Julius "Jules" Dassin ( December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor.

A subject of the Hollywood blacklist, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, where he continued his career. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Directors' Guild.

Dassin received a Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Du rififi chez les hommes. He was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen for his film Never on Sunday, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his Broadway production of Illya Darling.

Biography

Julius Dassin was born in Middletown, Connecticut, on December 18, 1911, to Bertha (née Vogel) and Samuel Dassin, a barber. His parents were both Jewish immigrants from Odesa, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). Julius had seven siblings, including four brothers, Louis C., Benjamin, Irving and Edward; and three sisters.

In 1915, when Julius was three years old, the Dassin family moved to Harlem, New York. He attended public grammar school where he received his first acting role in a school play. Julius was given a small part but when came time to speak his only line, he fainted due to stage fright. He also learned to play the piano at a young age. During his youth he attended Camp Kinderland, a left-wing Yiddish youth camp.

Julius attended Morris High School in the Bronx. He started acting professionally in 1926, at the age of fourteen, with the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York City. On October 13, 1929, newspaper columnist Mark Hellinger printed a story given to him by Dassin in the New York Daily News; nearly twenty years later, the two would work together in Hollywood.

On July 11, 1933, Julius' older brother Louis was arrested in Meriden, Connecticut when he confessed to the theft of $12,000 from the Puritan Bank and Trust Company, where he worked as a teller and treasurer. On September 10, 1933, when he was 21 years old, Julius married Beatrice Launer, a concert violinist and a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music.

Beginning in 1934, Julius spent three years studying dramatic technique in Europe. He spent time in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Switzerland and Greece, working odd jobs to sustain himself.

After returning from Europe in 1936, Dassin joined the Children's Theatre, a division of the Federal Theatre Project during the Great Depression. It was during this time that he joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The troupe put on children's plays at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City. During this time, he played the role of Zar in The Emperor's New Clothes in September 1936, and the role of Oakleaf in Revolt of the Beavers, which ran from May 20, 1937, to June 19, 1937. The later play was criticized as strongly communist.

He later joined up with the Artef Players, a Yiddish Proletarian Theater company in 1937, serving as an actor, set designer, set builder, stage director and even ticket salesman. Beginning on October 5, 1937, he appeared in Moyshe Kulbak's play The Outlaw, which had been adapted by Chaver Paver at The Artef Theatre He also appeared in Artef Players' Recruits and 200,000. On November 5, 1938, Dassin's wife Beatrice gave birth to their first child, son Joseph. In October 1939, he acted in Chaver Paver's Clinton Street, which was staged at the Mercury Theatre, after Orson Welles' troupe had left for Hollywood and the Radio-Keith-Orpheum circuit. Since the pay was poor with Artef Players, Dassin formed a theatre troupe to tour the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills as summer stock.

Dassin acted in a movie scripted and directed by Jack Skurnick, which was shown to a small group at a space that Skurnick rented in New York but was never exhibited beyond that.

He then wrote sketches for radio, at times directing his own radio plays, and became a stage director and producer. In April 1939, Dassin adapted Nicolai Gogol's story The Overcoat for the CBS variety program The Kate Smith Hour, which starred Burgess Meredith and was broadcast live on April 20, 1939. In early 1940, Dassin staged and directed the play Medicine Show for producer Martin Gabel, starring Isabel Bonner, Philip Bourneuf and Norman Lloyd. Although it was well received by critics, Medicine Show only ran for 35 performances at the New Yorker Theatre, from April 12, 1940, to May 11, 1940.