Dates

• Existence: 1905 - 1988

Biography

Henry Koster (1905-1988) was a German-born Hollywood filmmaker active between 1925 and 1966.

Born Hermann Kosterlitz in Germany to a German-Jewish family, Koster was left to provide for his family at a young age after his father left and worked at as a short story writer, which led him to begin a career as a scenarist. In 1932, he directed his first picture but due to rising anti-Semitism in Hitler’s Germany he fled soon after. He went to France and then to Budapest where he married his first wife Kató Király in 1934. There he also met the producer Joe Pasternak, who represented Universal Pictures in Europe and led to Koster’s eventual immigration to the United States and to Hollywood where he found success directing musicals with Deanna Durbin. In 1942 he married actress Peggy Moran. In 1948, he moved on to 20th Century Fox where he made two of the biggest hits of his career: Harvey (1950), a comedy starring James Stewart, and The Robe (1953), a biblical epic that was the first film shot on CinemaScope. In 1966, following 30 years of filmmaking, Koster retired from the Motion Picture Industry. He died in 1988 of liver cancer at 83 years old. He left behind his wife and three children.

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