Robert F. McGowan

Robert F. McGowan (born July 11, 1882 in Denver , Colorado , † January 27, 1955 in Santa Monica , California ) was an American director, screenwriter and film producer. He was the permanent director of the Little Tramp from its beginnings in 1922 until 1933 and played a major role in the success of the film series.

life and career

Early life

Robert F. McGowan initially tried unsuccessfully as an inventor, and eventually became a firefighter in his hometown of Denver. At the age of 30 he almost lost a leg in an operation and he had to give up the job of firefighter. Because he was a big fan of the Nickelodeon cinemas and their films, he moved to Hollywood in 1913 , where the film industry was just emerging. He initially worked as a prop master and occasionally as a gag writer. From 1916 he worked as a director. In 1922 the producer Hal Roach wanted to make a film series about children and brought in the director Fred C. Newmeyer for the pilot film Our Gang . However, Roach discarded Newmayer's completed film and looked in vain for a new director for the film, until the comedian Charley Chase suggested his friend Robert F. McGowan. McGowan made the pilot with success, and it became the beginning of Little Rascals .

As the director of the little rascals

McGowan became the permanent director of The Little Rascals and, alongside Hal Roach, was the father of the series' great success. His merit lay in developing a style that did not suppress the naturalness of the young actors and did not subordinate them to the working habits of the film industry. The more experimental director also wrote many gags of the films with the comedy department of Hal Roach Studios. The children were often too young to be able to read scripts and were sometimes directed by megaphone in their sometimes improvised actions. In the late 1920s, McGowan fell ill and he had to hand over the direction of the series to his nephew and assistant Robert A. McGowan (aka Anthony Mack) for two years. The works of the nephew are considered to be significantly weaker compared to those of his uncle. The director was popular with child actors and was called Uncle Bob . McGowan's favorite actors included Allen Hoskins , Mary Kornman , Matthew Beard and George McFarland , whom he described as a "natural."

Later life and death

In 1933 McGowan left the series after about 100 films as a director and handed over the reins to Gus Meins , mainly because he was annoyed with the ambitious mothers of the children and other pitfalls of working with children. He made a few small films for Paramount Pictures in the 1930s and returned to the Little Tramps in 1936 for Divot Diggers . He made his last films in 1940 with the teenage screen couple Marcia Mae Jones and Jackie Moran in the leading roles. In the 1940s, the father of two daughters still worked occasionally as a producer. He died of cancer in 1955 at the age of 72 and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery .

Web links

• Robert F. McGowan in the Internet Movie Database (English)