Research in Progress (Oct 28, 2022)
Directors:
Winners: 72
Nominees: 141
Total: 243
—
A: 12
B: 20
C: 23 (includes Chung)
D: 8
E: 2
F: 13 (includes Fennell)
G: 7
H: 20 (includes Hagamucci)
I: 2
J: 6
K: 7
L: 21
M: 20
N: 4
O: 1
P: 13
Q:
R: 17
S: 19
T: 7
U: /
V: 5 (Vinterberg)
W: 10
X /
Y: 1
Z: 5 (includes Zhao)
Total: 241
Winners: 72
Nominees: 171
A (12 directors)
Abrahamson, Lenny:
Allen, Woody
Almodovar, Pedro (Spanish, for Spanish film)
Altman, Robert
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni, Michelangelo (Italian for English-speaking film)
Aronofsky, Darren
Ashby, Hal
Attenborough, Richard
Avildsen, John G.
Avildsen was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Ivy (née Guilbert) and Clarence John Avildsen.
He was educated at the Hotchkiss School and at New York University. He was of Norwegian heritage.
After starting out as assistant director to Arthur Penn and Otto Preminger, Avildsen made the low-budget feature Joe (1970). It received good notices for star Peter Boyle and was a big box-office hit grossing $26 million from a $100,000 budget.
B (20 Directors)
Babenco, Hector
Barrymore, Lionel
Beatty, Warren
Beaumont, Harry
Benigni, Roberto
Benton Robert
Beresford, Bruce
Bergman, Ingmar
Bertolucci, Bernardo
10.Bigelow, Kathryn
Bogdanovich, Peter
Bong, Joon-ho, Korean
Boorman, John
Borzage, Frank
Branagh, Kenneth
Brenon, Herbert
Brest, Martin
Brooks, James L.
Brooks, Richard
20. Brown, Clarence
C (23 directors)
Cacoyannis, Michael
Cameron, James
Campion, Jane
Capra, Frank
(Done)
Cardiff, Jack
Cassavetes, John
Cattaneo, Peter
Chaplin, Charles
Chazelle, Damien
Chung, Lee Isaac (Minari)
Cimino, Michael
Clayton, Jack
Clooney, George
Coen, Ethan
Coen, Joel
Coppola, Francis Ford
Coppola, Sofia
Costner, Kevin
Crichton, Michael
Cuaron, Alfonso
Cukor, George
Cummings, Irving
Curtiz, Michael
D (8 directors)
Daldry, Stephen
Daniels, Lee
Dassin, Jules
Del Toro, Guillermo
DeMille, Cecil B.
Demme, Jonathan
Dieterle, William
Dmytryk, Edward
E
Eastwood, Clint
Egoyan, Atom
F (13)
Farrow, John
Fellini, Federico (Italian, for Italian movies)
Fennell, Emerald (Promising Young Woman)
Figgis, Mike
Fincher, David
Fleming, Victor
Ford, John
Forman, Milos
Forster, Marc
Fosse, Bob
Franklin, Sidney
Frears, Stephen
Friedkin, William
G (7)
Gavras-Costa
Germi, Pietro
Gerwig, Greta
Gibson, Mel
Gilroy, Tony
Glenville, Peter
Greengrass, Paul
H (20)
Hackford, Taylor
Hagamucci, Ryusuke. Japanese
Haggis, Paul
Hall, Alexander
Hallstrom, Lasse
Haneke, Michael
Hanson, Curtis
Harvey, Anthony
Hathaway, Henry
10. Hazanavicius, Michel
Hawks, Howard
Henry, Buck
Hicks, Scott
Hill, George Roy
Hiller, Arthur
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hooper, Tom
Howard, Ron
Hudson, Hugh
20. Huston, John
I (2)
Innaritu. Alejandro G.
