Lewis Milestone

Abstract

This book tells the remarkable personal and professional story of Lewis Milestone (1895-1980), one of the most prolific, creative and respected film directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Among his many films are the classics All Quiet on the Western Front, Of Mice and Men, A Walk in the Sun, Pork Chop Hill, the original Ocean’s Eleven and Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando. Born in Ukraine, he came to America as a teenager and learned about film in the U.S. Army in World War I. By the early 1920s he was editing silent films in Hollywood, and soon graduated to shooting his own features. His films were nominated for 28 different Academy Awards during a career that lasted 40 years. Among the many stars whom he directed were Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford and Kirk Douglas. Providing biographical information, production history and critical analysis, this first major scholarly study of Milestone places his films in a political, cultural and cinematic context. Also discussed in depth, using newly available archival material, is Milestone’s experience during the Hollywood Blacklist period, when he was one of the first prominent Hollywood figures to fall under suspicion for his alleged Communist sympathies. Drawing on his personal papers at the AMPAS library, my book gives Milestone the honored place herichly deserves in the American film canon.