A graduate of New York's Columbia School of Journalism, Irwin Allen was a magazine editor, the producer/director of a radio show and the owner of an advertising agency before entering film production in the 1950s. His documentary, Cette mer qui nous entoure (1953), won an Academy Award. A successful TV series producer (Au coeur du temps (1966), Perdus dans l'espace (1965)), Allen was nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" in the 1970s due to the tremendous success of his two special effects-laden epics, L'aventure du Poséidon (1972) and La tour infernale (1974).
