Stunning Stories of Famous Hungarians Who Made It In Hollywood

Stories of Hungarian Filmmakers who Became World-famous in the Hollywood Film Industry

Last updated on May 21st, 2020

There is a famous saying in Hungary that states: Anywhere you go in the world it’s sure that you will find Hungarians there. You may not know yet, but this is especially true for Hollywood, at least it was, during its classic era.

Hungarians mostly started to emigrate to the USA after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, but the biggest wave came during and after WW II, when many people had no choice but to flee the continent. Many Hungarians had a turn in fortune after emigrating and made something really special out of themselves: The foundation of the American film industry was born from the contribution of Hungarian immigrants. We dedicate this article to introducing some of their amazing stories.

WILLIAM FOX, the Founder of Fox Film Corporation

William Fox, who was born as Fried Vilmos in 1879 in a small Hungarian village called Tolcsva, worked as a producer and founded Fox Film Corporation.

When he was just nine months old he and his family emigrated to the United States because they could not make a living in Hungary. There they changed their names to Fox, their mother’s maiden name. As he was so young when they moved, Fox never learned to speak Hungarian.

He grew up on the worst streets of New York and had to start working at the age of 8 as a servant in a lavatory. In the States he had eleven siblings but only six of them survived because of their poor conditions. He even stopped going to school at the age of 11.

He later started working as a salesman in the fur garment industry, but after saving up a few thousand dollars he got out and invested in the film industry by buying a nickelodeon in Brooklyn. By the end of the year he owned a whole chain of them as well as a production company which was the start of his empire. He laid down the foundation for the Hollywood studio system by organizing Fox Film Corporation and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain, creating the star culture, and for freeing the industry from Thomas Edison’s monopoly.

Industry Accomplishments

After a few years in the film production industry Fox realized that he could make the company more profitable by exhibiting a film several times, as this needed smaller investments than producing new films, so he founded a film-distribution company called the Box Office Attractions Company. This was one of his first steps in challenging Edison's monopoly on the industry. Fox even went as far as initiating an antitrust lawsuit against Edison's Patent Company. Fox won the legal battle which greatly affected the film industry as free competition was born, and anyone could legally make movies, so the quality of productions improved in a heartbeat. Fox produced his first film, Life’s Shop Window, in 1914, and he organized Fox Film Corporation the following year.

Soon he owned the 1000 house Fox theatre chain which made him a millionaire. With the incredible amount of money he made from his mainstream productions, he produced more art house films, and gave opportunities to promising new directors.

He was an amazing businessman, he quickly realized the business potentials of advertising the actors as he was the first one who didn’t try to sell his films by advertising its directors and writers, but rather its stars to whom he gave screen credits to in order to attract the best actors. He even created stars by building up previously unknown actors’ public images and careers.

His genius ways of advertising, and the use of publicity, is well demonstrated by how he made Theda Bara, an average Cincinnati girl a huge star and the first on-screen vampire. The audiences loved these stars, and were drawn to the movies because of them, which in turn of course generated great profit for Fox.

In 1923 he built the so called Fox Hill studios that now gives home to 20th century Fox. In 1926 Fox acquired (for a great deal of money) a sound-on-film system called Movietone, and became one of the first studios (alongside Warner Brothers) to experiment with sound films. In same year he built „Movietone city” on a 300 acre territory in Beverly Hills, which at the time, became the state of the art studio.

At this period he was at the peak of his career and was the wealthiest. He used to brag that not a day went by without William Fox’s name appearing on at least one movie screen somewhere in the world. According to legend, he never had a smaller bill on himself than a 100 and he wanted to stop time so badly that he never wore a watch.

During his work in Hollywood he hired many Hungarian actors, writers and creatives with whom he worked closely. Although he never returned to Hungary, he sent a news filmmaker to his hometown to shoot some footage, which he later showed to his family in the States. In 1999 a memorial tablet was made in his honour that hangs on the wall of Fox Film Studio’s screening room, and is made of the famous Hungarian Herendi porcelain.

