Biography for
Fritz Lang (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

5 December 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]

Date of Death

2 August 1976, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA

Birth Name

Friedrich Christian Anton Lang

Height

5' 11" (1.80 m)

Mini Biography

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa. He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14. At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing. In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone). They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris. After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films. In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work. At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.

In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna. After his divorce from von Harbou, he had relationships with many other women, but from about 1931 to his death in 1976, he was close to Lily Latte, who helped him in many ways.

IMDb Mini Biography By: A. Nonymous

Mini Biography

He studied at the College of Technical Sciences of Vienna's Academy of Graphic Arts but unhappy with the career path chosen for him by his parents, he ran away to study art in Munich and Paris. He then spent many years travelling the world including Asia. In 1913, he returned to Paris to paint. When World War I began, he was drafted into the Austrian army. After the war, he became a story editor, then screenwriter and actor.

IMDb Mini Biography By: L.H. Wong

Spouse

Lily Latte	(1971 - 2 August 1976) (his death)
Thea von Harbou	(26 August 1922 - 26 April 1933) (divorced)
Lisa Rosenthal	(1919 - 1921) (her death)

Trade Mark

All his films feature a shot of his hand.

Usually wore a monocle, and probably only for dramatic effect.

Trivia

Dorothy Parker once remarked, in reference to Lang's wife's "campaigning" for his career, "There's a man who got where he is by the sweat of his Frau."

According to Lang himself, on 25 March 1933, two days after Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) had been banned, he was summoned to the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda to meet with Josef Goebbels himself. Goebbels explained the reason for the ban (the Nazi party slogans are fed into the mouth of the villain at the film's conclusion) and apologized to Lang. He then shocked Lang by offering him the position of production supervisor at the UFA studios, where his first film would be a biography of Wilhelm Tell. Lang claims he suspected a trap and attempted to throw off Goebbels by telling him, "My mother had Jewish parents," to which Goebbels responded, "We'll decide who's Jewish!" Lang then expressed interest in the position and said he needed some time to think it over. He describes how he looked at a clock and how during the entire meeting all he could think about was leaving as soon as possible so he could get to the bank and flee with all of his money. Lang says he didn't get there in time so he sold his wife's jewelry, boarded a train to Paris that same evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind, along with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who divorced him later that year and went on to write and direct films for the Nazi propaganda machine. This story is possibly exaggerated by Lang for dramatic effect because there is evidence he left weeks after that.

Interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, in the Enduring Faith section, just to the right of plot #3818, two in from the curb.

Before his death in 1976, he planned to make a film about the hippie culture.

As a soldier in the Austrian army during World War I, Lang fought in Russia and Romania, where he was wounded three times.

Both in Germany and the United States, he was one of the most personally disliked directors around, a fact that hurt him at times in Hollywood because some actresses and actors would refuse to work with him.

Was voted the 30th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 609-624. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

His first wife, Lisa Rosenthal, committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest. It was rumoured that she did this after finding her husband in a compromising situation with Thea von Harbou.

President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1964.

An animated version of Lang appeared in the Japanese animated movie "Full Metal Alchemist: Conquerors of Shamballa" (_Gekijyouban hagane no renkinjutsushi - Shanbara wo iku mono (2005)_). Originally mistaken by Edward Elric as being one of the Homonculi from his own world, this Fritz Lang aided Edward in his quest to return home. He was voiced by Hidekatsu Shibata.

Second son of Anton Lang, an architect, and Pauline Schlesinger.

Collected primitive art.

Was nearly blind at the time of his death.

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

His films, particularly his earlier work, was hugely influential and he was cited as influencing the work of directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel and Orson Welles.

His second wife, Thea von Harbou, divorced after finding some evidence of her husband's intimate relationship with Lily Latte, who was his contact in Paris during his visits, and then his stay in France. Lilly was also married, and also divorced shortly after, having lived with Lang, and serving as his personal assistant, from 1931 to 1971, when they were married.

Personal Quotes

About CinemaScope: "It's only good for funerals and snakes."

Each picture has some sort of rhythm which only the director can give it. He has to be like the captain of a ship.

There was a time when all I looked for was a good story, but nowadays everything has to look like the size of Mount Rushmore, and the actors in close- up look as though they belong there.

I do not like producers.

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