Albert Lewin was born in Brooklyn, New York September 23, 1894, and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a master’s degree at Harvard and taught English at the University of Missouri.
During World War I, he served in the military and was afterwards appointed assistant national director of the American Jewish Relief Committee. He later became a drama and film critic for the Jewish Tribune until the early 1920s, when he went to Hollywood to become a reader for Samuel Goldwyn.
Later he worked as a script clerk for directors King Vidor and Victor Sjöström before becoming a screenwriter at MGM in 1924.
Lewin was appointed head of the studio’s script department and became Irving Thalberg’s personal assistant.
He produced several of MGM’s most important films of the 1930s. After Thalberg’s death, he joined Paramount as producer in 1937, where he remained until 1941.
Among his producing credits are True Confession (1937), Spawn of the North (1938), Zaza (1939) and So Ends Our Night (1941).
In 1942, Lewin began to direct, but he made only six films, writing all of them.
As director and writer, he showed literary and cultural aspirations in selecting materials for the screen.
He died on May 9, 1968, aged 73.
Films as director:
The Moon and Sixpence (1942)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
Saadia (1954)
The Living Idol (1957)
As screenwriter:
The Fate of a Flirt (1925)
Spring Fever (1927)