Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy (born October 15, 1900 in San Francisco , † September 13, 1987 in Beverly Hills ) was an American film director and film producer who was responsible for some classic films .
life and career
Early life
Mervyn LeRoy was born into a Jewish family in San Francisco. In the 1906 San Francisco earthquake , his mother died and the family lost all their fortune. At the age of 12 he played a small role as a newspaper boy in a theater production by Barbara Fritchie , a play that was also responsible for the stage name of Barbara Stanwyck . LeRoy then appeared for a while as The Singing Newsboy and The Boy Tenor of the Generation . In 1915 he won a talent competition for his imitation of Charlie Chaplin and then appeared regularly in vaudeville performances. He came to film on the recommendation of a friend who introduced him to Jesse L. Lasky . LeRoy's first job at Film was as a helper in the dressing room of Famous Players-Lasky, then one of the largest film companies. In the following years, Mervyn LeRoy took on a wide variety of tasks: He was camera assistant, cameraman, extra, supporting actor and screenwriter - often in personal union. When he moved to First National in 1924, he was responsible for a number of Colleen Moore films , including Sally and Orchid and Ermine .
Director and producer
He made his directorial debut in 1927 and in the same year directed Naughty, But Nice , a comedy starring Colleen Moore and the young Loretta Young . After some rather average films, LeRoy became known with the 1931 film The Little Caesar . The film depicts the rise and fall of a gang boss, played by Edward G. Robinson, and was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Shortly afterwards he shot a reckless picture about sensational journalism with Robinson late edition , which has lost all form of ethics. Uncovering moral abysses and social grievances soon became a hallmark of LeRoy's period at Warner Brothers . These included classics such as Hunt for James A. , who in 1932 exposed the untenable conditions in the penal system and made Paul Muni a star. The third degree in 1937 was a harrowing testimony of bigotry, racial prejudice and lynching that thrived on the excellent portrayals of Claude Rains and the young Lana Turner . LeRoy demonstrated his versatility through innovative musicals such as Gold Digger from 1933 or melodramas such as Tugboat Annie , the greatest box-office success of 1933 with Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery . With I Found Stella Parrish , an elegantly told drama about a mother who does everything for her daughter, he gave Kay Francis one of the greatest financial successes of her career in 1935 .
In 1938, LeRoy switched to MGM , whose studio boss Louis B. Mayer had meanwhile become LeRoy's father-in-law. His salary was $ 300,000 a year and was officially listed at $ 150,000 in order not to upset the other directors at MGM. Also included in the deal was the takeover of Lana Turner, who soon rose to become a glamorous star at MGM and played some of her best roles under the direction of LeRoy. Both had a lifelong friendship. One of his first roles at MGM was LeRoy, producer of the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland .
At MGM, LeRoy gave up his realistic, tough staging style and adapted himself to the look of MGM: soft, elegant lighting, lots of skylight, generous decorations, magnificent costumes and mandatory previews and subsequent shots, as the respective test audience with their reactions to the final cut decided. While LeRoy was more of a male director at Warners , the first tasks at MGM were rather large-scale productions with established female top stars: her first husband with Vivien Leigh , Escape , a spy drama with Norma Shearer , both of which were distributed in 1940, and a number of highly profitable films with Greer Garson , who rose to be a superstar of the war years under LeRoy. Starting with Blossoms in Dust from 1941, which was characterized by the subdued use of Technicolor , Found Years , a love story about amnesia with Ronald Colman and Garson, which ran successfully in the cinema in 1942, and Madame Curie , a somewhat unrealistic biography about Marie Curie , who discovers the radium perfectly coiffed and dressed elegantly on the side, so to speak. On the other hand, he also directed gripping gangster films such as The Dead Lives and war epics such as Thirty Seconds About Tokyo , which reenacts the Doolittle Raid , the first bomb attack on Tokyo, in great detail for the studio .
After the Second World War, the star of LeRoy's career began to decline somewhat, and the work, while profitable, was artistically rather banal overall. During the phase he was responsible for some expensive, extravagant water spectacles by Esther Williams and glossy melodramas by Lana Turner, among other things , according to Dr. Johnson's homecoming and Latin lover . His staging of the monumental film Quo Vadis, produced by MGM in Rome, was very successful commercially .
It was only when she returned to Warner Brothers in the mid-1950s that Mervyn LeRoy found his strengths again. He directed the film adaptation of the theatrical hit The Bad Seed and some expensive but not always successful films with Rosalind Russell : 1000 Miles to Yokohama from 1961 and Gypsy: Queen of the Night from 1962. In the mid-1960s, he retired into private life . In 1975 Mervyn LeRoy received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement, after receiving a special Oscar for The House I Live In in 1945 , a short documentary against racism and for more tolerance.
Private life
The director was married three times, most recently to Katherine Spiegel from 1946 until his death. From his second marriage to Doris Warner (daughter of Harry Warner ) he had the son Warner LeRoy (1935-2001), who later opened a successful restaurant chain. LeRoy was a horse lover who, among other things, co-founded the Hollywood Park Racetrack racecourse near Hollywood . His biography under the title Mervyn LeRoy: Take One was published in 1974. After he had last suffered from Alzheimer's, Mervyn LeRoy died in 1987 at the age of 86.
At the end of the 1940s he introduced the later presidential couple Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan to each other.
Filmography (selection)
As a director
|
|
As a producer
|
|
From 1938 he was also the producer of almost all films that he directed himself.
literature
- Mervyn LeRoy. In: John Wakeman (Ed.): World Film Directors. Volume One, 1890-1945. The HW Wilson Company, New York 1987, ISBN 0-8242-0757-2 , pp. 651-657.
Web links
- Mervyn LeRoy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Mervyn LeRoy's obituary for the New York Times in 1987
- ↑ Nancy Reagan's obituary in the Los Angeles Times
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | LeRoy, Mervyn |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American film director and film producer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 15, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | San Francisco , California , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 13, 1987 |
| Place of death | Beverly Hills , Los Angeles , California , United States |