Andrew Marton; Directed Action Sequences

Andrew Marton, a film director probably best known for spectacular action sequences and who once spent four months preparing the 10-minute chariot race segment for the 1959 version of “Ben-Hur,” died Tuesday of pneumonia in St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica.

His daughter, Tonda Marton-Bayer, said her Hungarian-born father, who came to this country with Ernst Lubitsch in 1923, was 87.

A 1965 headline in The Times referred to “Marton--First-Rate Second Unit Man,” using the phrase used in the film industry to describe those who labor in relative anonymity behind their director counterparts. But Marton, born Endre Marton and known to his friends as Bundy, outgrew the obscurity after a string of first-director credits that included “King Solomon’s Mines,” “The Thin Red Line” and “Storm Over Tibet.”

“I’m known as a spectacle maker,” Marton said in 1965, “and as such I’ve been the best midwife the industry ever had.”

After starting his career as a film editor in Vienna when he was 18, he accompanied Lubitsch to Hollywood in 1923, where he edited two of that director’s films. Marton made his directorial debut in “Two O’Clock in the Morning” in 1929. He commuted between the United States and Germany, directing two films there before fleeing the Nazis in 1933. He worked in Switzerland, Hungary and England before returning to Hollywood in 1940.

He directed the ski sequences in Greta Garbo’s last film, “Two-Faced Woman,” and headed several other second-unit projects before taking over “King Solomon’s Mines” after Compton Bennett fell ill.

“Storm Over Tibet,” released in 1951, was the result of some spectacular film Marton had shot in 1936 during the first International Himalayan Expedition into unexplored Tibetan territory.

His other better-known films include “The Longest Day,” (as co-director); “Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion” and “The Wild North.”

Marton’s contributions to other epic films included the war sequences in “A Farewell to Arms,” the Tibetan scenes in “Lost Horizon,” the Dunkirk evacuation in “Mrs. Miniver,” battle scenes in “The Red Badge of Courage” and Judah Ben-Hur’s (Charlton Heston) chariot race to the death against Messala (Stephen Boyd) in the 1959 “Ben-Hur.”

His recent interviews with the Directors Guild of America have just been published, Marton-Bayer said.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Lacerta, a sister, Elisabeth, and two stepdaughters. Donations in his name may be made to the Directors Guild of America’s Educational and Benevolent Foundation.

A memorial service will be held at Westwood Memorial Park on Saturday at 2 p.m.