Samuel Bronston

Samuel Bronston (né Bronstein;^[1] 7 August 1908 – 12 January 1994) was a Bessarabian-born American film producer and media executive. His films have earned a total of seven Academy Award nominations.

Born in Bessarabia, Russian Empire (present day Moldova), Bronston immigrated into the United States in 1937. A year later, he met James Roosevelt, the son of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and moved to Los Angeles. Together, they formed a brief but fruitless partnership. Roosevelt left Hollywood to return to active military service. Bronston then joined Columbia Pictures, and worked as an associate producer on The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942). A year later, in 1943, Bronston founded his namesake studio Samuel Bronston Productions, and produced Jack London (1943) for United Artists. He next collaborated with Lewis Milestone on the war film A Walk in the Sun (1945) and René Clair on the mystery film And Then There Were None (1945); however, Bronston went uncredited as he struggled to raise financing.

Bronston left Hollywood, and worked as a photographer with the Vatican. There, he produced a total of 26 documentary films, exploring the Vatican archives. In 1955, he returned to Hollywood as an independent producer. He relocated Bronston Productions in Madrid, Spain, and raised financial capital by pre-selling his film projects to private investors, including financier Pierre S. du Pont III. In Madrid, Bronston spearheaded several productions of historical epics, including King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

By June 1964, Bronston declared bankruptcy due to the box office failures of The Fall of the Roman Empire and Circus World (1964), in which he owed over US$5.6 million to du Pont III. He subsequently produced Savage Pampas (1966) and Dr. Coppelius (1966), albeit uncredited. During his bankruptcy proceedings with his creditors' attorneys, while under oath, Bronston was found to have committed perjury. He was convicted on one count of perjury, but was later acquitted in a prominent case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which set a major precedent for perjury prosecutions. In 1994, Bronston died in Sacramento, at the age of 85.