Biography
Val Lewton (born Vladimir Ivanovich Leventon, also credited as Vladimir Leventon) was a Russian-American film producer and screenwriter. He was born on 7 May 1904 in Yalta, then part of the Russian Empire, and moved to the United States with his family in 1909. He began his career as a writer of novels and stories, often under pseudonyms including Carlos Keith and Cosmo Forbes, before joining David O. Selznick as a story editor in the 1930s.
In 1942 RKO Pictures hired Lewton to head a new low-budget horror unit. His first production, Cat People (1942), was a commercial success, and he went on to produce a series of influential films including I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), The Leopard Man (1943), The Curse of the Cat People (1944), The Body Snatcher (1945) and Isle of the Dead (1945). He frequently contributed to screenplays and gave early directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson. Lewton died on 14 March 1951.
