Let’s take this May 1st opportunity to remember one of
Hollywood’s unfairly unsung directors, the German
émigré Henry Koster.  Between his thirty year
Hollywood career and his beginnings in Europe before that, he directed
almost fifty films, many of them genuine classics, and yet he’s
somehow escaped the lionization that so many other classic-era Hollywood
directors attained.  A solid directorial talent with an eye for
luscious detail, Koster switched between studios and genres to amass a
list of credits that would do anyone proud.

Born on May 1, 1905, Koster (nee Kosterlitz) caught the show
business bug early; his uncle ran a movie theater in Berlin and he spent
his evenings there watching his mother play the piano scores.  His
imagination sparked, he began working as a cartoonist and writer, and
soon got a job as a writer at a movie studio.  The bright young man
was in the right place at the right time, and soon began getting
opportunities to direct.  There’s a dramatic story about
Koster’s decision to leave Germany:  With the rise of Hitler
and his government, anti-Semitic sentiments were seething in the
city.  One lunch hour in 1933 an SS officer started throwing
epithets at Koster, and the incensed young director threw a punch and
knocked the officer out cold.  Knowing exactly how that was going
to be perceived by the party in charge, Koster went immediately to the
train station and got on the first train to France, and soon to
Hungary. 

The move to Hungary was a
propitious one; he married beautiful actress Katherine Kiraly, and met
Joseph Pasternak, an executive with Universal Studios in Europe,
directing several films for him.  The chance to go to Hollywood
came in 1936, and Koster (who spoke no English at the time) came over
with Pasternak, who used his influence to get Koster the chance to
direct again.  His first assignment was a musical picture with a
young girl soprano named Deanna Durbin.  The film, Three
Smart Girls, was a huge success for the ailing Universal
Studios, and Koster was on top.  He made several more incredibly
successful pictures with the beautiful and talented singer –
One Hundred Men and a Girl, Three Smart Girls
Grow Up, Spring Parade — and helped her to
make the transition into more mature roles with It Started With
Eve. 

In 1946 he moved over
to MGM for a pair of musicals, the frothy Two Sisters from
Boston with June Allyson and Kathryn Grayson, and the ballet-themed musical
drama The Unfinished Dance with Margaret O’Brien
and Cyd Charisse.  Next he made The Bishop’s
Wife for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn.  Now a
Christmas season staple, the romantic comedy/drama starred Cary Grant,
Loretta Young and David Niven, and Koster was nominated for the Best
Director Academy Award.  (The film also received nominations for
Best Music, Best Film Editing and even Best Picture, and won for Best
Sound.)

In 1948 Henry Koster started a
more-or-less continuous period of employment with Twentieth Century-Fox,
beginning with the whimsical comedy/fantasy Luck of the
Irish, a leprechaun-centric comedy starring the dashing Tyrone
Power, the lovely and talented Anne Baxter, and the twinkling Cecil
Kellaway (Oscar-nominated) as the magical imp.  Koster’s next
assignment was the heartwarming nun comedy Come to the
Stable in 1949, starring Loretta Young and Celeste Holm as
sisters on a mission to establish a children’s hospital.  The
movie received seven Oscar nominations — Best Actress for Loretta
Young, Best Supporting Actress for both Celeste Holm and co-star Elsa
Lanchester, In 1949
Koster took a one-picture jaunt over to Warner Bros. for the elaborate
(and underrated) Danny Kaye comedy-with-music The Inspector
General, co-starring Elsa Lanchester, Walter Slezak and Barbara
Bates (who might be best remembered as the ambitious young actress at
the very end of All About Eve).  Then it was back
to Fox for two Betty Grable musicals — Wabash Avenue
and My Blue Heaven — then over to Universal in 1950
for the screen adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
Broadway smash Harvey.  Koster directed a cast
headlined by James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, with Josephine Hull back
in the role she originated onstage.  (Stewart was nominated for the
Best Actor Oscar, and Miss Hull won as Best Supporting
Actress.)

