Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films" and a liberal movie icon.
34 Facts About Stanley Kramer
2.
In 2002, the Stanley Kramer Award was created, to be awarded to recipients whose work "dramatically illustrates provocative social issues".
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Stanley Kramer's parents were Jewish, and having separated when he was very young, he remembered little about his father.
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Stanley Kramer's mother worked at a New York office of Paramount Pictures, during which time his grandparents took care of him at home.
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Stanley Kramer attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he graduated at age fifteen.
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Stanley Kramer then enrolled in New York University, where he became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and wrote a weekly column for the Medley newspaper.
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Stanley Kramer graduated in 1933 at the age of nineteen with a degree in business administration.
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Stanley Kramer was drafted into the Army in 1943, during World War II, where he helped make training films with the Signal Corps in New York, along with other Hollywood filmmakers including Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak.
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Stanley Kramer left the army with the rank of first lieutenant.
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Stanley Kramer saw this as an opportunity to produce films dealing with subjects the studios previously avoided, especially those about controversial topics.
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However, Stanley Kramer soon learned that financing such independent films was a major obstacle, as he was forced to approach banks or else take on private investors.
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Stanley Kramer explained how he tried to differentiate his new company from the others, explaining he was less interested in the money than having the ability to make a statement through his films:.
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Stanley Kramer next produced Home of the Brave, again directed by Mark Robson, which became an even bigger success than Champion.
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Stanley Kramer's renamed Stanley Kramer Company produced The Men, which featured Marlon Brando's screen debut, in a drama about paraplegic war veterans.
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The film was another success for Stanley Kramer, who took on a unique subject dealing with a world few knew about.
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Stanley Kramer was very inventive in finding quite unlikely sources of finance.
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Stanley Kramer was given free rein over what films he chose to make, along with a budget of nearly a million dollars each.
18.
Stanley Kramer agreed to a five-year contract during which time he would produce 20 films.
19.
In 1953, Cohn and Stanley Kramer agreed to terminate the five-year, 20-film contract Stanley Kramer had signed.
20.
Stanley Kramer observed that during the 1940s and 1950s, "cinema was the producer's medium:".
21.
Stanley Kramer took on social issues when it was not popular to do so in Hollywood.
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Stanley Kramer's visit to Moscow marked the high point in the cultural exchange between the two countries during those long years of estrangement.
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Stanley Kramer gave the film an "effective and eerie" documentary look at depopulated cities.
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Inherit the Wind became Stanley Kramer's next challenging film, this one taking on the highly charged subjects of creationism and evolution, and how they are taught in school.
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Stanley Kramer has used film importantly and continues to emerge as the only truly responsible moviemaker in Hollywood.
26.
Oklahoma Crude was entered into the 8th Moscow International Film Festival where Stanley Kramer won the Golden Prize for Direction.
27.
In 1997, Stanley Kramer published his autobiography A Mad Mad Mad Mad World: A Life in Hollywood.
28.
Stanley Kramer died on February 19,2001, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, aged 87, after contracting pneumonia.
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Stanley Kramer was survived by his third wife, actress Karen Sharpe, and four children: Casey and Larry, and Katharine and Jennifer.
30.
Stanley Kramer has been called "a genuine original" as a filmmaker.
31.
In extreme cases, Stanley Kramer was accused of being "anti-American" due to the themes of his films, many concerning social problems or pathologies.
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Stanley Kramer produced and directed 23 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances, with Jose Ferrer, Gary Cooper, Maximilian Schell and Katharine Hepburn winning for their performances.
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Stanley Kramer's was among the first stars to be completed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 28,1960, out of the original 1,550 stars created and installed as a unit in 1960.
34.
One of his daughters, Kat Stanley Kramer, is co-producer of socially relevant documentaries, as part of her series Films That Change The World.