Albert Lewin

Albert Lewin (born Albert Parsons Lewin on September 23, 1894 in Brooklyn, New York) was an influential American film director, producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned the silent era to the late 1950s. Raised in Newark, New Jersey, he pursued higher education at Harvard University, earning a master’s degree before briefly teaching English at the University of Missouri. During World War I he served in the U.S. military and subsequently took on a humanitarian role as assistant national director of the American Jewish Relief Committee, experiences that informed his later cinematic sensibilities. In the early 1920s Lewin moved to Hollywood, initially working as a reader for Samuel Goldwyn and later as a script clerk for such notable directors as King Vidor and Victor Sjöström, quickly gaining a reputation for literary acumen and meticulous script supervision. By 1924 he was hired by MGM as a screenwriter, and thanks to his close association with Irving Thalberg he rose to head of the studio’s script department, where he was nominally credited as an associate producer on several landmark productions of the 1930s. After Thalberg’s death he joined Paramount in 1937, producing acclaimed pictures including True Confession, Spawn of the North, Zaza and So Ends Our Night before transitioning to directing in 1942. His directorial oeuvre, though limited to six films, is noted for its literary ambition, visual elegance, and cultural depth, featuring adaptations such as The Moon and Sixpence (1942), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), Saadia (1953) and The Living Idol (1957). Lewin also maintained a close friendship with actress Devi Dja, casting her in multiple projects, and in 1966 he published a novel, The Unaltered Cat, demonstrating his lifelong commitment to storytelling across media.