BIO

Lewis Milestone was born Lev Milstein in Chisinau, Moldova, in 1895.   He immigrated to the United States just before World War I, escaping the Russian draft, and held a number of odd jobs before enlisting in the U.S. Army.

He began his career as an assistant director of training films during World War I.   He directed his first film for the U.S. War Department in 1918.

After the war, he headed to Hollywood where he first worked as a film cutter and later as a screenwriter.   His first screenplay was produced in 1922.   In 1925, at the age of 35, Milestone wrote and directed his first film for Warner Bros.

Howard Hughes, through his Caddo Production Company, hired Milestone to direct Two Arabian Knights in 1927.   He was awarded the first and only Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Feature.   Milestone won his second Best Director Academy Award for the film classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). His next film, The Front Page (1931), earned him a third Best Director Oscar nomination.

Milestone steadily continued directing films through the next two decades and, by the mid-1950s, was directing for television.

He was resurgent at the end of his career, directing Marlon Brando in the 1962 remake of Mutiny On The Bounty.

He married the actress Kendall Lee in 1936.   She pre-deceased him in 1978.

Milestone died after surgery in Los Angeles, in 1980, at the age of 85.

Additional biographical information is available at:

NOTED FILMS