Then it was back again to Fox,
where he had a string of directing assignments for the next several
years, a grab-bag starting with the 1951 Brit-oriented airplane-safety
drama No Highway in the Sky, starring James Stewart,
Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns, Jack Hawkins and Janette Scott. 
Koster then tackled the third in the series of comedy films starring
Clifton Webb as the eccentric genius Lynn Belvedere in Mr.
Belvedere Rings the Bell, and next directed Webb again in
Elopement, co-starring the luscious Anne Francis as
Webb’s daughter, along with
Charles Bickford and William Lundigan.  In 1952 Koster directed
Marilyn Monroe in a segment of the multi-part
O’Henry’s Full House, and
later Clifton Webb, along with young stars Robert Wagner and Debra
Paget (the male duo would star again together the next year in
the studio’s Titanic) in Stars and
Stripes Forever, the biography of composer/bandleader John
Philip Sousa.  His last 1952 assignment was the adaptation of
Daphne Du Maurier’s brooding novel My Cousin
Rachel, starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton, who
received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for this, his first American
movie appearance.

In 1953 Koster took the
helm of the first movie filmed in wide-screen Cinemascope, the lavish
Biblical-era epic The Robe, about the soldier who won Jesus’ crucifixion garment in a dice game, and
the consequences it brought to him.  Richard Burton headed the
impressive cast which included Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Michael
Rennie, Dean Jagger, Jay Robinson (as Caligula), and Richard
Boone.  (The movie garnered five Academy Award nominations,
including Best Actor for Richardstory of Napoleon
Bonaparte — or at least one part of his life — in
Desiree, starring Marlon Brando as the famed French
general and Jean Simmons as the young woman who loved him.

Two more biopics followed in 1955, first up
A Man Called Peter, the adaptation of the bestselling
biography of Scottish clergyman Peter Marshall who eventually ends up as
chaplain of the U.S. Senate.  Richard Todd (The Hasty
Heart) starred as Marshall, opposite Jean Peters as his loyal
and loving wife Catherine.  1955 also brought Koster the chance to direct screen
legend her life through her
pupils’; Robert Stack co-starred. 

1956 brought more history with the and then Koster went
independent again with The Naked Maja, starring Ava
Gardner, Anthony Franciosa and a big Italian cast in the story of
Spanish painter Diego Velazquez and the beautiful woman in his most
famous painting.  In 1960 he was at Fox again with The
Story of Ruth, starring Viveca Lindfors in this movie based on
a tale from the Bible; Stuart Whitman and Tom Tryon were the male
leads. 

Koster’s last five
assignments over the next five years were considerably lighter,
beginning with, for Universal in 1961, the San Francisco Chinatown-set Flower
Drum Song, with words and music by Rodgers and
Hammerstein.  The family comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a
Vacation, starring James Stewart, Maureen O’Hara, John
Saxon, and teen idol Fabian was next (for Fox), followed by another
Stewart-starring comedy Take Her, She’s Mine –
based on the experiences of writers Henry and Phoebe Ephron with their
own daughter Nora (yes, that Nora Ephron) — with Sandra Dee as his
daughter and Audrey Meadows as his wife.  In 1965 Koster teamed
once again with James Stewart in another family
comedy Dear Brigitte, with Fabian, Glynis Johns and the
talented child star Billy Mumy.  Henry Koster’s last film was
1966’s The Singing Nun for MGM, the fictionalized
pseudo-biography based on the life of Soeur Sourire, who was a pop
singing one-hit-wonder sensation with “Dominique”.  The
film starred Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Greer Garson, Agnes
Moorhead, Chad Everett, a young Katharine Ross, with a guest appearance
by the real Ed Sullivan. 

I neglected
to mention that Koster’s first marriage ended in divorce, but he
found true
love in 1942 with actress
Peggy Moran, to whom he made a promise to put her in every one of
his movies, which he did — in the form of a sculpted bust of his lovely
wife which showed up somewhere in each of his films, without fail. 
During his retirement Koster became an accomplished artist, his
paintings, many of which were portraits of the actors and actresses he
directed over the years, highly prized by their fortunate owners.

Henry Koster, versatile and talented
director, died on September 1, 1988.  His lovely wife Peggy Moran
passed away
in 2002.

(I want to particularly recommend a
visit to Henry
Koster's son Bob's wonderful website.  Bob is also a show business veteran and has a terrific
section of his site devoted to the Koster family. 
Well worth checking out!)