Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang

 Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976)

Lang was an Austrian-German-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films include the groundbreaking futuristic Metropolis (1927) and the also influential M (1931), a film noir precursor that he made before he moved to the United States. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris, France. At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian army and fought in Russia and Romania, where he was wounded three times. At the end of 1932, Lang started filming The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, and by March 30, the new regime banned it as an incitement to public disorder. Lang was worried about the advent of the Nazi regime, partly because of his Jewish heritage. He left in 1933, and emigrated to America. In Hollywood, Lang signed first with MGM Studios. His first American film was the crime drama Fury, which starred Spencer Tracy as a man who is wrongly accused of a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail where he is awaiting trial. Lang became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. He made twenty-three features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood. One of his most famous films noir is the police drama The Big Heat (1953). Lang died from a stroke in 1976, age 85, and is buried at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills.