Happy Birthday, Mervyn LeRoy! Born today in 1900, this American author, occasional actor, film producer and film director began his career as an actor in silent films, and went on to create classic movies of the Golden Age.
Born in San Francisco, California, LeRoy was a son to Jewish parents. Six years later, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake that destroyed his father's import-export business.
To make money, young LeRoy sold newspapers in front of the Alcazar Theater after his father's death in 1910.
From this newspaper sales location, LeRoy was given a bit part for a play.
Through his winning a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest, he moved into vaudeville and then to minor parts in silent films.
LeRoy later worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films.
This included American filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille's epic 1923 American silent black and white religious film 'The Ten Commandments'.
LeRoy afterwards credited DeMille for inspiring him to become a director: "As the top director of the era, DeMille had been the magnet that had drawn me to his set as often as I could go."
LeRoy also credited DeMille for teaching him the directing techniques required to make his own films.
Sometime later, LeRoy ended up working at Warner Bros. after they took control of First National. When his film had made lots of money without costing too much, he became well received in the business.
In the early 1930s, LeRoy directed two key films which launched Edward G. Robinson into major stardom. The most notable of these was the first film of which he is best known for directing, being the 1931 American pre-Code black and white crime/drama film 'Little Caesar'.
Based off of American novelist and screenwriter William Riley "W. R." Burnett's eponymous 1929 novel, the film was the first "talkie" gangster film to capture the public's imagination.
It was also the film started a cycle of crime-related features that Warner Bros. rode across the ensuing decade and right into World War II.
Today, 'Little Caesar' is viewed in revivals with nearly as much audience enthusiasm as it enjoyed a half-century ago, within the depths of the Great Depression.
LeRoy started out as an actor in silent movies; he made a successful transition to directing in the late 1920s, and then to producing in the 1930s.
He later became a producer with MGM, in a contract with the studio that took effect on February 3, 1938. (He earned $6,000 per week, double the salary of any other MGM producer.)
'Little Caesar' helped to define the gangster movie while serving as an allegory of production circumstances because it was produced during the Great Depression.
It was one of the defining features of the early period of talkies, the prototype for the gangster movies which followed.
Within the film is inscribed a wholesale paranoia about individual achievement in the face of economic devastation.
Leavening this theme alongside the demands of social conformity during the early 1930's means that LeRoy's screen classic is far more than the simple sum of its parts.
For audiences, Rico's killing was undoubtedly a clear call of recent tensions about the state of the world at the time. Limited by the feature film's structure, but not dulled by censorial practice in the days before the Production Code Administration,
'Little Caesar' offers a scornful look at free enterprise taken to an extreme.
Seen through the long view of history and the focus on ill-gotten gains, it's a perfect corollary for Wall Street's collapse, itself the result poor regulation, mass speculation, and hysteria manipulated to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Acting out to get a bigger piece of the pie, Rico expresses the wish for acceptance and the drive toward success in an otherwise indifferent world.
Simultaneously terrorizing innocents and devastating the society he desires to control, he ends up illuminating the demands of power with homicidal shadows in this, a seminal film of the early sound era.
The following year, LeRoy directed the second film of which he is best known. This was the 1932 American pre-Code black and white crime/drama film 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang'.
The film had been based off of American author and World War I veteran Robert Elliott Burns' 1932 autobiographical book I Am A Fugitive from a Georgia Chan Gang.
Burns had gained notoriety after escaping from a Georgia chain gang. In writing his memoirs, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! exposed the cruelty and injustice of the chain gang system.
One year after the release of 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang', LeRoy and his first wife, American actress of the silent era Edna Murphy, were divorced.
That same year, LeRoy co-directed (alongside American film director and musical choreographer Busby Berkeley) the third and final film of which he is best known. This was the 1933 pre-Code American black and white musical/comedy film 'Gold Diggers of 1933'.
The film had been based on American playwright of the Jazz Age Avery Hopwood's play The Gold Diggers, which ran for two hundred and eighty-two performances on Broadway in 1919 and 1920.
During their separation, LeRoy dated Ginger Rogers, but they ended the relationship and stayed lifelong friends.
The following year, 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' received positive reviews and three Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Paul Muni), and Best Sound. However, it didn't win. This occurred at the 6th Academy Awards in mid-March 1934.
In 1938, LeRoy was chosen as head of production at MGM, where he was responsible for 'The Wizard of Oz'.
However, the main position eventually went to American film director, cinematographer, and producer Victor Fleming ('Captains Courageous', 'Gone with the Wind').
'The Wizard of Oz' was the first film LeRoy produced for MGM. Reports conflict on the respective roles of LeRoy and American lyricisms and Hollywood film producer Arthur Freed in the creation of the film.
Reportedly, LeRoy also directed some of the scenes, making him one of the round robin of directors who worked on the feature.
LeRoy was also responsible for discovering Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Robert Mitchum and Lana Turner.
On February 8, 1960, LeRoy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street for his contributions to the motion pictures industry.
LeRoy retired in 1965. Nine years later, he wrote his 1974 autobiography Mervyn LeRoy: Take One. He later sold his Bel Air home to Johnny Carson.
Two years after his book, LeRoy received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. This occurred at the 48th Academy Awards in late March 1976.
This accolade is periodically given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Governors Awards ceremonies to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production."
A total of eight films of which LeRoy directed or co-directed were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, one of the highest numbers among all other directors.
A fan of thoroughbred horse racing, LeRoy was a founding member of the Hollywood Turf Club, operator of the Hollywood Park Racetrack and a member of the track's board of directors from 1941 until his death.
After being bedridden for six months, LeRoy passed from natural causes and heart issues in Beverly Hills, California on September 13, 1987. Leroy was 86. This was one month before his 87th birthday.
In partnership with father-in-law, Harry Warner, he operated a racing stable, W-L Ranch Co., during the 1940s and 1950s.
On AFI's 100 Years...100 Quotes list, "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" ranked it at #73.
In 1991, 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2000, 'Little Caesar' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2003, 'Gold Diggers of 1933' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In June 2008, the American Film Institute named the film #9 in its list of Best Gangster films.
In all, LeRoy had directed seventy films during his distinguished forty-year career.
Among his credits, LeRoy is also known for directing 'Random Harvest'(1940), 'Little Women' (1949), 'Quo Vadis' (1950), 'Mister Roberts' (1955), 'The Bad Seed' (1956), 'The FBI Story' (1959), and 'Gypsy' (1962),
LeRoy was a prolific, mainstream Hollywood filmmaker who, while lacking the stylistic individualism that stamped the works of his more talented brethren, had an intuitive, almost uncanny grasp of what constituted successful screen entertainment.
In his time, which lasted from the 1920s until the 1960s, LeRoy was one of the film business's heavy hitters; a director/producer whose name evoked quality and entertainment in successful portions, and was associated with some of the more challenging and popular projects ever to come out of the old Hollywood.
Still, his life might have made a good movie.
LeRoy had been active from 1928–1968.
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