Lewis Milestone

Lewis Milestone (1895–1980) was born Lewis Milstein in Chisinau, Moldova. He enrolled in engineering college in Mitweide, Germany, but left to emigrate to the United States in 1913. Milestone settled in New York and worked as a laborer before joining the Signal Corps in 1917. After the war, he moved to Hollywood, where he worked as an assistant film cutter at J. D. Hampton Productions (Jesse Hampton was a Signal Corps acquaintance) and as an editor at Ince and several other studios. He was associated with director William A. Seiter on several films. One of his earliest credits is assistant director on Seiter's The Foolish Age (1921). In the mid-1920s he wrote several scenarios and cowrote the adapted story for his first directorial effort, Seven Sinners (1925). He signed a three-year contract with independent producer Howard Hughes in 1926. For Hughes he directed Two Arabian Knights (1927), The Racket (1928), and The Front Page (1931). Milestone's slate of war-themed films began with All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and continued with Edge of Darkness (1943), The North Star (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), A Walk in the Sun (1946), and Pork Chop Hill (1959). His other directorial efforts include Of Mice and Men (1939), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Les Miserables (1952), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Milestone received Academy Awards for directing All Quiet on the Western Front and Two Arabian Knights, and was nominated for directing The Front Page.