Stevens, George Cooper, 1904–75, American film director, b. Oakland, Calif. A distinguished 20th-century filmmaker, he is known for his skillful camera work and careful craftsmanship. After 1925 he was a cameraman in Hollywood, in 1930 he began to direct, and in 1933 he directed his first feature-length film. During more than four decades in the movie-making business, he directed such now-classic films as Alice Adams (1935), Gunga Din (1939), Woman of the Year (1942), I Remember Mama (1948), Shane (1952), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Stevens won Acadamy Awards as best director for A Place in the Sun (1951), an adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and for the Texas epic Giant (1956).
See George Stevens: Interviews (2004), ed. by P. Cronin; biographies by D. Richie (1985) and M. A. Moss (2004); study by B. Petri (1974, repr. 1987); George Stevens: A Film Maker's Journey (documentary dir. by G. Stevens, Jr., his son, 1984).
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