Born in New York City. A former still photographer, he a combat cameraman with the US Army Signal Corps during World War II, and as such took part in the Normandy landings on D-Day, along with future director Russ Meyer. Much of the familiar combat footage that has appeared over the years in documentaries about the D-Day landings was shot by Engel and Meyer. Engel received international acclaim for THE LITTLE FUGITIVE (1953), a highly imaginative film about the Coney Island adventure of a boy who is convinced he has committed murder, which Engel filmed on a low budget in collaboration with his wife, Ruth Orkin. In a later interview in The New Yorker, François Truffaut acknowledged that this film was single-handedly responsible for the French New Wave movement of the 1960s: "Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with his fine movie, LITTLE FUGITIVE." Engel followed THE LITTLE FUGITIVE with two other offbeat low-cost films, LOVERS AND LOLLIPOPS (1955), which he also co-directed with his wife, and WEDDINGS AND BABIES (1958), the winner of the Critics Prize at the Venice Festival. The latter film was notable for its on-location photography, shot with a portable synchronous sound camera of Engel's own design. In 1983 he completed his last film, I NEED A RIDE TO CALIFORNIA. It was never released.  Nominated for Writing (Motion Picture Story) 1953: THE LITTLE FUGITIVE (w. Ray Ashley & Ruth Orkin) 1 nomination