Ivory, James
J (6)
Jackson, Peter
Jaffe, Roland
Jenkins, Barry
Jewison, Norman
Jonze, Spike
Jordan, Neil
K (7)
Kazan, Elia
Kieslowski, Krzystof
King, Henry
Koster, Henry
Kramer, Stanley
Kubrick, Stanley
Kurosawa, Akira
L (21)
La Cava, Gregory
Lang, Walter
Lanthymos, Yorgos
Lean, David
Lee, Spike
Lee, Ang
Leigh, Mike
Lelouch, Claude
Leonard, Robert Z.
LeRoy, Mervyn
Levinson, Barry
Linklater, Richard
Litvak, Anatole
Lloyd, Frank
Logan, Joshua
Lonergan, Kenneth
Lubitsch, Ernst
Lucas, George
Lumet, Sidney
Lynch, David
Lyne, Adrian
M (20)
McCarey, Leo
McCarthy, Tom
McKay, Adam
McQueen, Steve
Madden, John
Malick, Terrence
Malle, Louis
Mankiewicz, Joseph L.
Mann, Delbert
Mann, Michael
Marshall, Rob
Mendes, Sam
Mereilles, Fernando (Brazilian for Brazilian film)
Milestone, Lewis
Miller, Bennett
Miller, George
Minghella, Anthony
Minnelli, Vincente
Molinaro, Eduard
Mulligan, Robert
N (4)
Negulesco, Jean
Nichols, Mike
Nolan, Christopher
Noonan, Chris
O (1)
Olivier, Laurence
P (13)
Pakula, Alan J.
Parker, Alan
Paulikowski, Pawell
Payne, Alexander
Peele, Jordan
Penn, Arthur
Perry, Frank
Petersen, Wolfgang
Phillips, Todd
Polanski, Roman
Pollack, Sydney
Pontecorvio, Gillo
Preminger, Otto
R (17)
Radford, Michael
Redford, Robert
Reed, Carol
Reitman, Jason
Renoir, Jean
Richardson, Tony
Ritt, Martin
Robbins, Jerome
Robbins, Tim
Robson, Mark
Ross, Herbert
Rossen, Robert
Ruggles, Wesley
Rush, Richard
Russell, Ken
Russell, David O.
Rydell, Mark
S (19)
Schafflner, Franklin
Schertzinger, Victor
Schlesinger, John
Schnabel, Julian
Schroeder, Barbet
Scorsese, Martin
Scott, Ridley
Seaton, George
Sheridan, Jim
Shyamalan, M. Night
Singleton, John
Siodmak, Robert
Soderbergh, Steven
Spielberg, Steven
Sternberg, Josef von
Stevens, George
Stevenson, Robert
Stone, Oliver
Sturges, John
T (7)
Tarantino, Quentin
Taurog, Norman
Teshigahara, Hiroshi
Thompson, Lee J.
Troell, Jan
Truffaut, Francois
Tyldun, Morten
U
V (5)
Van Dyke, W. S.
Van Sant, Gus
Vidor, King
Villeneuve, Denis
Vinterberg, Thomas (Another Round)
W (10)
Walters, Charles
Weir, Peter
Welles, Orson
Wellman, William A.
Wertmueller, Lina
Wilde, Ted
Wilder, Billy
Wise, Robert
Wood, Sam
Wyler, William
Y
Yates, Peter
Z (5)
Zeffirelli, Franco
Zeitlin, Benh
Zemeckis, Robert
Zhao, Chloe (Nomadland)
Zinnemann, Fred
Occupational Inheritance
Nationality; Birthplace
Social Class/Family
Race/Religion
A (12)
Abrahamson, Lenny:
Allen, Woody
Almodovar, Pedro (Spanish, for Spanish film)
Altman, Robert:
Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family.
Altman’s ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from “Altmann” to “Altman.” Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to follow or practice the religion as an adult, although he has been referred to as “a sort of Catholic” and a Catholic director.
