Turgut Demirağ

Turgut Demirağ — Biography

Born Ömer Turgut Demirağ on 13 December 1921 in the Divriği district of Sivas, he was the son of title-deed engineer Abdurrahman Naci Demirağ and a nephew of Nuri Demirağ, founder of Turkey's first aircraft factory. He finished primary school in Sivas and secondary school at Boğaziçi and Kabataş high schools in Istanbul, where his family later moved; sent to the United States in 1939 to study agricultural engineering, he switched in 1941 to film studies at the University of Southern California and interned at Paramount Studios. His father's death brought him back to Turkey in 1945, where he founded the production company And Film, named from his father's initials, and the And (later Şan) Cinema in Beyoğlu, becoming known as one of the filmmakers who brought Hollywood-style production methods to Yeşilçam. His directing debut, Bir Dağ Masalı (1947), was the most expensive Turkish film made to that point; Evvel Zaman İçinde, shot between 1947 and 1951, was one of Turkish cinema's earliest attempts at a feature-length color film, though it was never released after the footage sent to the US for processing was lost. He wrote and directed Aşk ve Kin (1964), named Best Film at the 2nd Golden Orange Festival. A former president of the Turkish Film Producers Association, he worked as director, producer or screenwriter on more than sixty films before settling in the United States in 1974. His marriage to jazz musician Rüçhan Çamay produced a son, Muhteşem, and a daughter, actress-musician Melike Demirağ; he later married 1970 Miss Turkey Afet Tuğbay. He died in Istanbul on 14 January 1987 and was buried in the family plot at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.