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Director, born in Austria on the 5th of November, 1880, died on the 11th of September, 1963.
Gay: N/A |
Lesbian: N/A |
Trans: N/A |
Queer: N/A |
Though he directed more than one film with gay-themes, including the monumental Different From the Others, there's no hint that he was gay himself.
Richard Oswald was born Richard W. Ornstein in Vienna, Austria on the 5th of November, 1880. He entered show business as a stage actor, and eventually worked his way up to playwright and stage director. During his work on the stage, he became acquainted and much interested with the budding film industry, and signed-on first as an actor with the Düsseldorfer Film company and then as a writer at Deutsche Vitascope. The public reception of his 1914 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles catapulted him to success and fame, and two years later he started his own production company: Richard Oswald-Film.
Directing now, he made film adaptations such as Around the World in 80 Days and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was his first, but certainly not the last, film to have a gay element to it in the character of Basil Hallward.
In 1917, in collaboration with the sex specialist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, he began his series of highly controversial (but extremely popular) sexual education films with the four part film Let There Be Light. The stated objective of these films was to speak candidly and unashamedly about topics that were taboo in polite society, realistically covering subjects such as prostitution, unwanted pregnancy, STDs, and, in the 1919 film Different From the Others, homophobia.
When the Nazis came to power, Oswald, like many of his compatriots, was forced to leave Austria. He made several films in France and then in the Netherlands, before again he would have to flee the Nazis to the USA. In the US, he was less successful and never made a place for himself in Hollywood. He made only three more films, The Lovable Cheat being the last in 1949.
After the war, he returned to Europe. Oswald died in Düsseldorf, Germany on the 11th of September, 1963. He left behind a son, Gerd Oswald, who had a mildly successful career directing television shows and B-movies in the US.
Aliases
Films
[ Gay feature | Lesbian feature | Trans feature | Queer feature ]
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