Stanley Kramer

Kramer was born in New York City. His parents were Jewish, and having separated when he was very young, he remembered little about his father. His uncle, Earl Kramer, worked in distribution at Universal Pictures. Kramer attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he graduated at age fifteen. He then enrolled in New York University, where he became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and wrote a weekly column for the Medley magazine. He graduated in 1933 at the age of nineteen with a degree in business administration. After developing a "zest for writing" with a newspaper, biographer Donald Spoto wrote, Kramer was offered a paid internship in the writing department of 20th Century Fox and moved to Hollywood. ==Film career==

Move to Hollywood Over the following years, during the period of the Great Depression, Kramer took odd jobs in the film industry: He worked as a set furniture mover and film cutter at MGM, as writer and researcher for Columbia Pictures and Republic Pictures, and associate producer with Loew-Lewin productions. Those years as an apprentice writer and editor helped him acquire an "exceptional aptitude" in editing and develop the ability to understand the overall structure of the films he worked on. They enabled him to later compose and edit "in camera," as he shot scenes. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 during World War II, where he helped make training films with the Signal Corps in New York, along with other Hollywood filmmakers including Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak. After the war, Kramer soon discovered that there were no available jobs in Hollywood in 1947, so he created an independent production company, Screen Plays Inc. He partnered with writer Herbie Baker, publicist George Glass and producer Carl Foreman, an army friend from the film unit. Foreman justified the production company by noting that the big studios had become "dinosaurs," which, being shocked by the onrush of television, "jettisoned virtually everything to survive." But they failed to develop cadres of younger creative talent in their wake. Kramer was given free rein over what films he chose to make, along with a budget of nearly a million dollars each. Kramer agreed to a five-year contract during which time he would produce 20 films. Kramer continued producing movies at Columbia, including Death of a Salesman (1951), The Sniper (1952), The Member of the Wedding (1952), The Juggler (1953), The Wild One (1953) and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953). With a larger budget, his films took on a "glossier" more polished look, yet his next 10 films all lost money, although some were nonetheless highly praised. In 1953, Cohn and Kramer agreed to terminate the five-year, 20-film contract Kramer had signed. However, his last Columbia film, The Caine Mutiny (1954), regained all of the losses Columbia had incurred as a result of his earlier projects. The Caine Mutiny was an adaptation of the book written by Herman Wouk and was directed by Edward Dmytryk. Kramer observed that during the 1940s and 1950s, "cinema was the producer's medium:" Director for Inherit the Wind. After The Caine Mutiny, Kramer left Columbia and resumed his independent productions, this time in the role of the director. Over the next two decades, Kramer reestablished his reputation within the film industry by directing a continual series of often successful films dealing with social and controversial issues, such as racism, nuclear war, greed and the causes and effects of fascism. Critic Charles Champlin later described Kramer as "a guy who fought some hard battles. He took on social issues when it was not popular to do so in Hollywood." It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning two. Five years after the film was released, producer George Stevens Jr. helped organize a showing of this, along with other Kramer films, at the Moscow Film Festival, which Kramer and co-star Sidney Poitier attended. Stevens writes that the showings of his films, especially The Defiant Ones, were a "great success in Moscow." He remembers that "filmmakers applauded his films, often chanting Kraaaamer, Kraaaaamer, Kraaaaamer," at their conclusion. Kramer spoke to the audience after each film, "making a fine impression for his country." Stevens credits The Defiant Ones for having the most impact, however: On the Beach (1959) With On the Beach (1959), Kramer tried to tackle the sensitive subject of nuclear war. The film takes place after World War III has annihilated most of the Northern hemisphere, with radioactive dust on a trajectory towards Australia. Kramer gave the film an "effective and eerie" documentary look at depopulated cities. For Tracy, who was nominated as Best Actor, the film became the first of four films he did for Kramer. "Everybody tells me how good I am," he said, "but only Stanley gives me work." Reviews were extremely positive. Critic Hollis Alpert wrote in his review: Similarly, Arthur Knight credited Kramer for the film's significance: "From first to last, the director is in command of his material. ...he has not only added hugely to his stature as a producer-director, but to the stature of the American film as well." Ship of Fools (1965) Ship of Fools (1965) has been described as a "floating Grand Hotel," an earlier film which also had an all-star cast. Its multi-strand narrative deals with the failing personal relationships among the passengers on board a passenger liner returning to Germany in 1933, during the rise of Nazism. Spoto describes its theme as one of "conscious social and psychological significance." Some writers describe the film as a "microcosm" displaying a "weakness of the world that permitted the rise of Hitler." However, Kramer, bothered by the film's negative reviews and wanting respect as an important film artist like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, undertook a nine-college speaking tour to screen the film and discuss racial integration. The effort proved a dispiriting embarrassment for him with college students largely dismissing his film and preferring to discuss less conventional fare like Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn. At the time of his retirement, he was attempting to bring a script titled Three Solitary Drinkers to the screen, a film about a trio of alcoholics that he hoped would be played by Sidney Poitier, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau. ==Retirement and death==