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni, Michelangelo (Italian for English-speaking film)
Aronofsky, Darren
Ashby, Hal
Attenborough, Richard
12. Avildsen, John G. No data about class
Abrahamson, Lenny:
Allen, Woody
Almodovar, Pedro (Spanish, for Spanish film)
Altman, Robert
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni, Michelangelo (Italian for English-speaking film)
Aronofsky, Darren
Ashby, Hal
Attenborough, Richard
12. Avildsen, John G.
Occupational Inheritance:
Yes
Anderson, Michael:
Parents actors; great aunt, actress; his sons would become actor and producer, respectively
Anderson, Paul Thomas: Father actor
B
Barrymore, Lionel
Occupational Inheritance:
No
Abrahamson, Lenny;
Woody Allen (sister later became producer)
Almodovar (brother later became producer)
Altman, Robert
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni
Aronofsky
Ashby, Hal
Born in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household, the son of Eileen Ireta (Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, a dairy owner. His tumultuous childhood as part of dysfunctional family included the divorce of his parents, his father’s suicide, and dropping out of high school.
Attenborough
Avildsen, John
B
Babenco, Hector
Barrymore, Lionel
Beatty, Warren; parents teachers, sister actress Shirley MacLaine.
Beaumont, Harry
Benigni, Roberto
Benton Robert
Beresford, Bruce
Bergman, Ingmar
Bertolucci, Bernardo
10.Bigelow, Kathryn
Bogdanovich, Peter
Bong, Joon-ho, Korean
Boorman, John
Borzage, Frank
Branagh, Kenneth
Brenon, Herbert
Brest, Martin
Brooks, James L.
Brooks, Richard
20. Brown, Clarence
C
Capra
Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, a village near Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was the youngest of 7 children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, and the former Rosaria “Serah” Nicolosi. Capra’s family was Roman Catholic. The name “Capra” represents his family’s closeness to the land, and means “goat.”
He notes that the English word “capricious” derives from it, “evoking the animal’s skittish temperament,” adding that “the name neatly expresses two aspects of Capra’s personality: emotionalism and obstinacy.”
In 1903, when he was 5, Capra emigrated to the U.S. with his family, who traveled in one of the steerage compartments of the steamship Germania, which was the cheapest way to book passage. For Capra, the journey, which took 13 days, remained one of his worst experiences: You’re all together—you have no privacy. You have a cot. Very few people have trunks or anything that takes up space. They have just what they can carry in their hands or in a bag. Nobody takes their clothes off. There’s no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They’re all miserable. It’s the most degrading place you could ever be.
Capra remembers the ship’s arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw “a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter”.
He recalls his father’s exclamation at the sight: Ciccio, look! Look at that! That’s the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That’s the light of freedom! Remember that Freedom.”
The family settled in Los Angeles’s East Side (today Chinatown), which Capra described as Italian “ghetto.” Capra’s father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for 10 years, until he graduated from high school.
Instead of working after graduating, as his parents wanted, he enrolled in college, California Institute of Technology, playing banjo at nightclubs and taking odd jobs, which included working at the campus laundry facility, waiting tables, and cleaning engines at a local power plant. He studied electrical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. His college education had “changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person.”
After graduating from college, Capra was commissioned in the US Army as a second lieutenant, having completed campus ROTC. In the Army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Point, San Francisco. His father died during the war in an accident (1916).
In the Army, Capra contracted Spanish flu and was medically discharged to return home to live with his mother. He became naturalized U.S. citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra.
Living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only member with college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed. After a year without work, seeing how his siblings had steady jobs, he felt he was a failure, which led to bouts of depression and abdominal pains, later discovered to have been an undiagnosed burst appendix.
After recovering at home, Capra moved out and spent the next few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains, wandering the Western US. To support himself, he took odd jobs on farms, as movie extra, playing poker, and selling local oil well stocks.
At 24, Capra directed a 32-minute documentary titled La Visita Dell’Incrociatore Italiano Libya a San Francisco. It documented the visit of the Italian naval vessel Libya to San Francisco, but also the reception given to the crew of the ship by San Francisco’s L’Italia Virtus Club, known as the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club.
