Leo McCarey

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Thomas Leo McCarey (born October 3, 1898 in Los Angeles , † July 5, 1969 in Santa Monica ) was an American director , film producer and screenwriter .

Life

McCarey began his film career as assistant to director Tod Browning , made his first Hollywood film when he was 23, and was hired by producer Hal Roach to write screenplays for comedian Charley Chase . In 1926 he was already Vice President of Roach Studios and thus also responsible for some of the best films by the duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy . According to several reports, McCarey was the first to come up with the idea of ​​pairing the rather unsuccessful lead actor Laurel with the busy supporting actor Hardy.

With the advent of talkies , McCarey quickly gained prominence thanks to several comedies with popular stars such as Eddie Cantor , whose The Kid from Spain he directed, and Duck Soup , a film by the Marx Brothers . In 1935 he directed A Butler in America with Charles Laughton in the lead role of a British butler who found himself in the American provinces.Famous for his talent in his films to combine both comedic and dramatic episodes without a break in the dramaturgy, he rose against At the end of the decade, he became one of the most famous and highest paid directors. Actress Irene Dunne owed McCarey her two best roles: The Terrible Truth of 1937 and Restless Love of 1939. Dunne was nominated for an Academy Award on both occasions. In the case of restless love , the crew had to work without a finished script and usually did not know at the beginning of the shooting day which dialogues were to be spoken. The finished film does not give an idea of ​​the sometimes chaotic development. A less commercially successful McCarey film, but one of his best today, is the drama No Place for Parents (1937), which shows the difficult situation of an old couple in the Great Depression .

McCarey's career peaked in 1944 with The Road to Happiness . The sentimental story of an idealistic priest, portrayed by Bing Crosby , was shot on a relatively low budget and became the biggest box office hit of the year. Those involved succeeded not only in repeating the financial success in the following year with The Bells of St. Mary , but even surpassing it. This may also have been due to the fact that Ingrid Bergman , at the height of her popularity at the time, took on the female lead as a nun.

McCarey's films from the late 1940s onwards were often neither artistically nor financially successful. Especially the film My Son John , made in the McCarthy era , which tells the story of a boy who sympathizes with communism and in the end realizes his error and dies an honorable death, hardly fits into the canon of his other films with its intrusive pathos. Probably the most notable film of his late career was The Great Love of My Life , its remake of Restless Love, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr . After the poor reception of his last film China Story (1962) with William Holden in the lead role, McCarey withdrew from the film business.

McCarey won the Oscar for best director in 1937 and 1944 . In 1945 he also received the Oscar for the best original story. In addition, his original scripts for Restless Love , My Favorite Woman and My Son John were Oscar-nominated.

He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City , California .

Filmography (selection)

Director

Script only

literature

  • Leo McCarey, small monograph on the occasion of the film series in the Münchner Filmmuseum, 56 p., Munich, 1984.
  • Jean-Pierre Garcia; Jacques Lourcelles; Dominique Païni; Jean-François Rauger: Leo McCarey. Le Burlesque des Sentiments. Cinémathèque française , Paris, 1998. ISBN 978-2-900596-23-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME McCarey, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McCarey, Thomas Leo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director, film producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1969
Place of death Santa Monica , California, United States