He first gained attention for film noir mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945), while in the 1950s and 1960s, he directed high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works.

Several of these later films pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with themes which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) and homosexuality (Advise & Consent, 1962).

[5] The couple provided a stable home life for Otto and his younger brother Ingwald, known as "Ingo", later the producer of the original film version of M*A*S*H (1970).

When the Preminger family relocated, Otto was nearly nine and was enrolled in a school where instruction in Catholicism was mandatory and Jewish history and religion had no place on the syllabus.

In 1923, when Preminger was 17, his soon-to-be mentor, Max Reinhardt, the renowned Viennese-born director, announced plans to establish a theatrical company in Vienna.

When the theater opened, on 1 April 1924, Preminger appeared as a furniture mover in Reinhardt's comedic staging of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters.

Other notable alumni with whom Preminger would work the same year were Mady Christians, who died of a stroke after having been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and Nora Gregor, who was to star in Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939).

In 1930, a wealthy industrialist from Graz approached Otto with an offer to direct a film called Die große Liebe (The Great Love).

[8] In April 1935, as Preminger was rehearsing a boulevard farce, The King with an Umbrella, he received a summons from American film producer Joseph Schenck to a five o'clock meeting at the Imperial Hotel.

During the shooting of Kidnapped, while screening footage of the film with Zanuck, the studio head accused Preminger of making changes in a scene; in particular, one with child actor Freddie Bartholomew and a dog.

Preminger was offered a teaching position at the Yale School of Drama and began commuting twice a week to Connecticut to lecture on directing and acting.

Before his next assignment with Fox, Preminger was asked by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn to appear as a Nazi once more, this time in a Bob Hope comedy, They Got Me Covered.

Before production would begin on Laura, Preminger was given the green light to produce and direct Army Wives, another B-picture morale booster for a country at war.

Although Preminger had no complaints about the casting of the relatively unknown Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, he balked at their choice for the film's villain, Waldo, actor Laird Cregar.

Bankhead learned that Preminger's family would be barred from emigrating to the U.S. due to immigration quotas, and she asked her father (who was Speaker of the House) to intervene to save them from the Nazis.

The film received generally lackluster reviews as the Ruritanian romance genre had become outdated, and it failed to earn back its cost of production.

In Fallen Angel, a con man and womanizer ends up by chance in a small California town, where he romances a sultry waitress and a well-to-do spinster.

The reviews and box office draw were tepid when the film was released in July 1946, but by the end of that year Preminger had one of the most sumptuous contracts on the lot, earning $7,500 a week.

[citation needed] Preminger maintained a busy schedule, working with writers on scripts for two planned projects, Daisy Kenyon (1947) and The Dark Wood; the latter was not produced.

Over the spring and early summer of 1948 Preminger turned Oscar Wilde's play into The Fan (1949), which starred Madeleine Carroll; the film opened to poor notices.

[citation needed] Several of his films in this period dealt with controversial and taboo themes, thereby challenging both the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code of censorship and the Hollywood blacklist.

Preminger made but one concession (substituting "violation" for "penetration") and the picture was released with MPAA approval, marking the beginning of the end of the Production Code.

Preminger also acted in a few movies including the World War II Luft-Stalag Commandant, Oberst von Scherbach of the German POW camp Stalag 17 (1953), directed by Billy Wilder.

However, despite his liberal social outlook, Preminger became notorious for his domineering and abrasive personality, his explosive temper, and his dictatorial manner on set, which earned him nicknames like "Otto the Terrible" and "Otto the Ogre"—although it has been speculated that (like his contemporary John Ford) Preminger's tyrannical persona and abusive behaviour were to some extent a calculated pose, intended to garner publicity, keep his cast and crew under his control, and keep interfering studio executives at bay.

Lana Turner (originally cast in the role that subsequently went to Lee Remick) quit Anatomy of a Murder a month before filming was due to start, over a dispute about her wardrobe, with Turner telling the press that she couldn't deal with Preminger's domineering personality,[15] and renowned British actor Paul Scofield reportedly quit Saint Joan after he got into a heated argument with Preminger during the first cast read-through of the script.

Laurence Olivier, who played a police inspector in the psychological thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), shot in England, recalled in his autobiography Confessions of an Actor that he found Preminger a "bully".

He remembered Preminger as being rude and unpleasant, especially when he disregarded the typical thespian etiquette of subtly cooperating when being helped to his feet, in a scene by West and Burt Ward.

She came to loathe him, and the combination of the long hours of filming, heavy dieting and Preminger's constant harangues caused Darnell to collapse twice on set, and she was ordered to take ten days off by a doctor.

During rehearsals for the Herman Wouk play Modern Primitive, Preminger screamed so violently at an actor who struggled to remember his lines that the man allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown, and one witness later commented, "I had never seen such terrifying rage in anyone," describing the director as having "veins standing out on his forehead" and "literally foaming at the mouth".

[21] In 1970, Preminger was a subject of ridicule in Tom Wolfe's essay Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's, where he was portrayed verbally dueling with Black Panther Field Marshal Donald Cox.