Early Life
William Castle was born William Schloss in New York City to a Jewish family. Schloss is German for "castle", and Castle chose to translate his surname into English to use as his pseudonym. Orphaned at the age of 11, he would drop out of high school and spend most of his teenage years working on Broadway in a number of jobs ranging from set building to acting. This stood him in good stead when he became a director, and he left for Hollywood at the age of 23, going on to direct his first film six years later. He also worked as an assistant to director Orson Welles, doing much of the second unit location work for Welles' noir classic, The Lady from Shanghai (1947).
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