In the 1980s, Kramer retired to Bellevue, Washington, and wrote a column on movies for The Seattle Times from 1980 to 1996. During this time, he hosted his own weekly movie show on then-independent television station KCPQ. In 1986, he signed an agreement with Columbia Pictures to produce or direct two films, Chernobyl and Beirut, but the deal fell through when David Puttnam left Columbia. Three years later, he agreed to make ERN starring Robert Guillaume but the project stalled. In 1991, he signed a deal with Trimark to direct and produce Bubble Man, a project he had been working on since 1972, but it was not made. In 1997, Kramer published his autobiography A Mad Mad Mad Mad World: A Life in Hollywood. He died on February 19, 2001, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, aged 87, after contracting pneumonia. He was married three times and divorced twice. He was survived by his third wife, actress Karen Sharpe, and four children: Casey (1955–2023) and Larry (with Anne Pearce), and Katharine and Jennifer (with Karen Sharpe). ==Legacy==

Kramer has been called "a genuine original" as a filmmaker. He made movies that he believed in, and "straddled the fence between art and commerce for more than 30 years." Most of his films were noted for engaging the audience with political and social issues of the time. When asked why he gravitated to those kinds of themes, he stated, "emotionally I am drawn to these subjects," Among his themes, Kramer was one of the few filmmakers to delve into subjects relating to civil rights, and according to his wife, Karen Kramer, "put his reputation and finances on the line to present subject matter that meant something." He gave up his salary to make sure that ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'' was completed. However, he has not had universal acclaim. Film critic David Thomson has written that Kramer's "films are middlebrow and overemphatic; at worst, they are among the most tedious and dispiriting productions the American cinema has to offer. Commercialism, of the most crass and confusing kind...devitalised all [of] his projects." Critics have labeled Kramer's films as "message movies." Some, like Pauline Kael, were often critical of his subject matter for being "melodramas," and "irritatingly self-righteous," but she credits his films for their "redeeming social importance...[with] situations and settings nevertheless excitingly modern, relevant." out of the original 1,550 stars created and installed as a unit in 1960. One of his daughters, Kat Kramer, is co-producer of socially relevant documentaries, as part of her series Films That Change the World. The Stanley Kramer Award The Producers Guild of America established the Stanley Kramer Award in 2002 to honor a production or individuals whose contribution illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues. ==Filmography==

As producer and director • Not as a Stranger (1955) • The Pride and the Passion (1957) • The Defiant Ones (1958) • On the Beach (1959) • Inherit the Wind (1960) • Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) • ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963) • Ship of Fools (1965) • ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'' (1967) • The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1968) • R.P.M. (1970) • Bless the Beasts and Children (1971) • Oklahoma Crude (1973) • Judgment: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1974) • Judgment: The Court-Martial of the Tiger of Malaya – General Yamashita (1974) • Judgment: The Court-Martial of Lieutenant William Calley (1975) • The Domino Principle (1977) • The Runner Stumbles (1979) As producer only • The Moon and Sixpence (associate producer, 1942) • So This Is New York (1948) • Champion (1949) • Home of the Brave (1949) • The Men (1950) • Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) • Death of a Salesman (1951) • High Noon (1952) (uncredited) • The Sniper (1952) • The Happy Time (1952) • The Member of the Wedding (1952) • Eight Iron Men (1952) • The Wild One (1953) • The Juggler (1953) • The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) • The Caine Mutiny (1954) • Pressure Point (1962) • A Child Is Waiting (1963) ==Academy Award nominations==

==Accolades for theatrical features directed by Kramer==

Oscar-related performances These actors have received numerous Oscar nominations for their respective performances in Kramer's motion pictures. ==References==