December 18: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg, whose blockbuster movies have included Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), War of the Worlds (2005) and Lincoln (2012) — among many others — was born in Cincinnati on this date in 1946. Spielberg was raised as an Orthodox Jew in New Jersey and Arizona, and says he “got smacked and kicked around” by anti-Semitic kids. He made his first films as an adolescent by staging crashes of his electric trains. Suffering from dyslexia, he dropped out of several colleges while getting his chops as a film director. Jaws was his first enormous hit, winning three Academy Awards and setting box office records. Spielberg raised the bar on science fiction films enormously with Close Encounters, E.T., A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Minority Report, and also brought Jewish history onto a world stage with Schindler’s List and Munich. The profits from the former went to establish the Righteous Persons Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving memory of the Holocaust and revitalizing Jewish life. Spielberg has been criticized for preferring overstatement and sentimentality in his films, but whatever they lack in subtlety they make up for with extraordinary imagery.
“I dream for a living.” —Steven Spielberg