biography
| name: |
Wilder, Billy
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| |
originally Samuel Wilder
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1906–2002)
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| biography:
| Film-maker, born in Sucha, Poland (formerly Austria). A law student at Vienna University, he worked as a journalist and crime reporter. He wrote for several German films from 1929, but as a Jew was forced to leave in 1933, and moved to Hollywood, working initially as a screenwriter. He started as a director in 1942 with The Major and the Minor, and continued for some 40 years with a wide variety of productions, which he often co-produced and scripted, including Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945, Oscar), Stalag 17 (1953), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and The Apartment (1960, Oscar). Many of his later productions were in Europe, such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) in England, and Fedora (1978) in Germany. He received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1986. |
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