Alexander Korda

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 555-562. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Founded, in his journalist days, the magazine le Cinéma de Pest in Hungary on October 1st 1912.

One of a large group of Hungarian refugees who found refuge in England in the 1930s, Sir Alexander Korda was the first British film producer to receive a knighthood.

He was a major, if controversial, figure and acted as a guiding force behind the British film industry of the 1930s and continued to influence British films until his death in 1956. He learned his trade by working in studios in Austria, Germany and America and was a crafty and flamboyant businessman.

He started his production company, London Films, in 1933 and one of its first films The Private Life of Henry VIII.

(1933), received an Oscar nomination as best picture and won the Best Actor Oscar for its star, Charles Laughton. Helped by his brothers Zoltan Korda (director) and Vincent Korda (art director) and other expatriate Hungarians, London Films produced some of Britain's finest films (even if they weren't all commercial successes). Korda's willingness to experiment and be daring allowed the flowering of such talents as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and gave early breaks to people such as Laurence Olivier, David Lean and Carol Reed.

That Hamilton Woman was his first film to be made entirely in Hollywood since the outbreak of World War II and made at Winston Churchill's suggestion to counteract the considerable anti British sentiment that still existed in the United States in 1940.

1942: Knighted for services to the film industry by King George VI, the first film personality to be so honored.

His third wife was over thirty years his junior and remarried only fourteen months after his death. She died of an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1966.