Celebrity Biographies
Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller, director of “Love Story”, died on August 17, 2016, in Los Angeles, at the age of 92, according to Cheryl Boone, president of the Hollywood Academy, an institution she chaired between 1993 and 1997. “We are deeply saddened by the death of our dear friend,” he said. Two months earlier, his wife had died, with whom he lived an intense ‘love story’.
Born in Edmonton, a town in the Canadian province of Alberta, on November 22, 1923, his father ran a musical instrument store. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1947 and, three years later, received a Master’s degree in psychology.
Arthur Hiller began his career as a director on television in the 1950s, and in the following decade he moved to film, being part of the generation that went from the small screen to the big one, like Sidney Lumet . He was aware that he was not a cinema genius, but a solvent craftsman, with valuable titles in his filmography such as The Americanization of Emily (1964); Penelope (1966); the war film Tobruk (1967); The charms of the big city (1970); the musical Man of La Mancha (1972); the valuable film about Nazi horror The Man in the Glass Cabin (1975); the drama author, author (1982), and the hilarious comedies The Chicago Express (1976) and Don’t Yell at Me I Don’t See You (1989).
His biggest hit was Love Story , from 1970, which told an intense love story between young people from different social classes. He was always in love with the same woman, Gwen, whom he met when they were schoolmates. He proposed to her at the age of 8, although logically they did not contract it until they were of legal age, in 1948.
In 2002, Hiller received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the trophy that was presented at the Oscars ceremony. In 2006 she received the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civil distinction.