Henry Levin Biography
Henry Levin was born in 1909 in Trenton, an American B-movie director who worked in a variety of genres including film noir, musicals, westerns and science fiction.
Levin worked in the theater as an actor and director before launching a film career in the early 1940s. He was hired by Columbia as a dialogue director, but quickly graduated to directing entire films. In 1944 Levin directed his first film, The Cry of the Werewolf, a spine-tingling thriller starring Nina Foch and Osa Massen. His best films at Columbia include The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (co-directed with George Sherman), a Cornel Wilde swashbuckler and one of six features Levin made in 1946; The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947), a tense melodrama starring Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas; Convicted (1950), a prison drama starring Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford; and The Petty Girl (1950), a play about a famous pinup artist. Two of a Kind (1951) was a noir starring Edmond O'Brien and Lizabeth Scott as cold-hearted crooks.
In 1952 Levin moved to Twentieth Century-Fox, where his work continued to be wide-ranging. Belles on Their Toes (1952), a sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), was a great success, as were the musicals The Farmer Takes a Wife (1953), starring Betty Grable, and April Love (1957), starring Pat Boone and Shirley Jones. The latter was a stark contrast to The Lonely Man (1957), a melancholy western starring Jack Palance. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), an adaptation of Jules Verne's novel, is widely considered a classic. Levin's first film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was one of his biggest successes: Where the Boys Are (1960), a comedy about college students on spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Then came the lovable biopic The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). Later credits included Come Fly with Me (1963), a romantic comedy starring Hugh O'Brien and Pamela Tiffin, and a pair of Matt Helm spy yarns, Murderers' Row (1966) and The Ambushers (1967), both of which starred by Dean Martino. Levin also directed the epic Genghis Khan (1965), with Omar Sharif in the title role. His last project was the television film Scout's Honor (1980), a family drama starring Gary Coleman. Levin died on the last day of production.