His former home has just been recently discovered in Tolcsva, and is waiting to be rebuilt into a Museum in his honour which is expected to highly boost the tourism of this little town. He contributed greatly to the art, technology, and business of the film industry. Up to this day he is considered a pioneer in the film industry.

Due to the stock market crash of 1929, alongside several legal issues, as well as a car accident forced him into a long struggle to fight bankruptcy and eventually Fox lost control of the Fox Film Corporation through a hostile takeover in 1930.

In 1941 he even served a few months in prison for bribing a judge during the liquidation of his holdings. After that, Fox was forced to retire from the film business as he was blacklisted. He died in 1952 at the age of 73 in New York. None of his former film industry colleagues attended his funeral. Even though he had to sell his interests in the ’30s, his legacy lives on in the name of 20th Century Fox and his films that influenced the lives of millions.

ADOLPH ZUKOR, the Founder of Paramount Pictures

Adolph Zukor, the founder of Paramount Picture *Photo: Wikipedia*

Adolph Zukor became one of the fathers of the Hollywood film industry by founding Paramount Pictures. He started from nothing, but he accomplished everything he ever wanted to. Thanks to his hard work he became one of the founders of the American film industry.

He was born in a Hungarian town called Ricse in 1873, where his parents owned a small shop. He became an orphan at the age of 7.

He was an exceptional student, but had to start working at the age of 12 while still attending night school. When he turned 15, he decided to travel and emigrate to the United States completely alone. At that time he just finished elementary school and never went back to high school afterward. With just a few bucks sewed into the lining of his coat, Adolph Zukor arrived in New York in 1889.

Once in the states, he first took a job he could get at a furrier. In his free time he played baseball, and constantly sang Hungarian songs with other immigrant boys. Over the years he saved up a few thousand dollars, and returned to Hungary for a visit, after which he married Lottie Kaufman, who was also a Hungarian immigrant.

Youtube The History of the founders of hollywood

He even saved up enough to start his own fur shop, but when he saw his first movie he instantly realized the business potentials of the motion picture industry. In 1903 he invested in a Union Square penny arcade that went so well that he sold his fur business and opened more arcades, which began his giant motion picture production and distribution empire.

Industry Accomplishments

Zukor’s success mainly lied in him realizing that the feature films had potential, that they were economically more viable than short films. When he acquired the American rights for 40,000 dollars to the feature film called Queen Elizabeth and broadcast it as the film’s exclusive distributor, it instantly became a huge success. He made a fortune, thus proving the viability of feature films.

In 1912 he founded the Famous Players Film Company which produced such films as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Prisoner of Zenda whose success exceeded all expectations. In the following years he got huge financial backings and it became his goal to bring famous stage actors to the screen.

He even opened the first studio building in Hollywood. Soon, many famous actors came to him for work. His studio worked with and gained such actors as Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Gary Cooper and Douglas Fairbanks much fame.

Zukor introduced exclusivity, which meant that his actors couldn’t work for other companies. It wasn’t a financially good or even fair deal for the actors, but still this contract always brought them their desired fame. Up to this day, the stars on Paramount’s logo represent the first few signed stars of the studio.

In 1916, Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky (the owner of Lasky Company) bought out the owner of Paramount and merged the three companies into one. Zukor became president of the new Paramount. From then on the company was flourishing thanks to Zukor.

He wasn’t an eccentric, well-publicized figure like most of the pioneers in the industry, he could have been easily mistaken for an average businessman as he liked to work from behind the scenes. Around the studio Zukor was known by funny nicknames like Sugar which Zukor means in Hungarian. During the 1910s and 1920s he created a cinema chain of nearly 2 000 screens, ran two production studios, and became an investor in radio, but his real talent laid in the organization of his company’s industrial structure.

He created a model of an integrated film studio as he centralized all segments of the film industry in one company, meaning that he gave Paramount control over production, distribution, and exhibition of movies. He was also infamous for visiting movie sets every morning and always keeping a close eye on production.

