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William Cameron Menzies. William Cameron Menzies movies on TCM: Murderous Joan Fontaine, deadly Nazi Communists Best known as an art director/production designer, William Cameron Menzies was a jack-of-all-trades. It seems like the only things Menzies didn't do was act and tap dance in front of the camera. He designed and/or wrote, directed, produced, etc., dozens of films – titles ranged from The Thief of Bagdad to Invaders from Mars – from the late 1910s all the way to the mid-1950s. Among Menzies' most notable efforts as an art director/production designer are: Ernst Lubitsch's first Hollywood movie, the Mary Pickford star vehicle Rosita (1923). Herbert Brenon's British-set father-son drama Sorrell and Son (1927). David O. Selznick's mammoth production of Gone with the Wind, which earned Menzies an Honorary Oscar. The Sam Wood movies Our Town (1940), Kings Row (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). H.C. Potter's Mr. Lucky...

Michael Winner: Death Wish director has died Michael Winner, best remembered for directing the Charles Bronson action hit Death Wish, died earlier today at his home in Kensington, London. According to reports, Winner had been suffering from (an unspecified) liver disease. He was 77. (Photo: Michael Winner.) Born in London (on Oct. 30, 1935) to a well-to-do family of Eastern European Jews — his father was Russian, his mother was Polish — Winner studied law and economics at Cambridge University. Following a stint as a gossip columnist (reportedly at the age of 14), he proceeded to study journalism and film criticism. He began working in the field in the mid-’50s. Michael Winner movies Michael Winner’s directorial career also took off in the mid-’50s, when he began directing several documentary and live-action shorts, a couple of which featured well-known names such as A.E. Matthews and Dennis Price. Winner progressed to features in the early ’60s,...