael Gordon and Tuttle himself.

Jules Dassin's name was further mentioned during the Un-American Activities Committee hearings involving actor Jose Ferrer on May 25,1951, and film director Michael Gordon on September 17,1951.

Jules Dassin was from that point on, officially listed as an identified past or present member of the Communist Party.

In 1952, after Jules Dassin had been out of work for two years, actress Bette Davis hired him to direct her in the Broadway revue Two's Company.

In March 1953, Jules Dassin was hired by French producer Jacques Bar to direct the comedy-crime film The Most Wanted Man, starring Fernandel and Zsa Zsa Gabor in a spoof of American gangster films.

Jules Dassin maintains that two days before the film was to begin shooting, Bar relented to pressure from a noted Hollywood politician not to work with him, receiving threats that the film, and any future Bar productions, would not be granted American distribution.

Jules Dassin later stated that he had further difficulty finding work in Europe as American film distribution companies forbade the exhibition of any film, regardless of its origin, associated with artists blacklisted in Hollywood.

Jules Dassin later admitted that he worked as an uncredited writer on a number of scripts that were sent back to Hollywood through Zanuck.

Jules Dassin did not work as a film director again until Rififi in 1955, his most influential film and an early work in the "heist film" genre.

Jules Dassin won the Best Director award for the film at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

Jules Dassin's later career in Europe and the affiliation with Greece through his second wife, combined with the Frenchified pronunciation of his surname in Europe led to a common misconception that he was a native European director.

Jules Dassin next made He Who Must Die based on Kazantzakis' Christ Recrucified and in which Mercouri appeared.

Jules Dassin went on to star in his Never on Sunday for which she won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jules Dassin divorced his first wife, Beatrice Launer, in 1962 and married Mercouri in 1966.

Jules Dassin was considered a major Philhellene to the point of Greek officials describing him as a "first generation Greek".

Jules Dassin died from complications of influenza at the age of 96; he was survived by his two daughters and his grandchildren.