Val Lewton Bio (Short Version)

Vladimir Leventon was born on May 7, 1904 in Yalta, Russia, nephew of the actress Alla Nazimova (Adelaide Leventon). In 1909, he immigrated to the USA with his mother and sister (by then the family had adopted their mother's maiden name, which on the move to the USA was anglicized to "Lewton") where they stayed at the Nazimova estate in Port Chester, New York. He was an almost painfully kind, sensitive, and non-confrontational man -- a strange match for the cutthroat world of Hollywood.

As a young man, Lewton wrote obsessively: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism -- in short, anything he could sell. He sometimes even had to use pen-names (one of which, Carlos Keith, he revived for movies later) to disguise the fact that one man was writing that much diverse material. In the 1920's, Lewton's mother Nina (who by then had a job as a story editor in movies) helped him get his foot in the door with movies.

Lewton held various jobs as a writer and in movies (much of that time, for example, was spent as story editor and jack-of-all-trades for David O. Selznick.) His first screen credit was "revolutionary sequences arranged by" in Selznick's 1935 version of A Tale of Two Cities. Then in 1942, Lewton was named head of the horror unit at RKO studios. RKO was suffering financial difficulties at the time, and decided to follow the example of Universal and start a unit that would make horror B-movies that were so inexpensive that they were almost sure to make a profit. They would choose a title through marketing tests, then Lewton was to make a movie to go with that title. They wanted shorter films (under 75 minutes) and with a very small budget, to be shown as one half of a double-bill. Because of the (relatively) tiny budgets, the studio allowed him a fairly free hand, preferring to spend their effort monitoring larger investments. From 1942-1946, he produced eleven films, listed below (in order of release):

Despite the fact that his only screen credit was as "producer," Lewton didn't fit the non-creative, "guy-with-the-checkbook" stereotype often applied to producers. He was definitely an artistic force behind his movies who could have claimed diverse credits on his productions, but he was afraid it would look like a producer using his power to get more credit than he deserved. In two cases (The Body Snatcher and Bedlam) he did accept co-writing credit, but used a pseudonym (Carlos Keith).

RKO was doubtlessly surprised at how literary and intelligent his movies were. Stories were adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, and Charlotte Bronte; some were even inspired by paintings. Authentic, traditional folk songs were among the historical details in many, and many were also sprinkled with quotes from the likes of John Donne, Shakespeare, Hippocrates and Freud.

In general, Lewton concentrated on atmosphere and suggestion rather than just showing the "monster", to get the viewer to conjure up their own mental terrors. Another horror tactic he used often was the "bus" -- so named from the first time it was used in Cat People. A woman is walking through the dark streets of New York, followed by something. Tension mounts, and the audience is on the edge of their seats, expecting an attack. Just then, a bus zooms loudly into the picture, its brakes squealing and its door opening, startling the viewers who have been primed for an explosion.

One particularly refreshing aspect in several of Lewton's films was the intelligent roles for black characters. The characters (such as Alma in I Walked with a Zombie or Edward in Curse of the Cat People) are servants yes, but they are smart, capable, normal people. A far cry from the gaping moron that was the standard way to portray blacks in Hollywood films of the time. Likewise, Lewton films had many strong females. Rarely did men do anything heroic in his movies, more often than not it was a woman who drove the plot. If Lewton's females showed one frustrating weakness, it was that they often fell in love with nitwits.

From 1947-1950, having "graduated" to big-budget A-pictures, he produced two of those, My Own True Love (1949) and Please Believe Me (1950), both for studios other than RKO. Due to various reasons, such as the studio interference that necessarily comes with being given a bigger budget, neither of these films is very good, and Lewton's reputation would be better off without them. In 1951, he returned to his low-budget ways with a western for Universal called Apache Drums. While it doesn't compare well to any of his earlier RKO movies, it is an entertaining movie, and promised a return to his previous quality.

Unfortunately, for the last few years, Lewton suffered from increasing health problems. In 1951 he had the last of several heart attacks and died, with so much potential undeveloped and so much promise unfulfilled.

Val Lewton's wife, Ruth, died in 1994 in San Jose. His sister Lucy is currently in her mid-90's, and living in a nursing home in Ventura, CA. His daughter, Nina, married Elihu Druckman in 1950, and died in Jan. 1978 of the same coronary artery disease and at approximately the same age as her father. Elihu is living in rural Washington with his wife of just over two years, Carol. He and Nina had five children, and yes, a grand-daughter named Nina. Lewton's son, Val E. Lewton is a well-known artist living in Washington, DC and who worked (before his retirement a short time ago) for the Smithsonian's National Museusm of American Art. Both Elihu Druckman and Val E. Lewton use the internet, and have been kind enough to contribute information to this page. Thank you!

Go Back to Val Lewton homepage