Steven Spielberg

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Arnold and Leahanni Spielberg, née Posner, and has three younger sisters. His surname name comes from the name of the Austrian city Spielberg where his Hungarian Jewish ancestors lived in the 17th century. Spielberg’s family often moved because of his father’s occupation as a computer engineer; he lived in Camden, New Jersey, Montclair, New Jersey, Haddon Heights, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona and Saratoga, California. The first film Spielberg saw was Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth.

Throughout his early teens, Spielberg made amateur 8 mm “adventure” movies with his friends, the first of which he shot at a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. He charged admission (25 Cents) to his home movies (which involved the wrecks he staged with his Lionel train set) while his sister sold popcorn. At 13, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute war movie he titled Escape to Nowhere. At Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963, the then 16-year-old Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent movie, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight (which would later inspire Close Encounters). The movie, with a budget of USD$400, was shown in his local movie theater and generated a profit of $100. A writer for the local Phoenix press wrote that he could expect great things to come.

After his parents divorced, he moved to California with his father. His three sisters and mother remained in Arizona, where he attended Passover seders at the home of Zalman and Pearl Segal on an annual basis. He graduated from Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California in 1965, which he called the “worst experience” of his life and “hell on Earth“. During this time Spielberg became an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), as he developed the requirements for the Boy Scout Cinematography merit badge. In later life, he resigned from the national board of BSA after he had been admitted, because of his disapproval regarding the BSA’s anti-homosexuality stance.

After moving to California, he applied to attend film school at UCLA and University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television three separate times but was unsuccessful due to his C grade average. After Spielberg became famous, USC awarded Spielberg an honorary degree in 1994, and in 1996 he became a trustee of the University. He attended California State University, Long Beach to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. His actual career began when he returned to Universal studios as an unpaid, three-day-a-week intern and guest of the editing department. While attending college at Long Beach State in the 1960s, Spielberg also became member of Theta Chi Fraternity. In 2002, thirty-five years after starting college, Spielberg finished his degree via independent projects at CSULB, and was awarded a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option in Film/Video Production.

As an intern and guest of Universal Studios, Spielberg made his first short film for theatrical release, the 24 minute long movie Amblin’ in 1968. After Sidney Sheinberg, then the vice-president of production for Universal’s TV arm saw the film, Spielberg became the youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio (Universal). He dropped out of Long Beach State in 1969 to take the television director contract at Universal Studios and began his career as a professional director.

Credit : Wikipedia

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