Biography for
Stanley Kramer More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

29 September 1913, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Date of Death

19 February 2001, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (pneumonia)

Birth Name

Stanley Earl Kramer

Spouse

Karen Sharpe	(1 September 1966 - 19 February 2001) (his death) 2 children
Anne P. Kramer	(1950 - 1963) (divorced) 2 children
Marilyn Erskine	(1945 - 1945) (annulled, after three months)

Trivia

Has a street in Berwick, Australia where part of On the Beach (1959) was filmed, named in his honour - Kramer Drive.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 538-544. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Directed 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Cara Williams, Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Oskar Werner, Michael Dunn, Simone Signoret, Katharine Hepburn, Cecil Kellaway and Beah Richards. Hepburn and Schell won Oscars for their performances in one of Kramer's movies.

After graduating from New York University in 1933, majoring in writing, Kramer accepted an internship in Hollywood as a production assistant. He worked as a set p.a. at several studios from 1933 onward and eventually worked at Universal in the early 1940s as part of the swing gang in the art department.

Was to name his child after Spencer Tracy, but when the baby turned out to be a girl, he named her after Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn was also her godmother.

Personal Quotes

"I'm always pursuing the next dream, hunting for the next truth."

[On Humphrey Bogart] "He was playing Bogart all the time, but he was really just a big sloppy bowl of mush."

[on Lee Marvin] I'm not his psychiatrist. I don't know whether he has one or needs one. I'm only saying that to understand him, one needs help.

[on Spencer Tracy] If I am to be remembered for anything I have done in this profession, I would like it to be for the four films in which I directed Spencer Tracy.

[on Katharine Hepburn] The most completely thorough, driving, constantly seeking actress with whom I'm been associated. She's never really satisfied; she never stops thinking about what she's doing and about what everybody else is doing. She is a marvelous woman who has a capacity for many emotional areas and she has great talent. She can trigger an emotional truth at precisely the right time. I don't know what she draws on; it's a deep, deep well.

[on Ava Gardner] She can read a script and immediately give you a completely lucid explanation of its merits and faults.

[on Sidney Poiter] Sidney has a greatness and professionalism and a deep, deep sensitivity. He's an absolutely beautiful man inside and out.

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