Movie Director. Born in 1892, Ernst Lubitsch started making movies in the 1910's in Berlin. He had left the family business to enter Max Reinhardt's Deutches Theater, and he quickly began to act and then direct silent movies. After making a few hits, he stopped appearing in his movies, and in 1923 moved to Hollywood.
There he made many movies, including The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), which like most of his work, was acclaimed by the critics, but didn't do very well in the box office. It was then that the famous "Lubitsch Touch" got to be known : defined by wit and sophistication, many tried to imitate it, but most failed. It was a sparkle that made his comedies extremely funnies.
Then talking movies appeared, and Lubitsch was among the first to make movies of a whole new kind : the musical comedy, with The Love Parade (1928), and others followed : Monte Carlo (1930), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), and One Hour With You (1932). During that time, he also made what is perhaps his best movie, Trouble in Paradise (1932), the summit of the Lubitsch Touch, a movie set in what would now be called the jet set, where aristocrats and crooks meddle...
He went on to make BlueBeard's Eight Wife (1938), the very good Ninotchka (1939) which starred Greta Garbo, the great The Shop Around The Corner (1940), set in a small shop in Central Europe, which features Jimmy Stewart at his best, and the famous Anti-Nazi film, To Be Or Not To Be (1942), Heaven can Wait (1943), in which the hero tells his life to the devil, who is to decide wether he should go to Hell or to Heaven. His last movie was Cluny Brown (1946).
At the director's funeral, his fellow director, and friend, Billy Wilder said, "No more Lubitsch," to which fellow filmmaker William Wyler replied, "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures."