Stanley Kramer

Born Sept. 29, 1913, in New York City. American motion-picture director and producer.

While still a student at New York University, Kramer began working in motion pictures as a technician and editor (1933, Hollywood). In 1947 he started his own “independent” company and produced films that critically depicted the mores of American society (Champion, 1949, and others). This provoked a vicious campaign against Kramer and his colleagues. He made his directorial debut in 1955. Kramer’s artistic individuality revealed itself in the antiracist film The Defiant Ones (1958; Soviet distribution, Shackled by the Same Chain).

Kramer is a representative of the progressive trend in the American cinema. His films include On the Beach (1959, based on N. Shute’s novel), about thermonuclear war; Inherit the Wind (1960, based on the play by J. Lawrence and R. E. Lee), about the 1925 “monkey trial” in the USA; Judgment at Nuremberg (1962) and Ship of Fools (1965), both about the forms of individual and social consciousness that laid the way for fascism; The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), about the Resistance Movement in Italy; and Bless the Beasts and Children (1971), a film filled with protest against brutality and violence.

Kramer’s best films are characterized by social awareness and the illumination of significant characters in sharp conflicts. He also directed the films It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Oklahoma Crude (1973).