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Quick Facts
Best Known For
Stanley Kubrick was an American filmmaker best known for directing Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.
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Stanley Kubrick - Film Icon (1:10)
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Play NowStanley Kubrick. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 01:35, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672.
Stanley Kubrick. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672 [Accessed 19 May 2013].
"Stanley Kubrick." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 01:35 http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672.
"Stanley Kubrick," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672 [accessed May 19, 2013].
"Stanley Kubrick," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672 (accessed May 19, 2013).
Stanley Kubrick [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672.
Stanley Kubrick, http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672 (last visited May 19, 2013).
Stanley Kubrick. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672. Accessed May 19, 2013.
Synopsis
Born in New York City on July 26, 1928, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look magazine before exploring filmmaking in the 1950s. He went on to direct a number of acclaimed films, inclduing Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Clockwork Orange (1971), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kubrick died in England on March 7, 1999.
Contents
Quotes
"A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper."
"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
"It's a mistake to confuse pity with love."
"I never learned anything at school, and I never read a book for pleasure until I was 19."
"I started out thinking if I couldn't play for the Yankees, I'd be a novelist."
Younger Years
Famed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was born in New York City on July 26, 1928, and grew up in the Bronx, New York, where his father, Jacques Kubrick, worked as a doctor and his mother, Sadie (Perveler) Kubrick, was a housewife. He had a younger sister, Barbara.
Kubrick never adjusted to or did well in school. In elementary school, his attendance record was evenly split between days absent and present. In high school, he was a social outcast and the prototypical underachiever, ranking at the bottom of his class, despite his intelligence. "I never learned anything at school, and I never read a book for pleasure until I was 19," he once said.
Kubrick's early ambitions were to become a writer or play baseball. "I started out thinking if I couldn't play for the Yankees, I'd be a novelist," he later remembered. Seeking creative endeavors rather than to focus on his academic status, Kubrick played the drums in his high school's jazz band; its vocalist later became known as Eydie Gorme. Kubrick also displayed early promise as a photographer for the school paper, and at age 16, began selling his photos to Look magazine. A year later, he was hired for the staff of the magazine. When not traveling for Look, he spent most of his evenings at the Museum of Modern Art.
Toward the end of his high school career, Kubrick applied to several colleges, but was turned down for admission by all of them.
Foray into Filmmaking
Kubrick began to explore the art of filmmaking in the 1950s. His first films were documentary shorts financed by friends and relatives. His first feature, the 1953 military drama Fear and Desire, was made independently of a studio—an uncommon practice for the time. Early into his filmmaking career, Kubrick acted as cinematographer, editor and soundman, in addition to directing. Later, he would also write and produce.
Kubrick made 10 feature films from 1957 to 1998, with early releases including the acclaimed films Spartacus (1960); Lolita (1962), based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov; and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Denied official cooperation from the U.S. armed services during the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick went on to construct sets from photographs and other public sources.
'2001: A Space Odyssey'
Kubrick released his most popular film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 1968, after working diligently on the production for a number of years—from co-writing the script with sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke to working on the special effects, to directing.
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