In the 1910s and 20s his career reached its peak, he became one of the most influential people in Hollywood by founding Paramount Pictures and building a whole realm of cinemas and studios around it. But even then, he always kept in touch with his hometown. He even sent money to build a school in Ricse, and to the people in need. He helped his hometown in any way he could.

Although he spent most of his life in the United States, he never forgot his hometown and country, where he came from. Perhaps the most expressive and famous legend about him is that he had an inscription on the wall of his office that said: “It is not enough to be Hungarian” - to which he was quoted to add in a low voice: “but it may help.”

In 1932, Paramount went bankrupt and Zukor left his role as president and became chairman of the board.

Adolph Zukor was a pioneer in the industry, he saw the future and possibilities of the motion picture before most people did. Zukor even got an Academy Award in 1949 for his life achievements. He wrote his memoir in 1953, which is called The Public Is never Wrong. He retired from Paramount in 1949, but held the role of chairman emeritus until his death in 1976 at the age of 103.

Today, Paramount is the fourth oldest surviving film studio in the world.

BÉLA LUGOSI, a.k.a Dracula

Béla Lugosi (born Béla Blaskó) is most famous for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula. This world-famous character actor was born in 1882 in Lugos, Hungary, a town he later based his stage name on.

He worked as an actor in Hungary but after the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1919, he had to flee the country due to his activities in the actors’ union. First he worked in Germany, then he settled in America. In the States he first appeared in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and his portrayal was so successful that in 1931 he was chosen to play the role of the blood-thirsty vampire again in a hit feature film.

His portrayal of the character was unlike any other thus far. He instantly became famous for his mysterious, alluring, and fearsome portrayal of Dracula but after this part, his Hungarian accent limited his possibilities as an actor. He was unsuccessful in avoiding typecasting, and he stayed a character actor throughout his whole life, which led to him being frustrated during his entire career.

After the success of Dracula, Lugosi became one of the most famous horror stars of America. He was often paired with the legendary Boris Karloff with whom they made several classics like The Black Cat and Son of Frankenstein. After these movies, he wasn’t able to get roles in other genres despite his trying. He was even gradually restricted to minor parts by the producers. At this time he became addicted to morphine which was noted by the producers and led to Lugosi’s downfall. This was the time of his life when he became acquainted with Ed Wood and his low-budget movies.

Ed Wood, who was a huge fan of Lugosi, found him in poverty, and offered him roles in his infamous trash films like the Bride of the Monster and Glen or Glenda. This co-operation didn’t last long because Lugosi died of a heart attack in 1956. He was buried wearing one of the Dracula costumes. The cape he wore in Dracula is now in the ownership of Universal Studios.

Despite the unfortunate end of his career, Lugosi hasn’t been forgotten: In the 1994 movie Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton, Lugosi was played by Martin Landau who received an Academy Award for his portrayal of the Hungarian actor.

Up to this day, Lugosi is considered by many as the best actor to ever play Dracula.

MICHAEL CURTIZ, the Oscar-winning Director of Casablanca

Michael Curtiz, or as we know him Kertész Mihály, was a Hungarian American film director, mostly known for directing one of the world’s greatest films: Casablanca.

Michael Curtiz won Academy Award for Best Director with the movie, Casablanca

Curtiz was born in 1886 in Hungary where he later studied the art of filmmaking and directing. Curtiz decided to leave when the Hungarian film industry was nationalized in 1919.

He first worked in Vienna and moved to America in 1926, where Jack Warner hired him as a director. In the States he directed many classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce and of course Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director. Even today the American Film Institute considers Casablanca as the third greatest American movie ever made. But this wasn’t his first Oscar nomination. He had been nominated four times before for Captain Blood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Four Daughters and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Curtiz also worked with such actors as Elvis Presley, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart.

