Walter Feuchtwanger (1894-1968) studied at Dartmouth College and then went into theatrical production in New York. It was during his military service during the First World War that he had his introduction to filmmaking, when he was assigned to work on producing propaganda films.
After the war, Wanger met Jesse Lasky, who hired him to work at Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount) in New York. He eventually became General Manager of Production, and produced the Marx Brothers’ first pictures, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930).
Wanger left Paramount in 1931 and, after an abortive attempt at independent production, joined Columbia, where he was responsible for The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932). He then had a short spell at MGM, producing Queen Christina (1933) and one musical, Going Hollywood. It was after this that he finally achieved independence, releasing productions through Paramount, and then United Artists.
Pictures produced by Wanger over the next quarter of a century included John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and The Long Voyage Home (1940), Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947), and Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). His career ended when he joined Twentieth Century-Fox for the debacle of Cleopatra (1963).
Leave a Reply