Directing

Jack Garfein

Born — Died

1930-07-02 — 2019-12-30

Place of birth

Mukachevo, Zakarpatskaya oblast, USSR [now Ukraine]

Known for

Directing

Credits

5 titles

IMDb profile

Jakob Garfein[1] (July 2, 1930 – December 30, 2019) was an American film and theatre director, acting teacher, and a key figure of the Actors Studio. Growing up in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazism,[2] Garfein was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 and survived 11 concentration camps. In 1946, as an orphaned teen, he was among an early group of Holocaust[3] survivors to arrive in the U.S, and he obtained his American citizenship in 1952. After studying at the Dramatic Workshop[4] in New York, Garfein became the first theater director to be awarded membership in the Actors Studio. He put on its first-ever play to move to Broadway, End as a Man (1953), and expanded the i…

Known for

6.2

A young rape victim tries desperately to pick up the pieces of her life, only to find herself at the mercy of a would-be rescuer.

Something Wild

1961

6.0

In the work of Jack Garfein - Holocaust survivor, theater and film director, key figure in the formation of the Actors Studio - past and and present freely intermingled to contribute to memorable stage productions and in two films, many which were ahead of their time in tackling such issues as homosexuality, race and violence. Powered by his vivid recollections and augmented with readings by Willem Dafoe, The Wild One traces Garfein’s life: his Czechoslovakian youth, his family’s fleeing the Nazis, surviving in Auschwitz and other camps, his 1946 arrival at 16 in New York and coming under the wing of Lee Strasberg, Hollywood, his marriage to actress Carroll Baker.