He never fully learned English which is a huge part of the anecdotes of him. The most famous story of him is that during a shooting he said: „Bring on the empty horses!” by which he meant bring the horses without riders, but it made his colleagues laugh very hard.

His most successful period was when he worked for the Warner Brothers and after the 40s, when he tried to become a freelancer, his career began to decline. Still, he continued directing films until his death in 1962. During his career he directed more than 50 films in Europe and more than a hundred in the States.

Andrew G. Vajna, the producer of Rambo and Terminator

Andrew G. Vajna, or as many simply call him Andy Vajna, was one of the most important Hollywood producers of the second half of the 20th century. He was the executive producer of the Rambo series, Terminator 3-5, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Evita, as well as the founder of Carolco Pictures and Cinergi Productions.

Although he reached such success in Hollywood, the beginning of his life was extremely tumultuous. In 1956, after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Army, he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 with the assistance of the Red Cross. The experience of his parents allowing him to leave to start a new life alone on another continent at such a young age, unquestionably had an enormous influence on his personality, forming it to become driven, inventive, innovative and fearlessly enthusiastic. After learning English, he went on to study cinematography at the University of California. But instead of diving into the film industry, he started to work as a hairdresser and then went to Hong Kong to start a high-quality wig business, which became a huge success.

Selling his company in Hong Kong gave him the financial stability to purchase cinemas in the Far East and to start Panasia, a highly profiting venture dealing with film distribution. He then sold this company of his, to found Carolco Pictures with Mario Kassar in 1976. Starting as a small office with only the two of them and their partners as secretaries, they set out to deal with distribution, funding and selling films on a global scale.

Andrew Vajna (left) and Mario Kassar (right)

Vajna and Kassar also started to produce movies, beginning with the worldwide favourite Rambo: First Blood, premiered in 1982. They bought the rights for the book and had a strong vision of Sylvester Stallone in the leading role, who at the time was not yet such a famous actor. When they offered Stallone the role he agreed, but then unexpectedly decided against it. Cunningly, to bring him back to the production they asked him to rewrite the script for 100.000 dollars, and as they were hoping, Stallone became so connected to the script, that he wanted to play the role again. This collaboration led to global fame, and they went on to make film history when they created the second Rambo film in 1985, that created a phenomenal box office success.

Youtube TRAILER of RAMBO - FIRST BLOOD

Alongside his Hollywood success, he always sought to connect with Hungary, even before the political change. He was one of the first to bring large scale Hollywood productions to Hungary when as the producer of Red Heat, he took the crew and cast to the other side of the Iron Curtain in 1988. With the political change only a few years away, the change was more tangible in Hungary, making shooting easier here than in Moscow, where they were denied filming permits even for one scene. But Andy’s recklessness was not stopped by that; the most important members of the crew flew to Moscow, where they illegally shot a scene in the Red Square. The production of the film in Hungary was significant because it gave opportunities to many Hungarian actors and generally offered an extraordinary experience for the inhabitants of Budapest to witness a Hollywood production in the making for the first time in their lives.

After selling his part of Carolco due to disagreements with his partner, Vajna founded Cinergi Productions in 1989, so that he could continue his passion of independent film production and distribution, which he based on close relations with his creatives partners. But Vajna continued to be on good terms with Carolco and even collaborated as producer of Terminator 2, another of the company’s landmark movies.

Vajna’s Cinergi participated in distribution with The Walt Disney Company for nine years. He produced some key films through this company, such as Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third movie of the series, that gained the largest box office success of 1995. He also bought the rights to the story and produced the enormously successful historical musical feature film Evita in 1996. The brilliant super-production stars Madonna as the Argentine president's wife for which she received a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and the film also received awards for Best Picture and Best Original Song. Next to filming on location in Buenos Aires, many key scenes were filmed in Budapest as well. In this period he also worked on other productions with countless other star actors like Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and Danny DeVito. But regardless, many of the films were not able to gain a sufficient amount of financial success, leading to the company closing in 1998.

