Seymour Nebenzal

SIMPP Member (1946-1958)

Seymour Nebenzal (formerly Nebenzahl) with famed director Fritz Lang (right).

A cosmopolitan producer who joined SIMPP toward the end of the war, Seymour Nebenzal, was actually a Jewish native of New York, but entered films in Berlin and was commonly thought of as a European. He founded Nero-Film in the mid-1920s, and produced the classic thriller from Fritz Lang, M (1931). Facing Nazi censorship, Nebenzal fled Germany, crossing the boarder with his automobile full of film negative. He changed the true spelling of his name from "Nebenzahl," and came to Hollywood in 1939 where he produced Summer Storm (1944), Whistle Stop (1946), Heaven Only Knows (1947), and Siren of Atlantis (1948). Following financial setbacks in the late 1940s, Seymour Nebenzal returned to Germany on a permanent basis in 1950 but remained a SIMPP member essentially up to his death in 1961.

SOURCES:

Seymour Nebenzal: "Seymour Nebenzal," DV, September 27, 1961; "Nebenzal, 62, of Films, Dies in Berlin," Los Angeles Examiner, September 27, 1961; McGilligan, pp. 145-146, 173.

See Bibliography.