At 25, Capra took job selling books written and published by American philosopher Elbert Hubbard. Capra recalled that he “hated being a peasant, being a scrounging new kid trapped in the Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles. … All I had was cockiness—and let me tell you that gets you a long way.”
During his book sales efforts—and nearly broke—Capra read a newspaper article about a new movie studio opening in San Francisco. Capra phoned them saying he had moved from Hollywood, and falsely implied that he had experience in the budding film industry. Capra’s only prior exposure in films was in 1915 while attending Manual Arts High School. The studio’s founder, Walter Montague, was impressed by Capra and offered him $75 to direct a one-reel silent film. Capra, with the help of a cameraman, made the film in two days and cast it with amateurs.
Social Class:
A (12)
Abrahamson, middle; father solicitor; grandfather physician
Allen, Woody; lower middle; father, jewelry engraver and waiter; mother bookkeeper.
Almodovar: lower-middle
Altman, Robert: Upper-middle; father wealthy insurance salesman
Anderson, Michael: Middle (Actors)
Anderson, Paul Thomas; Middle; father actor
Anderson was born in Studio City, Los Angeles, to Edwina and Ernie Anderson, an actor who was the voice of ABC and Cleveland TV late-night horror movie host known as “Ghoulardi” (which became Anderson’s production company).
Anderson, Wes: Upper-middle; mother realtor and archaeologist; father advertising and public relations. Family: parents divorced when he was 8.
Antonioni Upper middle; landowners
Aronofsky: Middle class, parents teachers
Ashby, Hal
Avildsen, John
No data (check?)
Attenborough: Upper-middle; father scholar and academic administrator, fellow at Emmanuel College,
Babenco, Hector, Jewish
Beatty: Upper-middle class; both parents teachers; grandparents also teachers
Beaumont,
Benton, Robert: middle class; father telephone company employee;
C
Capra:
Lower class, son of immigrants
Nationality:
Abrahamson, UK–Irish
Allen, Woody, US–NYC–Brooklyn
Almodovar, Spanish
Altman, Robert, US, Kansas
Anderson, Michael, UK
Anderson, Paul Thomas: US, LA
Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the 3rd youngest of 9 children. Troubled relationship with mother but close with father, who encouraged him to become writer or director.
Anderson, Wes, U.S.; lives in France
Antonioni: Italian (also English-speaking)
Aronofsky; US,
Ashby, Hal, US, Utah
Avildsen, John; US; Norwegian and Danish descent; born Oak Park, Illinois
Attenborough, UK
B
Babenco, Hector, Brazil-Argentine (nom for English-speaking film)
Barrymore, Lionel, US,
Beatty, Warren; US, Richmond, Virginia
Benton, Robert, US, Waxahachie, Texas
Race and Religion
Abrahamson, Jewish (born); atheist
Allen, Woody, Jewish
Almodovar, Catholic
Altman, Catholic
Anderson, Michael, No Data
Anderson, Wes:
Antonioni: Italian, Catholic
Aronofsky: Jewish
Ashby, Hal: Mormon
Attenborough, UK
Avildsen, John
B
Babenco, Hector, Argentina, Brazil; Jewish
Barrymore, Lionel, US
Beatty, Warren
Beaumont, Harry
Benigni, Roberto, Italian
Benton Robert, US
Beresford, Bruce, Australia
Bergman, Ingmar, Swedish
Bertolucci, Bernardo, Italian
10.Bigelow, Kathryn, US
Bogdanovich, Peter, US
Bong, Joon-ho, Korean
Boorman, John
Borzage, Frank;
Branagh, Kenneth
Brenon, Herbert
Brest, Martin
Brooks, James L.
Brooks, Richard
20. Brown, Clarence
C
Capra
Born in Italy; son of immigrants (upward mobility); Catholic
