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Otto Ludwig Preminger (December 5, 1906 – April 23, 1986) was an Austrian actor and twice Oscar-nominated film director.

Preminger was born in Vienna to a well-known family. Preminger's father Marc was once the Attorney General of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As their father, both Otto and his brother, Ingo Preminger, earned law degrees in Vienna.

Preminger worked with Max Reinhardt before emigrating to America. At first he directed and acted for 20th Century Fox. His Austrian accent caused him to be typecast as a cinematic Nazi, despite the fact that he was a Jew who had left Austria in 1935, three years before Austria merged with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss.

After the war, he became well known as a Hollywood director in the 1950s and early 1960s, delivering films that were praised by critics such as Andrew Sarris.

The bald-headed Preminger was known to be demanding and strict according to the stereotype embodied by such directors such as Erich von Stroheim and Fritz Lang. He was well-respected by some, but was often antagonistic towards his actors: Dyan Cannon once commented that she didn't think "he was capable of directing his nephew to the bathroom." He was also instrumental in ending the morals code then controlling motion pictures by his demands, creativity and control.

Life and career

Some of his notable films include: Anatomy of a Murder with James Stewart, Lee Remick, George C. Scott and Ben Gazzara; Laura, a much admired film noir starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews; Whirlpool also starring Tierney and Jose Ferrer. Advise and Consent, starring an on-form Charles Laughton; Bonjour Tristesse with David Niven, Deborah Kerr and Jean Seberg, who made her film debut in Preminger's Saint Joan; The Man With the Golden Arm for which Frank Sinatra was Oscar nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Bunny Lake is Missing, a cult-movie starring Laurence Olivier and Carol Lynley, who herself was part of the ensemble cast of The Cardinal.. Preminger also acted in a few movies; his most notable role is that of the warden of a German POW camp in Stalag 17.

At the New York City Opera, in October 1953, Preminger directed the American premiere (in English translation) of Gottfried von Einem's Der Prozeß (The Trial), after Franz Kafka. Soprano Phyllis Curtin headed the cast.

In the 1960s Batman television series, Preminger was the second of three actors who played Mr. Freeze, in the two-parter "Green Ice/Deep Freeze." Adam West, who portrayed Batman, remembers Preminger as incredibly rude and unpleasant, and that all other members of the cast were secretly delighted when he was subsequently pursued for unpaid dues by the Screen Actors Guild.

Ingo Preminger, who produced the 1970 M*A*S*H movie, was Otto Preminger's kid brother.

By an extramarital relationship with Gypsy Rose Lee he had a child, writer and screenwriter Erik Lee Preminger.

During his marriage, he had an affair with Dorothy Dandridge, who starred in Preminger's film version of Carmen Jones (1954) and wanted him to leave his wife and marry her.

Otto Preminger died in 1986, aged 79, of cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.