death_place death_date birth_place birth_date yearsactive article_title name occupation
sacramento , california , us 12 january 1994 bessarabia , russian empire 7 august 1908 1939 -- 1964 samuel bronston
 samuel bronston film producer , film director
samuel bronston

samuel bronston -lrb- samuel bronshtein , march 26 , 1908 , bessarabia -- january 12 , 1994 , sacramento , california -rrb- was a bessarabian-born american film producer , film director , and a nephew of socialist revolutionary figure , leon trotsky .
he was also the petitioner in a u.s. supreme court case that set a major precedent for perjury prosecutions when it overturned his conviction .
bronston was born in kishinev , bessarabia , russian empire -lrb- present day moldova -rrb- and educated at the sorbonne .
he worked for metro-goldwyn-mayer 's french unit in paris before setting up as an independent film producer by the 1940s .
his first film for his new production company , samuel bronston productions , was `` jack london '' , -lrb- 1943 -rrb- followed by a series of epic films : `` john paul jones '' -lrb- 1959 -rrb- , `` king of kings '' -lrb- 1961 -rrb- , `` el cid '' -lrb- 1961 -rrb- , `` 55 days at peking '' -lrb- 1963 -rrb- and `` the fall of the roman empire '' -lrb- 1964 -rrb- .
in 1962 , he was awarded a special merit golden globe award for `` el cid '' .
he was a pioneer in the practice of locating epic-scale productions in spain to reduce the massive costs involved .
the success of his films inspired him to help build gigantic studios in las rozas near madrid .
bronston frequently worked with a regular team of creative artists : the director anthony mann , the screenwriters philip yordan and jesse lasky jr. , the composer miklós rózsa , the co-producers jaime prades , alan brown and michał waszyński , the cinematographer robert krasker and film editor robert lawrence .
he also favoured charlton heston and sophia loren as his leading actors .
the cost of the construction of the film studios and the box-office failure of his last epic , `` the fall of the roman empire '' combined to leave bronston in financial difficulties and , in 1964 , he had to stop all business activities .
samuel bronston productions filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on june 5 , 1964 stating he owed a debt of $ 5,647,758 to his creditor pierre s. du pont .
his company declared bankruptcy in june of that year .
a petition in august 1964 stated bronston distributors , inc. -lrb- a separate company -rrb- owed paramount $ 6,750,000 and pierre s. du point $ 323,191 .
two years later , he was asked under oath by a lawyer for one of his creditors a series of questions about the many bank accounts the company had had in europe .
one of them concerned whether he had had an account in switzerland .
`` the company had an account in zürich for six months '' , he replied , and answered all other questions concerning swiss bank accounts in the negative .
later , it was discovered that he had indeed had a very active personal bank account in geneva during the years he had been producing films in europe .
he was convicted of perjury by federal prosecutors who argued that his answer , while truthful in and of itself , was intended to mislead or evade .
after the appeals court upheld the conviction , `` bronston v. united states '' reached the supreme court , which overturned the conviction on january 10 , 1973 .
its ruling , that literally truthful yet technically misleading answers can not be prosecuted as perjury , has formed an important part of jurisprudence on the matter ever since , even being invoked by president bill clinton 's attorneys when he was charged with perjury during his impeachment .
the bankruptcy and criminal prosecution devastated his film career .
he had completed the 1964 `` circus world '' with john wayne just before the bankruptcy , and after that he made only three films : `` savage pampas '' -lrb- 1966 -rrb- , filmed in argentina with robert taylor ; `` dr. coppelius '' -lrb- 1966 -rrb- ; and `` fort saganne '' -lrb- 1984 -rrb- , a french film with gérard depardieu and catherine deneuve .
a planned epic on the life of isabella of spain never materialised .
bronston died in 1994 of pneumonia secondary to alzheimer 's disease at mercy hospital in sacramento , california .
he is buried in las rozas , madrid , spain .
he was survived by five children : dr william bronston , irene bronston , andrea bronston , philip bronston and kira bronston .
