Early Life and Career
Bern was born Paul Levy to a Jewish family in Wandsbek, which was then a town in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein (now a district of the city of Hamburg). In 1899 Bern's family emigrated to the United States, and eventually settled in New York City.
Bern pursued a career in acting on the stage and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He later pursued other aspects of theater production. He eventually moved to Hollywood and worked as a writer and director for various, smaller film companies. This led to his working full-time as a producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the major studio of the time.
The star-studded film Grand Hotel, released six days after Bern's death, won the Best Picture Academy Award for 1931–32. Bern and Irving Thalberg produced the film, although neither was listed in the film credits (in the early 1930s MGM did not list their films' producers in their credits). However, the award was presented solely to Thalberg, and Bern was excluded.
Read more about this topic: Paul Bern
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)