Артур Пен: Американдық режиссер және продюсердің өмірі мен шығармалары

American producer and director (1922–2010)

Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American filmmaker, theatre director, and producer. He was a Tony Award winner, and was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Director, as well as a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmys. As a member of the New Hollywood movement, Penn directed several critically acclaimed films dealing with countercultural issues of the late 1960's and 1970's, notably the drama The Chase (1966), the biographical crime film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the comedy Alice's Restaurant (1969), and the revisionist Western Little Big Man (1970). Penn was nominated for three Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play, winning in 1959 for The Miracle Worker, a play based on the childhood of Helen Keller. He received his first Oscar nomination for directing the 1962 film version. His other notable films included the neo noir Night Moves (1975) and the revisionist Western The Missouri Breaks (1976). In the 1990's, he returned to stage and television direction and production, including an executive producer role for the crime series Law & Order. By his death in 2010, Penn was the recipient of several honorary accolades, including an Honorary Golden Bear, a Tony Award, and an Akira Kurosawa Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Penn was born in 1922, to a Russian Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Sonia (Greenberg), a nurse, and Harry (Tzvi) William Penn,a watchmaker, both natives of then Novoaleksandrovsk, Russia, now Zarasai, Lithuania. He was the younger brother of Irving Penn, the fashion, portrait and still life photographer. During his early years, he moved in with his mother after she divorced his father. Some time after, he came back to his sickly father, leading him to run his father's watch repair shop. At 19, he was drafted into the United States Army during World War II (1943–1946), serving as an infantryman in the Battle of the Bulge. While stationed in Britain, he became interested in theater. He started to direct and take part in shows being put on for the soldiers around England at the time.

After making a name for himself as a director of quality television dramas, Penn made his feature debut with The Left Handed Gun (1958) for Warner Brothers. A retelling of the Billy the Kid legend, it was distinguished by Paul Newman's portrayal of the outlaw as a psychologically troubled youth (the role was originally intended for James Dean). The production was completed in only 23 days, but Warner Brothers reedited the film against his wishes with a new ending he disapproved of. The film failed upon release in North America, but was well received in Europe. Penn's second film was The Miracle Worker (1962), the story of Anne Sullivan's struggle to teach the blind and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate. It garnered two Academy Awards for its leads Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. Penn had won a Tony Award for directing the stage production, written by William Gibson, also starring Bancroft and Duke, and he had directed Bancroft's Broadway debut in playwright Gibson's first Broadway production, Two for the Seesaw. and called on John Frankenheimer to take over the film. Penn's next film was The Chase (1966) a thriller following events in a small corrupt Southern town on the day an escaped convict, played by Robert Redford, returns. Penn was excluded from the post production process, which was instead overseen by producer Sam Spiegel. At the time he had completed Bonnie and Clyde, Penn was residing in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, when he heard a story of a large scale littering incident that had happened in the town two years prior. He contacted Arlo Guthrie, received permission to adapt his song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" into a film, and secured Guthrie's participation as well as several other Stockbridge town residents while filming in many of the same locations where the events took place. The film Alice's Restaurant was released in 1969. Guthrie later stated in 2023 that he was angered by the film, believing Penn and his co writer had come to a fundamentally wrong conclusion about whether or not hippie values were still relevant, and had walked out of the film's premiere; Alice Brock and Richard Robbins, who were also portrayed in the film, were similarly offended. Penn followed up Alice's Restaurant in 1970 with Little Big Man, a "shaggy dog" account of the life of a white man (played by Dustin Hoffman) who gets adopted into the Cheyenne tribe. Subsequently, Penn returned to work in television, including as an executive producer for the crime series Law & Order.

In 1955, he married actress Peggy Maurer. They had two children: son Matthew Penn and daughter, Molly Penn. Penn became friends with Alger Hiss during the production of Mickey One, saying in a 2010 interview, "Alger got married here in my apartment. And so I became more of a student of the Hiss period than I knew what to do with, frankly".

Penn died from congestive heart failure at his home in Manhattan on September 28, 2010, the day after his 88th birthday.