Val Lewton

Born in Russia in 1904, Lewton moved with his mother and sister to Berlin in 1906, then to USA in 1909. He wrote for newspapers, magazines, novels, pornography, etc.

- often using pseudonyms to disguise their origin (the name Val Lewton was one such pseudonym, used first for some novels in the 1930's, then revived later in his career to take writing credit for two movies).

In 1933, he got a job with David O. Selznick where he spent many years as a story editor and jack-of-all-trades.

While working at MGM, he published a novel, "Where the Cobra Sings", under the name Cosmo Forbes. In 1936, a husband-and-wife team of agents set up a meeting with Lewton and David O. Selznick to sell the film rights to Forbes' novel. Lewton didn't admit to writing it at first, to see how far he could go with it, and set up a meeting with an impostor named Forbes. When he found out that the agents were bordering bankruptcy to sell the book, Lewton confessed to being Forbes.

Wrote several scenes for Gone with the Wind (1939), such as the Atlanta depot sequence. Then, as a joke, he included an outrageously expensive scene with an elaborate elevator shot of hundreds of wounded soldiers. David O. Selznick read it and loved it so much, he had it put in the film.

Then in 1942, RKO hired him to head their new horror unit, where he made many famous and well-respected B-movies, for very low costs and high profits.

In Final Destination (2000), Kristen Cloke's character, high school teacher Val Lewton, was named after him.