Lewis Milestone: From Kishinev to Hollywood

Please join us for a talk with Harlow Robinson, author of Lewis Milestone: Life and Films (University Press of Kentucky, December 2019).
Creator of such recognized classic films as All Quiet on the Western Front, Of Mice and Men and Pork Chop Hill, Lewis Milestone rose from humble Russian-speaking Jewish origins in Kishinev to become one of the leading directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. During the course of his long career he worked with many great stars, and maintained close contact with Soviet filmmakers. His Russian origins and left-wing sympathies made him a target of the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s, but he survived into the 1960s with Ocean’s 11 and Mutiny on the Bounty. Harlow Robinson’s book Lewis Milestone: Life and Films is the first major study of this fascinating cinema pioneer.
HARLOW ROBINSON is professor of History and Screen and Media Studies Emeritus at Northeastern University. He is the author of Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography; The Last Impresario: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Sol Hurok; Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image; and editor and translator of Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Opera News, Musical America, Cineaste, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. In 2010 he was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Event Contact Information:
Carly Jackson
212 854 6217
crj2116@columbia.edu