From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Wanger (July 11, 1894 – November 18, 1968) was an important American film producer.

Wanger was born Walter Feuchtwanger in San Francisco, California. He served with the United States Army during World War I.

He produced his first motion picture in 1929 titled The Cocoanuts directed by Joseph Santley and starring the Marx brothers.

His many significant productions include The Sheik (1921), Gabriel Over the White House (1933), Queen Christina (1933), Stagecoach (1939), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Scarlet Street (1945), Joan of Arc (1948), The Reckless Moment (1949), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), I Want to Live! (1958), and Cleopatra (1963).

Wanger married silent film actress Justine Johnstone in 1919. They divorced in 1938 and in 1940 he married Joan Bennett with whom he remained married until 1965.

In 1951, Wanger shot his wife's agent, Jennings Lang, in the groin after confronting the two on suspicions that they were having an affair. His attorney, Jerry Giesler, mounted a "temporary insanity" defense and Wanger served a four month sentence at the Castaic Honor Farm two hours' drive north of Los Angeles.

The experience profoundly affected him and in 1954 he made the prison film Riot in Cell Block 11.

Wanger was given an Honorary Academy Award in 1946 for his service as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He refused another honorary Oscar in 1949 for Joan of Arc, out of anger over the fact that the film, which he felt was one of his best, had not been nominated for Best Picture.

His 1958 production of I Want to Live! starred Susan Hayward in an anti-capital punishment film that is one of the most highly regarded films on the subject. Hayward won her only Oscar for her role in the film.

In May 1966, Wanger received the Commendation of the Order of Merit, Italy's third-highest honor, from Consul General Alvaro v. Bettrani, "for your friendship and cooperation with the Italian government in all phases of the motion picture industry."

Walter Wanger died of a heart attack, aged 74, in New York City. He was interred in the Home of Peace Cemetery in Coloma, California.

• Walter Wanger at the Internet Movie Database