Biography for
Arthur Penn (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

27 September 1922, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Date of Death

28 September 2010, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (congestive heart failure)

Spouse

Peggy Maurer

(27 January 1955 - 28 September 2010) (his death) 2 children

Trivia

Was an early contender to direct The Stunt Man (1980) and used elements from that film's source, the Paul Brodeur novel of the same name, in the story of Night Moves (1975).

He directed 8 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Patty Duke, Anne Bancroft, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard and Chief Dan George. Duke, Bancroft and Parsons won Oscars for their performances in one of Penn's movies.

Won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Director (Dramatic) for "The Miracle Worker." He was also Tony-nominated two other times: in 1958 as Best Director for "Two for the Seesaw." and in 1961 as Best Director (Dramatic) for "All the Way Home."

Older brother is renowned photographer Irving Penn.

Interviewed in "The Director's Event: Interviews with Five American Filmmakers," by Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin.

Hospitalized with pneumonia in a New York hospital [July 14, 2009].

Father of Matthew Penn and Molly Penn.

Hospitalized with pneumonia in July 2009.

Personal Quotes

Lee Strasberg ruined an entire generation of actors with that sense memory crap.

There hasn't been much of a market for what I can do. I'm not into outer space epics or youth pictures.

[on Hurd Hatfield] America's least known great actor.

[1982 comment on Steven Spielberg] The movies have changed: there's now this wonderful storyteller Spielberg making benign movies that are enormously successful, while I'm known mainly for making movies about people shooting and cutting each other up. I love his work, but I could never make stuff like that.

[on acting] A look, a simple look, will do it.

[on Bonnie and Clyde (1967)] I thought that if were going to show this (violence), we should SHOW it. We should show what it looks like when somebody gets shot. TV coverage of Vietnam was every bit, perhaps even more, bloody than what we were showing on film.

A society would be wise to pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find out ... where it's failing.