Walter Reisch

When Walter Reisch was still a student in Vienna, he worked at Sascha-Film, one of the largest Austrian film companies. There, he was an assistant to the iconic director Alexander Korda. This early start prepared him well for his career. He started small, learning about films behind the scenes as a camera assistant, but soon transitioned to writing, the profession for which he is most well known. He received his first screenwriting credit at the age of 22 for the 1925 German silent film "The Curse." Over the course of his career, he penned almost 100 screenplays, including the famous 1959 adaption of Jules Vernes' "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and the popular 1944 mystery "Gaslight." In addition to scriptwriting, he also wrote songs for many of his films, such as the theme song to the 1931 drama "The Theft of the Mona Lisa" and the popular "Flieger, Grü? Mir Die Sonne," which was performed in the 1932 German sci-fi drama "F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht." Reisch also dabbled in directing and producing; some such work includes 1936's Austrian drama "Silhouetten" and 1954's German thriller "Die Mücke." After a long and storied career, Reisch passed away in 1983 at the age of 80.