Jean Negulesco

Jean Negulesco

Jean Negulesco in 1986
Born 29 February 1900 (O.S.)
Craiova, Dolj, Romania
Died 18 July 1993 (aged 93)
Marbella, Andalusia, Spain
Cause of death Heart failure
Spouse(s) Dusty Anderson
(m. 1946–1993)

Jean Negulesco (born Ioan Negulescu; 29 February 1900 (O.S.) – 18 July 1993) was a Romanian-American film director and screenwriter.[1]

Biography

Born in Craiova, he attended Carol I High School. In 1915 he moved to Vienna, and then went to Bucharest in 1919, where he worked as a painter before becoming a stage decorator in Paris. In 1927 he went to New York City for an exhibition of his paintings and settled there. He then made his way to California, at first working as a portraitist.[2]

In 1934 he entered the film industry, first as a sketch artist, then as an assistant producer, second unit director. In the late 1930s he became a director and screenwriter. He made his reputation at Warner Brothers by directing short subjects, particularly a series of band shorts featuring unusual camera angles and dramatic use of shadows and silhouettes.

Negulesco's first feature film as director was Singapore Woman (1941). In 1948 he was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for Johnny Belinda. In 1955 he got a nomination the BAFTA Award for Best Film for How to Marry a Millionaire. His 1959 movie, The Best of Everything, was on Entertainment Weekly's Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time list.

From the late 1960s he lived in Marbella, Spain, where he died, at age 93, of heart failure.

During his Hollywood career and in his 1984 autobiography Things I Did and Things I Think I Did, Negulesco claimed to have been born on 29 February 1900; he was apparently motivated to make this statement because birthdays on Leap Year Day are comparatively rare (and even though 1900 was not a Leap Year in the Gregorian calendar, it was under the Julian calendar, which applied in Romania at that time).

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6212 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography

Notes

  1. ↑ David Shipman, "Obituary: Jean Negulesco", Independent (London), 22 July 1993.
  2. ↑ "Jean and Dusty Negulesco papers". Margaret Herrick Library. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 21 May 2015.

References

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