Joseph Losey Biography
Joseph Walton Losey (1909 - 1984) was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. After studying at Dartmouth and Harvard, he moved to New York where he worked as an auditor. Transferred to Europe by Variety, Losey attended cinematographic art courses with the great Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. Returning to New York, he joined the left-wing Radical Theater movement and worked closely with Bertoldt Brecht. Losey's first feature film was commissioned by RKO: The Boy with Green Hair (1949). After completing his favorite Hollywood film, The Prowler (1951), Losey's affiliations with left-wing intellectuals such as Brecht and Eisenstein saw him summoned before the McCarthyist House UnAmerican Activities Committee. As a result, blacklisted, Losey fled to Britain. Here he directed under assumed names, such as Victor Hanbury for The Sleeping Tiger (1954). Other examples include M, Eve (1962), considered Losey's most personal film, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). The 1960s marked Losey's most productive period. He worked closely with the (later) Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, and their three adaptations are considered highlights in both men's careers. The Servant, Accident which received the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes and The Go Between (1970), which was their biggest success, winning four BAFTAs, the Palme d'Or at Cannes and an Oscar nomination. In the mid-1970s he moved to France, where he shot most of his latest films, including M. Klein (1976). Losey died in London a few months before the release of his last film, Steaming (1985).
