Entertainment

BLU-RAY ‘DIARY’ HONORS ANNE FRANK

THE Holocaust wasn’t even a term in general use when Hollywood made its first feature film on the subject 50 years ago.

So says George Stevens Jr., who served as a second unit director on his father’s movie version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which is being issued on Blu-ray today, four days after what would have been Frank’s 80th birthday.

Frank died in a concentration camp after spending two years with her family and others hiding from the Nazis in an attic in Holland. Her diary, begun shortly before her 13th birthday, is the most famous literary work to come out of the Holocaust.

The elder Stevens had a connection to the material: As an Army cameraman in World War II, he recorded the American liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, footage that is included in the featurettes in the DVD.

Stevens Jr. vividly remembers his and his father’s meeting with Frank’s father, Otto, the only family member to survive the war.

“He brought out something wrapped in cloth, and we were sitting looking at his daughter’s little red checked diaries,” Stevens says. “And then he took us upstairs in the attic where they hid. It was a very moving experience.”

Stevens debunks Hollywood legend, which says that the role of Anne was first offered to Audrey Hepburn, who turned it down because it brought back unpleasant childhood memories.

“It might have been discussed, but it was never taken too seriously, because she was at least 10 years too old for the part,” Stevens says. “We tested hundreds of girls before choosing Millie Perkins, a 19-year-old from New Jersey who had never appeared in a movie.”

The newcomer was surrounded by a group of seasoned professionals, among them Joseph Schildkraut, brilliant as Anne’s father.

To play the shrill Mrs. Van Daan, Stevens turned to Shelley Winters, whom he’d directed in “A Place in the Sun.” Winters, then 28 and still glamorous, “committed to playing a blowsy middle-age woman,” says his son. “But there were occasions when she bribed the makeup woman to make her prettier. Dad would always catch her at it, though.”

More at blogs.nypost.com/movies.