American Dreamer

Robert Halmi Sr. was born in Budapest, Hungary on January 22, 1924. He received a degree in economics from the University of Budapest. During World War II, he was jailed by the Nazis. Afterward, he became a translator and assistant for a Time-Life reporter in Budapest and began taking pictures. Since he was working for American newspapers, he was accused by the Communist government of spying and sent back to jail. Eventually he became a broadcaster in Salzburg, Austria, for Radio Free Europe.

He moved to the United States in 1950. His first job there was photographing babies for a diaper service. He photographed his fellow immigrants on the ship as they arrived in New York Harbor. He eventually took the photographs to Life magazine and was hired. He also worked for other magazines. His nature photographs have been collected in several books including In the Wilds of Africa and Into Your Hand They Are Delivered.

In the early 1970s, he made documentaries for television shows like The American Sportsman. His first feature film, Visit to a Chief's Son came out in 1974 and was based on a photo essay of his that Life had published in 1962 documenting a sojourn that he and his stepson had shared with the Masai tribe in Kenya. He later became a television producer, an executive producer, and a head of a production company. He worked on adapting Lonesome Dove, Call of the Wild, Gulliver's Travels, Crime and Punishment, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. He died of an aneurysm on July 30, 2014 at the age of 90.

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