Youtube TRAILER OF DIE HARD 3

Vajna and the Hungarian Film Industry

Vajna is significant among the many other Hollywood filmmakers of Hungarian origins, because he never forgot his roots and always kept it part of his personality. Whenever he had an opportunity, he supported Hungary’s film industry with his knowledge or by bringing American productions here. Right after the political change, he founded InterCom, Hungary’s leading film distribution company of Hollywood films.

He was determined to prove to the Hungarian film industry, that even with Hungarian actors, creators and crew, it was possible to create blockbuster movies similar to those in Hollywood. To prove his point, he produced his first Hungarian movie in 1997, called Out of Order that became one of Hungary’s most successful comedies. At the beginning of his working process he was looking for the right story, which he finally found when he saw Ray Cooney’s play in a theater. By the end of that evening he had already bought its rights and within a year the movie was in the cinemas, a perfect example of how driven and enthusiastic he Vajna could be. He produced other Hungarian films as well like Children of Glory which is about a love story during the 1956 revolution, the one after which he had to emigrate. The premier of the movie was scheduled to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic event and was awarded critical and public acclaim.

In the last period of his life from 2011 until his death, he moved permanently back to Hungary, where his presence and activity started a new period in Hungarian film production by becoming the Government Commissioner for the renewal of the Hungarian film industry. Vajna had two goals, one being to make Hungary an attractive and promising country for foreign productions, while the other to bring up the Hungarian movies to an international standard.

Vajna went on to direct the two key legal advancements enabling Hungary to become hugely attractive for international productions. The first of these is the development of the new permit system for shooting in public spaces. The second is the improvement of the tax incentive system, that now offers a 30% tax rebate for international productions with projects connecting to European culture.

Furthermore, Vajna’s aim was to provide the Hungarian industry and filmmakers with his rich knowledge and experience, to assist the development and success of Hungarian film productions both within Hungary and on an international level. After a few years, Vajna’s results became visible with an upsurge of diverse and high-quality movies, that have brought home many highly acclaimed awards such as an Oscar, a Grand Prix and a Golden Globe for Son of Saul and the Golden Bear for On Body and Soul. This has led to Hungarian films gaining larger global respect for the first time in decades.

However, in his last years he also became a more politically controversial public figure in his home country by gaining ownership on a significant amount of Hungarian media platforms, such as main commercial television channels, radio channels and tabloids, making them increasingly exclusively supportive of the Hungarian government and more tabloid in nature.

Right up until his death in Budapest at the age of 74 in 2019, Andy Vajna was fully active. His funeral was orchestrated in Hungary’s most prominent cemetery and was attended by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister. But since a huge amount of his professional and personal life was spent in L.A., he also had a funeral in the U.S., where his ashes were buried next to his family members in the presence of some of the most important people in Hollywood. His death unquestionably leaves a void in Hungarian and international film production alike.

ISTVÁN SZABÓ, Academy Award Winning Director

István Szabó, who was born in 1938 in Hungary, is a film director and screenwriter, most famous for his film Mephisto (1981) which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.

During WW II, Szabó and his family were chased by the Nazis but he managed to survive by hiding in an orphanage. It is no surprise that the most common topic of his films are political conflicts and Central Europe’s history.

István Szabó with Klaus Maria Brandauer at the 1982 Oscars

He first directed films in Hungary during the 60s like Father and Confidence for which Szabó won the Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1980. The film was even nominated for an Academy Award. But the first time that a film directed by Szabó won an Academy award was in the next year, in 1981.

Mephisto even won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival which increased Szabó’s international prestige.

Despite these prestigious awards, his most famous film is probably the 1999 historical drama called Sunshine. It is also considered as Szabó’s most ambitious picture.The movie, with Ralph Fiennes in the leading role, tells the story of the Jewish Sonnenschein family as they experience the first half of the 20th century. The film was nominated for three Golden Globes and received very positive reviews, even from Roger Ebert. Szabó keeps making great international movies up to this day, like Being Julia (2004), for which Annette Bening won a Golden Globe as Best Actress.

