Ivan Abramson

Who was Ivan Abramson?

Ivan Abramson was a director of American silent films active in the 1910s and 1920s.

Abramson emigrated to the United States from Russia in the 1880s and soon became involved in the Jewish newspaper field. In 1905 he founded an opera company. In 1914, he founded Ivan Film Productions to produce silent films, with the Sins of the Parents as his first release. In 1917, after success with pictures including One Law for Both and Enlighten Thy Daughter, Abramson partnered with William Randolph Hearst to form the Graphic Film Corporation.

Abramson's films feature melodramas with titillating titles such as Forbidden Fruit and A Child for Sale, and sexual hygiene films such as The Sex Lure and Enlighten Thy Daughter. Abramson's alliance ended with the 1919 release of The Echo of Youth.

In 1923, Abramson and Sidney M. Goldin directed East and West, filmed in Austria and starring Molly Picon, and which had English and Yiddish subtitles.

Abramson died on September 15, 1934 in New York at Mount Sinai Hospital, survived by his wife Liza Einhorn.