Stanley Kramer

Stanley Kramer (born September 29, 1913, New York, New York, U.S.—died February 19, 2001, Woodland Hills, California) was an American film producer and director who created unconventional, socially conscious works on a variety of issues not usually addressed in mainstream Hollywood fare.

Early life and production work

Kramer graduated from high school at age 15 and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from New York University in 1933. Soon thereafter, he moved to Hollywood and entered the film industry, working as researcher, editor, and writer. During World War II, he served with the Army Signal Corps, where he made training and orientation films. Following the war, Kramer helped establish Screen Plays Inc., an independent production company. In 1948 its first motion picture, So This Is New York (directed by Richard Fleischer), was released. Kramer’s first success, Champion (directed by Mark Robson), followed in 1949. In dealing with the ruthlessness of an ambitious prizefighter and with corruption in boxing, the film noir established the moral tone that Kramer’s best-known future films would reflect. It also sparked the career of Kirk Douglas.

However, profits at Screen Plays were not as hoped, and in 1949 Kramer established his own production company, which worked on joint ventures with the major studios, most notably Columbia. The following year he launched Marlon Brando’s film career with The Men (directed by Fred Zinnemann), a drama that explores the challenges faced by disabled war veterans. Among Kramer’s subsequent credits as producer were Death of a Salesman (1951), a critically acclaimed adaptation of the Arthur Miller play; the western classic High Noon (1952), which earned seven Academy Award nominations, including a nod for best picture; and the surreal fantasy 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), a cult hit cowritten by Dr. Seuss. Also of note were The Wild One (1953), with Brando in one of his iconic roles as a brooding biker, and The Caine Mutiny (1954), starring Humphrey Bogart in arguably his last great performance; both dramas were critical and commercial successes.

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Directing

Although he continued to produce, in 1955 Kramer made his directorial debut with Not as a Stranger, a middling medical soap opera that starred Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Olivia de Havilland. The historical drama The Pride and the Passion (1957), however, was better received, in part because of a cast that featured Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Sophia Loren. Kramer’s success continued with The Defiant Ones (1958), the first of his notable “message” pictures. The drama starred Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis—both in Oscar-nominated performances—as prison escapees who must overcome their racial prejudices in order to elude capture. Kramer also received an Academy Award nod for his direction. He then examined nuclear annihilation in On the Beach (1959), an adaptation of Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic novel. The powerful film starred Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Gregory Peck.

Kramer looked to Broadway for his next project, adapting Inherit the Wind, the Jerome Lawrence–Robert E. Lee play about the Scopes Trial of 1925. The 1960 film featured acclaimed performances by Spencer Tracy (as Clarence Darrow) and Fredric March (as William Jennings Bryan). Kramer also earned praise for his direction of the tense drama. He reteamed with Tracy on Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), about the post-World War II trials of former Nazi leaders. The director once again showed that, within the confines of a courtroom, he was adept at maximizing dramatic tension amid philosophical debates. The classic was a critical and commercial success, and Kramer earned his second Academy Award nomination for best direction. Although he did not win, Kramer received the 1961 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the “consistently high quality” of his work.

Taking a break from social issues, Kramer ventured into screwball comedy with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). It featured an all-star cast of comedians—including Jimmy Durante, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, and Jack Benny—as well as Tracy as a police detective caught up in the hunt for buried money. Kramer returned to drama with Ship of Fools (1965), which was based on the Katherine Anne Porter novel. Though viewed by some as a soap opera, the Oscar-nominated film addressed important issues, notably anti-Semitism and the rise of Nazism, and it boasted a cast that included Vivien Leigh (in her last role), Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, and Lee Marvin.

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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was one of 1967’s most popular films, and it probably remains the movie with which Kramer is most closely identified. A lesson in racial tolerance and etiquette, it starred Katharine Hepburn (who won an Oscar) and Tracy (in his last film) as parents of a young woman (Katharine Houghton) engaged to an African American doctor (Poitier). The comedy-drama received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Kramer’s third nod for directing. He closed out the decade with The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), a light comedy about Italian villagers who try to hide a million bottles of wine from occupying Germans during World War II.

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Final films

Kramer’s career began to decline in the 1970s. R.P.M. (1970), which applied that abbreviation (for “revolutions per minute”) to student revolts, was widely derided. Moviegoers also avoided Bless the Beasts and Children (1972), a fable about six social misfits who try to free a herd of buffalo, although it later attained the status of cult classic, thanks in large measure to the presence of child actors Bill Mumy and Miles Chapin. After Oklahoma Crude (1973), with George C. Scott and Faye Dunaway, Kramer turned to the small screen, codirecting several TV movies about well-known trials; these included Judgment: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1974), about the American civilians charged with espionage, and Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley (1975), which centers on the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. In 1977 he returned to feature films with the poorly received thriller The Domino Principle. After the little-seen The Runner Stumbles (1979), in which Dick Van Dyke played a priest accused of murdering a nun, Kramer retired from directing.

Kramer subsequently moved to Seattle and taught filmmaking at the University of Washington. Late in life he remarked, “If I am to be remembered for anything I have done in this profession, I would like it to be for the four films in which I directed Spencer Tracy.” However, many of his other productions were also noteworthy—his nearly three dozen films (as a producer, a director, or both) were nominated for some 80 Academy Awards and won 16. In 2002 the Producers Guild of America created the Stanley Kramer Award, which was given annually to the film or filmmaker whose achievement or contribution best “illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.”