Lately, a heated debate has evolved surrounding Szabó, since the Hungarian Filmacademy Association has given him a lifetime achievement award in 2020, but a well-known Hungarian historian stood out against this due to Szabó’s spy activities from 1957 to 1963. After the political change, the Hungarian public learned that he wrote reports on the anti-government activities at the Hungarian Film University and specifically on his classmates. After graduating, he continued to report on his fellow directors and actors with whom he collaborated. This was during the period of retaliation after the 1956 revolution when imprisonment and executions were everyday matters in the dictatorship. Following finishing his spy activities at the age of 26, he was constantly granted opportunities to shoot feature films in an era when other talented filmmakers had to wait many years to shoot if they were not collaborative with the Communist Party.

The news of Szabó’s activity as a communist informer broke in 2006, but he and many others stated he reported with the intentions of defending people. Regardless of his intentions, it is a truly relevant question, whether a director’s film lifetime achievements can be awarded to someone whose first half of his carrier was supported by a dictatorial system, due to his secret reports against his fellow filmmakers. The wider public is provided only limited access to the archive of reports, which makes it quite impossible to be able to certainly decide whether Szabó’s reports were made with good intentions or not.

VILMOS ZSIGMOND, Oscar Winning Cinematographer

Vilmos Zsigmond, Academy Award-winning cinematographer with Jack Nicholson in 1989 *Photo: Eliot Marks*

Vilmos Zsigmond, who was born in Hungary in 1930, was one of the most prestigious and well-known cinematographers of Hollywood with his very unique style. During the first period of his career he studied cinematography and worked in Hungary, but in 1956 came a turning point: He and one of his friends filmed the events of the Hungarian Revolution and had to flee the country. These young men had a huge role in notifying the West about the Revolution in Hungary.

He went to America and by 1962 he became a citizen of the United States. At first he worked in Los Angeles as a photographer, but during the 1960s he constantly tried to break into the film industry and worked on many independent films. But only the ’70s delivered the success he deserved when Robert Altman hired him as the cinematographer for his now cult classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Youtube A SCENE FROM McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Zsigmond was free to implement his own artistic ideas so he created a unique look for the film by using a special process in a laboratory which made the movie’s atmosphere resemble the old films’. The film brought him fame and recognition.

In the following years he was the cinematographer of such films as Altman’s The Long Goodbye, Boorman’s Deliverance and Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind for which he won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

He was nominated four more times for McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Deer Hunter, The River, and The Black Dahlia. He has also worked with Woody Allen several times, on movies like Cassandra’s Dream and Melinda and Melinda.

And Many, Many Others...

We could introduce countless Hungarians who work or worked in the Hollywood film industry, but unfortunately we only have space and time to mention a few more.

You might know that the protagonist of the legendary Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, was also Hungarian. You might know that, because in the last few decades of his life he took great interest in his Hungarian heritage, along with her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis.

His parents were born in Hungary but emigrated to America. Curtis himself could only speak Hungarian until the age of six, which made it difficult for him to start his schooling. With her daughter, Tony Curtis even helped finance rebuilding the Synagogue of Budapest in the 1990s. He also founded the Emanuel Foundation for Hungarian Culture. Furthermore, he promoted the tourism of Hungary in several commercials.

If you are a fan of the classic Hollywood, you might have heard about George Cukor, the master of romantic movies. Yes, he also had Hungarian blood running through his veins. His parents were also immigrants from Hungary, but Cukor himself was born in New York. He directed such cult classics as The Philadelphia Story, My Fair Lady and Romeo and Juliet. He is also known for playing a huge part in Katharine Hepburn’s rise and success.

Hungarians have reached the highest success even in the field of music: Miklós Rózsa, an Oscar winning music composer was also Hungarian. He composed the music of such cult classics as Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Ben Hur or El Cid. He won three Academy Awards for the aforementioned works of art.

