Paul Josef Levi was born to a Jewish family in
Stuttgart. He became an avant-garde painter at the age of 15, he studied at Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts, and subsequently worked as a theatrical set designer, working for a number of theatres in Berlin (but not with
Max Reinhardt). In 1913, he started working in the German film industry designing film sets and/or costumes for directors such as
Joe May,
Ernst Lubitsch,
Richard Oswald, and
E. A. Dupont. During World War I, Leni started directing as well with films such as
Der Feldarzt (
Das Tagebuch des Dr. Hart, 1917),
Patience (1920),
Die Verschwörung zu Genua (1920/21) and
Backstairs (1921). In 1923 he participated in the creation of the theater cabaret-cafe Gondola in Berlin.
Waxworks (1924) was planned as a four-part omnibus feature, but the last part was not shot when money ran out. He also made a series of unusual short
animated films
Rebus-Film Nr. 1–8, which were filmed
crossword puzzles. Leni designed short prologues for festive film premieres in Berlin cinemas, such as Lubitsch's
Forbidden Paradise (1924),
Herbert Brenon's
Peter Pan (1924), and E. A. Dupont's
Variety (1925). In 1927, he accepted
Carl Laemmle's invitation to become a director at
Universal Studios and moved to Hollywood. There Leni made a distinguished directorial debut with
The Cat and the Canary (1927), an adaptation of
John Willard's stage play. The film had a great influence over Universal's later classic "
haunted house" horror series, and was subsequently remade several times, notably in 1939 with
Bob Hope. The following year he directed the big budget
The Man Who Laughs (based on the novel by
Victor Hugo), one of the most visually stylized of late period silent films. His final film was
The Last Warning, envisioned as a companion film for
The Cat and the Canary due to its predecessor's popularity. Leni died in
Los Angeles on 2 September 1929, of
sepsis brought on by an untreated tooth infection, only eight months after its release. He was 44. ==Filmography==