Vincente Minnelli

Born

1903

Died

1986

From

Chicago, Illinois, USA·Beverly Hills, California, USA

Height

1.75 m (5'9")

Also:
Music Department

Credits on file

Decades active

Awards

In short · Directed for 10 decades — 54 credits, 3 Golden Globe Award wins.

Remembered for

Ranked by community engagement + sustained interest across this person's credits in our database.

Recent & in release

1959
Award win
Golden Globe Award — Best Director
1959
Award win
Golden Globe Awards — Golden Globe — Best Director
1958
Award win
Academy Awards — Oscar — Directing

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Biography

Lester Anthony Minnelli was born in Chicago on February 28, 1903. His father, Vincent, was a musical conductor for the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Minnelli began his career in the costume department of the Chicago Theater, and later worked on Broadway during the Depression as a set designer and costumer. He adopted a Latinized version of his father's first name when he was hired as an art director by Radio City Music Hall. His directorial debut came in the fall of 1935 with a Franz Schubert revue titled *At Home Abroad*, one of three shows in the style of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. He later accepted an offer from Arthur Freed to work at MGM, his second attempt at Hollywood after a brief, unsuccessful contract at Paramount. He remained at MGM for the next 26 years. After contributing to numerous *Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland* films, often directed by Busby Berkeley, Freed assigned him his first directorial film, *Cabin in the Sky* (1943), a bold project featuring an all-black cast. This was followed by the ambitious period film *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944), starring Judy Garland, whom he married in 1945. Utilizing top MGM technicians, Minnelli directed a range of genres, including musicals such as *The Band Wagon* (1953), melodramas like *Some Came Running* (1958), and urban comedies such as *Designing Woman* (1957), and occasionally worked on two films at once. Minnelli is one of the few directors for whom Technicolor was seemingly created. Many of his films feature dream sequences in every one of his movies.