Ivan Tors | |
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1960 photo
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Born |
Iván Törzs June 12, 1916 Budapest, Austria-Hungary |
Died | June 4, 1983 Mato Grosso, Brazil |
(aged 66)
Years active | 1946-1980 |
Spouse(s) |
Constance Dowling (1955–1969) (her death) (4 children) |
Ivan Tors (born Iván Törzs; June 12, 1916 – June 4, 1983) was a Hungarian playwright, film director, screenwriter, and film and television producer with an emphasis on non-violent but exciting science fiction, underwater sequences, and stories involving animals. He started a Miami-based film studio now known as Greenwich Studios, and later a music company.
Tors wrote several plays in his native country Hungary before moving to the United States just prior to World War II. He arrived with his brother Ervin in July 1939 on the SS Hansa and had come to study at Fordham University in New York City. He subsequently enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps then transferred to the Office of Strategic Services. Following the war he was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a screenwriter.
In 1952 he made Storm over Tibet, his first film as co-writer and producer. He began his partnership with his fellow Hungarian Andrew Marton with this film.
Long interested in fact-based science fiction, often with an underwater setting, Tors partnered with actor Richard Carlson in the 1950s to create A-Men Films, a production company devoted to making movies about its own fictitious exploits.
Under the A-Men banner, Tors wrote and produced films such as The Magnetic Monster (1951), Riders to the Stars (1954), Gog (1954) and the television series Science Fiction Theatre, Sea Hunt, and The Aquanauts, starred Keith Larsen, Jeremy Slate, and Ron Ely, renamed Malibu Run. He created the NBC science fiction series The Man and the Challenge, starred George Nader and Jack Ging and was the executive producer of Ripcord.