Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American filmmaker, theatre director, and producer. He was a three-time Academy Award nominee for Best Director, and a Tony Award winner. Among other accolades, he was also nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Penn first achieved prominence as a theatre director, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for The Miracle Worker. He received similar acclaim and his first Oscar nomination for directing the 1962 film adaptation. His 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde is credited with initiating the New Hollywood movement, by infusing the biographical crime drama with a counterculture sensibility. He achieved similar critical and commercial success directing the comedy Alice's Restaurant (1969) and the revisionist Western Little Big Man (1970), which further reflected that ethos.
Penn’s other notable films included the neo-noir Night Moves (1975) and the revisionist Western The Missouri Breaks (1976). In the 1990s, he returned to stage and television direction and production, including an executive producer role for the police procedural series Law & Order.
Early life
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. As Penn grew up, he became increasingly interested in film, especially after seeing the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane.
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. and he was a featured commentator in the documentary Fully Awake about the college.
Career
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.
Penn maintained an affiliation with Yale University, occasionally teaching classes there.
Personal life
In 1955, he married actress Peggy Maurer. They had two children: son Matthew Penn and daughter, Molly Penn.
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| 1958
| rowspan="2" | Two for the Seesaw
|Booth Theatre, New York
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|Wilbur Theatre, Boston
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| 1964–66
| Golden Boy
|Majestic Theatre, New York
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| rowspan="4" |1978
| rowspan="4" |Sly Fox
|Jacobs Music Center, San Diego
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| 2000
| Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
|Actors Studio, New York
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| rowspan="2" | 2002
| rowspan="2" | Fortune's Fool
|Truglia Theatre, Stamford
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|1968
|Bonnie and Clyde
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|1970
|Alice's Restaurant
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|Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival
|1987
|Grand Prize
|Dead of Winter
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|Bodil Awards
|1968
|Best English Language Film
| rowspan="2" |Bonnie and Clyde
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|British Academy Film Awards
|1968
|Best Film
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|Cannes Film Festival
|1996
|SACD Prize
|Inside
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|Golden Globe Awards
|1968
|Best Director
|Bonnie and Clyde
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| rowspan="2" |Mar del Plata International Film Festival
| rowspan="2" |1968
|Best Film
| rowspan="2" |Bonnie and Clyde
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|Best Film
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|Moscow International Film Festival
|1971
|FIPRESCI Prize
|Little Big Man
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|New York Film Critics Circle
|1967
|Best Director
|Bonnie and Clyde
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| rowspan="2" |Primetime Emmy Awards
|1958
|Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
|Playhouse 90
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|2001
|Outstanding Drama Series
|Law & Order
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