Jean Negulesco

Early life

Born in Craiova, Negulesco was the son of a hotel keeper and attended Carol I High School. When he was 15, he was working in a military hospital during World War I. George Enescu, the Romanian composer, came to play the violin to the war wounded; Negulesco drew a portrait of him, and Enesco bought it. Negulesco decided to be a painter and studied art in Bucharest.^[4] Negulesco went to Paris in 1920, and enrolled in the Académie Julian. He sold one of his paintings to Rex Ingram.^[5]

America

In 1927, he visited New York City for an exhibition of his paintings and settled there.^[4] He then made his way to California, at first working as a portraitist.^[6] He became interested in movies and made an experimental feature film, financed as well as written and directed by himself, called Three and a Day. Through his contact with the film's star, Mischa Auer, he managed to get a job at Paramount.^[7]

Paramount

He did the opening montage for the film musical Tonight We Sing and worked on The Story of Temple Drake and A Farewell to Arms (1932).^[7]

Freelance

Jean Negulesco received screen credit as director for the first time in 1936, when he co-directed (with William Nigh) a Jack Holt action picture, Crash Donovan. He then began freelancing among various studios as second-unit director or as the author or co-author of stories and screenplays (Fight for Your Lady,^[8] Swiss Miss,^[9] Rio).^[10]

Warner Bros.

Negulesco went to Warner Bros. in 1940. He made his reputation there by directing short subjects, particularly a series of band shorts featuring unusual camera angles, striking compositions, and dramatic use of shadows and silhouettes. The studio recognized Negulesco's distinctive touch and referred to his shorts as "tone poems."^[11] His first feature film for Warner, without screen credit, was City for Conquest (1940); Negulesco finished the project when director Anatole Litvak was sidelined by an eye infection.^[12] Negulesco's first credited directorial assignment was Singapore Woman (1941). He remained with the studio through the 1940s. In 1948, he was nominated for an Academy Award for directing Johnny Belinda.^[13]

20th Century-Fox

In 1948, Negulesco went to work for 20th Century-Fox. He was the first director to make two films in Fox's widescreen CinemaScope process: How to Marry a Millionaire and Three Coins in the Fountain;^[14] the former receiving a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Film.^[15]

His 1959 movie The Best of Everything was on Entertainment Weekly's Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time.

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 apparently was 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.

Shorts

Feature films