The famous producer, director, one of the founders of the British film industry Sir Alexander Korda was born on September 16, 1893 in the village of Pushtaturpashto in Hungary. His real name is Sandor Laszlo Kellner. His father was a manager in a rich name, where he spent his childhood years. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother and brothers to Budapest. As a teenager, he began to try his hand at journalism, publishing his articles in the liberal newspaper Independent Hungary. Since 1909 he was published under the pseudonym Sandor Korda, later - as Alexander Korda. In 1911, as his own correspondent, he was sent to Paris for several months, where he often visited the Paté film studio. Upon returning home, Korda in record time turned into a leading film critic writing in various publications, worked as a credits translator at the Pictographer firm, and soon founded his own film magazine.
From 1914, Korda began to shoot his own films, and three years later became one of the founders of the Corvin film studio, built in the vicinity of Budapest. During this period Korda actively worked not only as a director, but also as a producer, becoming one of the most influential people in Hungarian cinema. In 1919, after the Communists came to power and the proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Korda was appointed a member of the Committee on Cinematography under the new government and directed the nationalization of film production. With the fall of the communist government and the establishment of Horthy's counter-revolutionary regime, Korda was arrested. After a brief prison sentence in November of that year, he and his wife, leading Hungarian actress Maria Farkas (Korda), were forced to leave for Vienna. From Vienna, he soon moved to Berlin, where he directed several films at the UFA film studio. The success of the drama “Dubarry Today” (1927) according to the script of the playwright Lajos Biro allowed him to sign a contract in Hollywood.
In America, he declared himself by putting a costumed pseudo-historical film “The Private Life of Helen of Troy” (1927), in which his wife Maria Korda played the main role. His other films in Hollywood were not widely successful, and he returned to Europe in 1931. After a short stay in Paris, Corda settled in Britain. In 1932 he founded London Films, which soon became the largest film company in the country, and three years later he built a studio in Denham. In an effort to raise the level of film production, Korda attracted young talented actors, cameramen, artists and screenwriters. Soon a team gathered around him, the core of which were his brothers - production designer Vincent and producer and director Zoltan Korda, screenwriter Lajos Biro and cameraman Georges Perinal, who came from France.
The first British paintings of Corda were the romantic comedies "Services for Ladies" and "Wedding Rehearsal" (both - 1932), but the real success came to him with the costumed historical drama "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933) with the participation of actor Charles Laughton. Thanks to the unprecedented scale of production for British cinema and brilliant acting, the film became a real event and was nominated for the Oscar. However, Corda’s follow-up film, The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), came out much weaker and generally fell short of expectations. A similar fate befell the next painting by Korda “Rembrandt” (1936), dedicated to the life of the famous Dutch painter. At the same time, he worked successfully as a producer, having had a hand in the creation of such films as “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” (1936, Lothar Mendes), “Flame over England” (1937, directed by William Howard), “The Little Elephant Driver” (1937, directed by Robert Flaherty, Zoltan Korda), “Four Feathers” (1939, dir. Zoltan Korda). In 1939, Korda, who had already been divorced for several years, married actress Merle Oberon, who starred in his film studio. After the outbreak of World War II, he worked for two years in the United States, where as a producer he participated in the creation of the Oscar-winning fairy tale film The Thief of Baghdad (1941, dir. Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan), and also directed one of his best films - the romantic melodrama Lady Hamilton (1941) with Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier. On his return to Britain, he was awarded a noble title for his contribution to the formation of British cinema.In the forties, Corda's leading position in filmmaking was shaken under the pressure and commercial grip of a more powerful competitor, the influential tycoon Arthur Rank. However, he continued to work in cinema, mainly as a producer, including in the world-class films Anna Karenina (1948, dir. Julien Duvier), The Third Man (1949, dir. Carol Reed) and Richard III (1955, dir. Lawrence Olivier). Corda’s own later directorial work, the romantic drama Strangers (1945) and the film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Perfect Husband (1947), went almost unnoticed. Alexander Korda died on January 23, 1956 in London of a heart attack. Despite the failure of recent films and the commercial failures that followed him, he forever entered the history of world cinema as one of the most outstanding figures of cinema, who combined creativity in working on films with an outstanding talent of the organizer.