Biography
Early US career
In the US, Benedek worked on the montage scenes of Test Pilot (1938) at MGM. He edited A Little Bit of Heaven (1940) for Pasternak at Universal.[10]
At MGM he was assistant director on Song of Russia (1944) and worked as an associate producer under Joe Pasternak. Among his jobs included doing screen tests, second unit directing, and supervising the animated dance sequence in Anchors Aweigh (1945).[11]
In 1946 he was linked with communist front organisations.[12]
Television
In the 1960s Benedek mostly concentrated on TV, doing episodes of Perry Mason, The Naked City, Thriller, Zane Grey Theater, The Fugitive, The Doctors and the Nurses, The Outer Limits, Mannix, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Untouchables, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Felony Squad, 12 O'Clock High, Iron Horse, and Custer.
In 1965 he directed a play Belial.[21]
Later career and death
From 1976 to 1980, he was chairman of the graduate film program at New York University's School of the Arts. In 1983, he became a visiting professor of film at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.[7] He went on to teach at the Film Academy in Munich, Germany, at Rice University in Houston, and at Columbia University in New York City.[23]
Benedek died in 1992 in The Bronx, New York.[7] He had two daughters, Melinda Norton and Barbara Rhodes, and at the time of his death was partner to painter and printmaker Danielle DeMers.[24]
