Biography

Arguably the most famous casting director in show biz with more than 400 film and TV credits to his name, Lynn Stalmaster helped launch the career of many a great star. He was born in Nebraska, son of Irvin Stalmaster, a district court judge (1897-1952), and Estelle Lapidus (1903-1971). In 1938, his family relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he attended Beverly Hills High School and first discovered acting on radio. Following military service, he studied at UCLA, graduating with a master's degree in theater arts in 1952. Between 1951 and 1955, he had a minor career as a screen actor but at the same time hedged his bets by joining an independent production company headed by Jack J. Gross and Philip N. Krasne. Stalmaster started out as a producer's assistant then took over the role of casting director upon his predecessor's retirement, over time developing a canny aptitude for "reading actors" as well as accumulating an inventory of (not necessarily established) theatrical players from the U.S. and Europe. He initially worked on several classic TV shows, including The Lone Wolf (1954), 319 episodes of Gunsmoke (1955), and Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). After going freelance, he was tasked by the director Robert Wise to find "new faces" who could be cast as suitable inmates for the Susan Hayward prison drama I Want to Live! (1958). Offers soon began to flood in from other famous filmmakers for ensemble casting.

Stanley Kramer used his services for Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (kick-starting the career of William Shatner), William Wyler for The Children's Hour (1961), Billy Wilder for Irma la Douce (1963) and The Fortune Cookie (1966), and Norman Jewison for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Stalmaster's bolder choices included traveling across Europe to recruit native German speakers (rather than using familiar English-speaking actors) for key roles in The Great Escape (1963). (He found Hannes Messemer, who played prison Kommandant Von Luger, in Zurich.) His keen eye for talent resulted in the seminal casting of relatively unknown stage actor Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967) and LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte in Roots (1977). He discovered Christopher Reeve on the New York stage and persisted in efforts to have him assigned the lead role of Superman (1978). (Of Reeve, Stalmaster once said, "I was totally captured, not only by his talent, but by him as a human being.") He furthered the careers of Ned Beatty (Deliverance (1972)) and Jeff Bridges (Halls of Anger (1970)) by prompting their respective movie debuts. Others whose careers "The Master Caster'" helped mentor along the way include Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, John Travolta, Bruce Dern, Jon Voight, and James Caan.

Stalmaster was the first in his chosen profession to receive a single-card main screen credit, "casting by" (for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)), and the first casting director to receive an honorary Academy Award (in 2017).