Born in Middletown, Connecticut on 18/12/1911. He grew up in Harlem, New York, and became a member of the Communist Party of the USA in 1930, walking out in 1939. From 1936, he participated as an actor in theater performances and wrote scenarios for plays. In 1940 he went to Hollywood to work as a director. Initially he worked as assistant to Alfred Hitchcock and Mark Hellinger, and in 1942 he directed his first film. He became known for directing “noir” films, such as Brute Force (1948), Naked City (1948) and Thieves’ Highway (1949). In 1950, during the McCarthy era, he was put on the Hollywood blacklist due to political beliefs and fled to Europe two years later. In France he filmed Rififi (1954), winning a prize for direction at the Cannes Film Festival (1955). In France he also met Greek actress Melina Merkouri, whom he married in 1966. With Melina he directed films such as Christ Recrucified (1957), Phaedra (1961), Top Kapı (1963), A Dream of Passion (1978) and Never on Sunday (1960) -which won the Best Film award at Cannes in 1961 and the Academy Award for Manos Hadjidakis’s music. During the seven-year military rule in Greece (1967/74) he lived in Paris and, together with Melina Merkouri, participated in the struggle against the dictatorship. He returned to Greece in 1974 and directed plays. From 1981 he fought, along with Merkouri, for the return to Greece of the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum. After her death, he founded and directed the “Melina Merkouri” Foundation. He dies in Athens on 31/08/2008. He directed the opera Othello for the Greek National Opera at Herod Atticus Theater in the 1984/5 season. // Last update of the biography: March 2022 - The list of the productions below is complete.