David Swift (Director)

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David Swift (born July 27, 1919 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , United States , † December 31, 2001 in Santa Monica , California ) was an American film director and screenwriter.

Life

Swift, the son of a sausage skin manufacturer, began his film career in the 1930s as a delivery boy at the Disney cartoon studios. As early as 1938 he was promoted to cartoon assistant at Disney. During World War II, Swift served in the Eighth Air Force in England. After his release into civilian life, he worked as a gag writer for radio broadcasts (including for Bob Hope ). In 1949 Swift began writing screenplays for television series such as 'Philco Playhouse', 'Studio One', 'Kraft Theater' and 'Omnibus', and in the 1950s he also directed numerous episodes for television series such as 'Wagon Train' and 'Rifleman'. Tried and tested as a compatible assembly line worker of the studio system, Disney made it possible for the 40-year-old to direct a feature film for the first time in 1959. The two youth- friendly Hayley Mills fabrics " All love Pollyanna " and " The marriage of their parents announce ", the latter an adaptation of Erich Kästner's famous children's novel ' Das doppelte Lottchen ' , was classic cinema entertainment for a family audience at the beginning of the 1960s.

After these early box office hits, Swift directed similar mass-compatible entertainment films with no artistic ambitions; Most successful were comedies such as “ A marriage bed for rehearsal ” and “ Leih mich dein Mann ” with Jack Lemmon and Hollywood excursionist Romy Schneider, but also “ Forty million are looking for a man ” with Glenn Ford and Hope Lange , which here was “an amusing performance as an extremely capricious and spoiled multi-millionaire heiress "and proved to be" an excellent comedian ". When New Hollywood cinema began to take hold in the late 1960s, Swift's staging style seemed out of date, and the director, apart from a few minor television collaborators, largely retired. David Swift returned to the cinema for two screenplay collaborations in the late 1970s. In 1985 he wrote the screenplay for the television film " The Hugga Bunch ", which, like his previous works, was also a family production. Swift's "script collaboration" mention in the 1997 "Doppelten Lottchen" re-remake A twin rarely comes alone with the debutante Lindsay Lohan in the double role is explained by the re-use of his old movie manuscript from 1960.

In the 1950s, Swift was married to actress Maggie McNamara ; in his second marriage in 1957 he married a photo model. This marriage lasted until his death on New Year's Eve 2001 at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica.

Movies (complete)

as a director and (co-) writer, unless otherwise stated

literature

  • The world encyclopedia of film, assoc. editors: Tim Cawkwell & John M. Smith. London 1972, p. 266
  • Ephraim Katz : The Film Encyclopedia, 4th Edition. Revised by Fred Klein & Ronald Dean Nolen, p. 1330, New York 2001

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of the film . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 4: H - L. Botho Höfer - Richard Lester. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 583.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Swift, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 2001
Place of death Santa Monica , California