Frank Darabont is an American director, screenwriter and producer of Hungarian heritage, whose life story is a typical example of the adventurous and dangerous lives of the Hungarian emigres of the 1956 Revolution. His parents had to flee the country with the infant Darabont hidden in a picnic basket, according to his recollection, arriving in Chicago and then Los Angeles at the age of five. He grew up to become a filmmaker nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe, renown for adapting Stephen King’s works, such as The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist to screen. Darabont is also widely respected for developing and executive producing the first season of The Walking Dead horror series and creating the neo-noir TNT series Mob City.

Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter, who after being born in a Hungarian village, ended up in an Austrian refugee camp during the Second World War and then moved with his family to the poor immigrant area of Cleveland, New York. In the 1970s he worked for Rolling Stone and wrote his first screenplay for F.I.S.T. starring Sylvester Stallone. He continued to write the scripts of such cult films as Basic Instinct, Flashdance and Jagged Edge. He also wrote the movie Showgirls’ script, for which he was given an award for the worst screenplay. Paradoxically, as time went on this film still became so popular among the public that it is one of MGM’s top 20 all-time bestsellers. Still, all the scripts he wrote in the next decade never got produced. After a long period of failure, at least one of his scripts finally got produced in 2006. The producer was Andy Vajna, a Hollywood filmmaker also born in Hungary. For this production, they when back to Hungary for shooting the Hungarian language film called Children of Glory, about the 1956 revolution in Budapest.

Klasky Csupo Inc. was founded and is lead by Gábor Csupó and his ex-partner Arlene Klasky. Csupó was born and grew up in Budapest, but escaped the Communist regime in 1975 at the age of 23, moving firstly to Sweden and then to the United States. Klasky Csupo Ins. is one of the world’s most famous animation studios based in Hollywood. Its success peaked in the 1990s, when working on the pilot and first three seasons of world-famous The Simpsons, for which Csupó decided on the series’ characteristically weird colouring. The next huge success came after producing Rugrats, one of Nickelodeon’s first animated shows. They also created Duckman and made further animated series, movies and commercials, even winning an Emmy award.

In the last few years, films made in Hungary have also been successful in Hollywood, winning Oscars and other internationally renown awards.

Made in 2015, Son of Saul is an Oscar-winning Hungarian film that revisits the topic of the Holocaust in such an innovative and reformative manner, that it shocked the mainstream film industry and audience. Both its story and its unique visual language was inspired by files about and photographs made by members of the Sonderkommando, work units made of prisoners at German Nazi death camps. They were the people forced to do the work behind the constant extermination of the prisoners. The exceptional way that the DOP Erdélyi Miklós and Director Nemes Jeles László use one unusual close-up framing throughout the film brings the world of the deathcamp uncannily close to the viewer, without showing violence and death upfront.

Another victory was when the 2016 short film called Sing won the Oscar for best live short film. It is a partially psychological, partially symbolic film about community and authority set in 1991 - connecting its meaning to history and the political change, although it could be easily be read as a comment on current times.

On Body and Soul is a psychological and spiritual film like no other, presents a story of love first experienced in the mutual dreams of two workers in a slaughterhouse. Ildikó Enyedi, the film’s director and writer stirred both the viewers and film world in general with her highly unique perspective on the human condition and filmmaking.The 2017 movie was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, nominated for an Oscar and the lead actress Alexandra Borbély was awarded the European Actress award at the European Film Awards.

The list of Hungarians in Hollywood and of the Hungarian films acknowledged in Hollywood could go on and on, but this article can’t. As you can see, Hungarians presence in the American film industry has become so striking that it requires explanation that of course no one can give. Norman Macrae, who was the chief editor of the Economist, even wrote once that the word movie must have come from the Hungarian word for it, which is „mozi”.

Whatever the reason is for this phenomenon, one thing is sure: without these amazing Hungarians the Hollywood film industry wouldn’t be what it is today.