About Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone (born Leib Mendelevich Milstein; Russian: Лейб Менделевич Мильштейн; September 30, 1895 – September 25, 1980) was a Russian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer active during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He twice won the Academy Award for Best Director, for Two Arabian Knights (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), with a third nomination for The Front Page (1931). Milestone's other notable directing credits included The General Died at Dawn (1936), Of Mice and Men (1939), The North Star (1943), A Walk in the Sun (1945), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Pork Chop Hill (1959), Ocean's 11 (1960), and his final film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). == Early life == Leib (or Lev) Milstein was born in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire (present-day Chișinău, Moldova), into a wealthy, distinguished family of Jewish heritage. Milstein received his primary education at Jewish schools, reflecting his parents' liberal social and political orientation, and including a study of several languages. Milstein's family discouraged his early love of theater and his desire to follow the dramatic arts and dispatched him to Mittweida, Saxony, to study engineering. After neglecting his classes to attend local theater productions, Milstein failed his coursework. He was intent on pursuing a theatrical career and bought a one-way ticket to the United States. Milstein arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, on November 14, 1913, shortly after his eighteenth birthday. Milstein, who found difficulty supporting himself in New York City, worked as a janitor, door-to-door salesman, and lace-machine operator before finding a position as a portrait-and-theater photographer in 1915.
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