Ilya Lopert born May 1, 1905 died February 27, 1971 was a Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

n born film producer and distributor. He was renowned for distributing foreign films for both arthouse and mainstream

Mainstream

Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....

 release in the United States. He was often credited as I E Lopert.

Biography

Lopert studied electrical engineering after the First World War in Switzerland, in Belgium at the University of Ghent and the University of Grenoble

University of Grenoble

University of Grenoble or Grenoble University was a university in Grenoble, France until 1970, when it was split into several different institutions:...

 from 1930-1933. He held a variety of jobs in France and the French Sudan

French Sudan

French Sudan was a colony in French West Africa that had two separate periods of existence, first from 1890 to 1899, then from 1920 to 1960, when the territory became the independent nation of Mali.-Colonial establishment:...

. Fluent in French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish and English as well as his native Lithuanian, he found himself employed by Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 studios in Paris where he dubbed American films into Spanish. He accompanied his wife the United States in 1936 and found work in Hollywood preparing American films for the South American market.

Film distribution

Lopert formed Pax Films and Juno Films to distribute foreign films in the USA, most famously Mayerling

Mayerling (1936 film)

Mayerling is a 1936 French historical drama film directed by Anatole Litvak and produced by Seymour Nebenzal from a screenplay by Marcel Achard, Joseph Kessel and Irma von Cube, based on the novel Idol's End by Claude Anet. The film stars Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux with Jean-Louis...

. He became head of foreign film distribution for MGM resigning in 1946 to become an independent distributor. Lopert remarked that prior to World War II only 12 foreign films a year played in the United States and it was impossible to make a living distributing foreign language films in America

Lopert Films was created in 1947 to release foreign films in the USA such as Shoeshine, Richard III

Richard III (1955 film)

Richard III is a 1955 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's historical play of the same name, also incorporating elements from his Henry VI, Part 3. It was directed and produced by Sir Laurence Olivier, who also played the lead role. The cast includes many noted Shakespearean actors,...

and Nights of Cabiria

Nights of Cabiria

Nights of Cabiria is a 1957 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, plays Cabiria Ceccarelli, a feisty but naive prostitute in Ostia, then a seedy section of Rome...

. Lopert produced Summertime for David Lean

David Lean

Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...

 and Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

 and also owned two cinemas in Washington D.C. the DuPont and Playhouse and one cinema in New York City, the Plaza.

Though critically acclaimed, his films were American box office failures that forced him to sell his theatres. In 1958 United Artists

United Artists

United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....

 bought Lopert Films, renaming them Lopert Pictures to release foreign films that may attract controversy by being in violation of the Production Code

Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...

 of the time. Lopert Pictures first release for United Artists was Black Orpheus

Black Orpheus

Black Orpheus is a 1959 film made in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus. It is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, which is an adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, setting it in the modern context of a favela in Rio de Janeiro during the Carnaval...

followed by the smash hit Never on Sunday

Never on Sunday

Never on Sunday is a 1960 Greek black-and-white film which tells the story of Ilya, a prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist from Middletown, Connecticut — a classical scholar enamored with all things Greek. Ilya is a character close to the...

. In 1961 Lopert became United Artists coordinator of European Production.

In addition to foreign films, Lopert films also released Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

's Kiss Me, Stupid

Kiss Me, Stupid

Kiss Me, Stupid is a 1964 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston.The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on Wife For a Night , an Italian film starring Gina Lollobrigida -- which was itself taken from a play by Anna Bonacci...

The arthouse film industry collapsed in the United States in 1970. Variety reporting that for the first time in six years not one foreign language film grossed over one million dollars. This trend and other factors affecting Hollywood at the end of the 1960s lead United Artists to close Lopert films in 1970. He had a daughter Tanya Lopert who became an actress.

External links

• Lopert Pictures