Frederic Zelnik

Frederic Zelnik, born Friedrich Zelnik in Czernowitz in 1885, was an Austrian producer, director and actor and one of the most important producer-directors of German silent cinema. After a stage career in Nuremberg, Aachen, Worms, Prague and Berlin he began acting in films in 1914 and from 1915 also produced and directed. In 1918 he married the Polish dancer and film actress Lya Mara, whose stardom he built with films made for her, and in 1920 he founded the production firm Zelnik-Mara-Film. His period operetta films, among them The Blue Danube, The Bohemian Dancer and Dancing Vienna, were successful in Germany and abroad. He is credited as the first director in Europe to postsynchronize a film, The Crimson Circle (1929), using the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. After the Nazis took power in 1933 he and Mara left for London, where he kept directing and producing, took British citizenship and changed his name to Frederic. He died in London in 1950.