George Michael Hoellering was an Austrian film director, producer and cinema manager. He directed Hortobagy about the Puszta in Hungary, as well as the 1951 British film Murder in the Cathedral, which he co-wrote with T. S. Eliot. He was the director of the Academy Cinema in London's Oxford Street from 1944 until his death in 1980.
Early life
George Hoellering was born as Georg Michael Höllering in Baden, near Vienna, Austria, on 20 July 1897, the third of four children of the musician and impresario, Georg Höllering, and his wife, Maria Magdalene.
Career
From 1919 to 1924 Hoellering was licensee of the Schikaneder Kino in Vienna. At the beginning of the 1920s he moved to Berlin, managed his Vienna cinema from the distance, and worked in the film industry as an editor and director of shorts. He was production manager of Kuhle Wampe, a German film classic, written by Bertolt Brecht. With the approaching Nazi takeover at the end of 1932, Hoellering and his pregnant Jewish wife thought it wise to leave Germany. For a short time they settled in Vienna. Early in 1934, Hoellering, his family and the cameraman László Schäffer moved to Hungary, to make a film at the famous Puszta of Hortobágy. The film Hortobagy is a docu-fiction, an amalgam of documentary shots with a threefold story-line, which is acted out by peasants and herdsmen. As the Hungarian censors ordered Hortobagy to be cut by more than 10%, in 1936 Hoellering decided to emigrate to England. The London premiere of Hortobagy was set by The Film Society for Sunday 13 December 1936 in the New Gallery Cinema, where the film could be shown without a British license. Graham Greene wrote about the film in The Spectator: "Undoubtedly, the horses have it. Hortobagy, a film of the Hungarian plains, acted by peasants and shepherds, is one of the most satisfying films I have seen: it belongs to the order of Dovzhenko’s Earth without the taint of propaganda. The photography is extraordinarily beautiful, the cutting superb." And later: "The leaping of the stallions, the foaling of the mares are shown with a frankness devoid of offence and add to the impression that here we are seeing, as far as humanly possible, the whole of a way of life. But we are not asked to admire one way more than another, the horse more than the tractor." From 1937, Hoellering became manager at the Academy Cinema in London's Oxford Street, and from 1944 until his death in 1980 he was director and part-owner. In the Summer of 1940 the British authorities arrested and interned all "enemy aliens", including Hoellering, and transported them for several months to the Isle of Man. In the camp there he wrote, organised and directed an amateur theatre production, a musical called "What a Life!" The music, mostly written by fellow inmate Hans Gál, was also played by inmates. During the war years, Hoellering directed several wartime propaganda shorts for different ministries, and Message from Canterbury, a documentary made with the close cooperation of Archbishop William Temple. His 1950 film, Shapes and Forms is considered to be the first appearance of the Institute of Contemporary Arts on film. He worked for several years on the film version of T.S.Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, which won two prizes at the Venice International Film Festival, 1951.
Personal life
Hoellering in 1919 married Emma Weidenauer, a German actress, who died in 1927 in cancer. His second wife, Dora Constance Lehmann, had been previously married and had a son, Ivo Jarosy. She was the daughter of Felix Lehmann and his wife Anna Friedländer. They married in 1929 in Baden, Austria, and their only child, Andrew, was born in Vienna in 1932. Dora died in England in 1955. On 24 November 1956, Hoellering married Anne Allnatt the daughter of Alfred Ernest Allnatt, a building contractor.
