Books
Through Hell
to Hollywood
A Biography
From the daughter of the man whose achievements have inspired generations comes the movie-worthy true story of Albert Mayer: Internment camp survivor, Immigrant, and Hollywood innovator.
Albert Mayer was born into the idyllic farming community of Perles in Yugoslavia—six years before the Axis Powers overran Europe and nine years before the Soviet forces interred thousands of ethic German in Yugoslavian liquidation camps. Surviving on stories of perseverance, faith, and the fearless efforts of fellow prisoners, Albert escaped certain death to become one of the most prolific inventors in the history of Hollywood—a legacy that has been hidden for far too long.
Beginning with his rural roots, Isabell Mayer Kerins recounts the stories told by friends, family members, and the man himself to trace a life deserving of such a legacy. THROUGH HELL TO HOLLYWOOD finds Albert in the bountiful fields of his childhood in pre-WWII on the Balkan Peninsula, the difficult horrors of his adolescence in a post-WWII Communist death camp, the hostile experiences of his teenage years as a refugee in war-torn Germany, and the hopeful beginnings of his American motion picture career. Bolstered by countless historical resources along with painstaking technical research, Kerins patches together the record of a life that is both gripping and tender, incisively personal and globally influential.
Albert Mayer is one of the most important names in film history the world has never heard. As a leading camera designer at Panavision, his work has shaped the way we see film—quite literally. With the advent of the Panaflex camera, designed and updated by Mayer and his son, countless culture-shaping classics have been produced: Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express (1974), Ron Howard’s Far and Away (1992), and James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) are only a few. Culminating in the award of several Oscars for technical achievements, Mayer is considered one of the most gifted and lauded camera engineers in history.
Visceral, vulnerable, and epic in both scale and subject, THROUGH HELL TO HOLLYWOOD is a tour-de-force achievement—a book worthy of the incredible man that inspires it.
