Biography

Stanley Kramer

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Stanley Kramer was born on September 29, 1913 in Hell's Kitchen [now Clinton], Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and Inherit the Wind (1960). He was married to Karen Sharpe, Anne P. Kramer and Marilyn Erskine. He died on February 19, 2001 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Was to name his child after Spencer Tracy, but when the baby turned out to be a girl, he named her after Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn was also her godmother.
Directed 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Cara Williams, Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Oskar Werner, Michael Dunn, Simone Signoret, Katharine Hepburn, Cecil Kellaway and Beah Richards. Hepburn and Schell won Oscars for their performances in one of Kramer's movies.
After his retirement in 1980, he moved to Seattle, where he wrote a column for the Seattle Times and taught at the University of Washington and Bellevue Community College.
Produced six Best Picture Oscar nominees: High Noon (1952), The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Defiant Ones (1958), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Ship of Fools (1965) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
Served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, making training films. He finished the war with the rank of first lieutenant.

I'm always pursuing the next dream, hunting for the next truth.
[on Humphrey Bogart] He was playing Bogart all the time, but he was really just a big sloppy bowl of mush.
[on Lee Marvin] I'm not his psychiatrist. I don't know whether he has one or needs one. I'm only saying that to understand him, one needs help.
If I am to be remembered for anything I have done in this profession, I would like it to be for the four films in which I directed Spencer Tracy.
[on Katharine Hepburn] The most completely thorough, driving, constantly seeking actress with whom I'm been associated. She's never really satisfied; she never stops thinking about what she's doing and about what everybody else is doing. She is a marvelous woman who has a capacity for many emotional areas and she has great talent. She can trigger an emotional truth at precisely the right time. I don't know what she draws on; it's a deep, deep well.

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