The Directors: Mervyn LeRoy

If it weren't for this director-producer, there would be a giant hole in the middle of Hollywood's Golden Age but as it turned out, his career was one of the most successful.  His signature crime films at Warner Bros. became the studio's signature films as well.  He moved to MGM and presided over those lushly beautiful films for which that studio was famous. He also knew his way around musicals, comedies, action, women's films, historical and social themes.  He was hard to pin down because he could do it all.

Mervyn LeRoy was born in San Francisco in 1900 to a wealthy department store owner.  The family lost everything in the devastating 1906 earthquake except their lives.  He then earned money by selling newspapers which became his entreé into show business when a customer got him a job as a newsboy in a local play.  He then played in vaudeville for a time.

He decided show business was for him and luckily his cousin was Jesse Lasky, one of the earliest Hollywood pioneers, a producer, head of Famous Players-Lasky and eventual head of Paramount Pictures.  Lasky helped LeRoy get a foot in the door and that was all.  He worked in costume departments, processing labs and as an assistant cameraman before becoming a gag writer and had minor acting roles in a few films.  After acting in DeMille's 1923 The Ten Commandments where the director took LeRoy under his wing, he decided he wanted to be a director.

The year 1927 proved a big one for LeRoy.  He married for the first of three times.  It is interesting that when he wrote his 1974 autobiography, he didn't even mention this wife, Edna, and he was married to her for six years.  It is also the year that he assumed full director duties for his first film, No Place to Go, for First National (WB).  

He would make eight films in the 1920s and 35 in the 1930s.  His first film of any consequence was the superior, trend-setting crime caper Little Caesar (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson whose star also rose.  The following year LeRoy directed Paul Muni to glory in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, a scathing indictment of southern prison conditions.  Both films remain important in the director's canon of work.

He directed a successful musical, Gold Diggers of 1933.  Warners switched between musical and crime dramas (sometimes both in one film) with ease and LeRoy handled a number of them in his  own polished manner.  He became WB's number one director.  It's surprising with this record that he was loaned to MGM to make Tugboat Annie (1933) but the canny pairing of the robust Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery and LeRoy's good ear for dialogue made this one another hit.  

In 1934 he married Doris Warner, the daughter of one of the other Warner brothers.  He was now a part of the family.  It raised his already weighty prestige.

I confess to never having seen Anthony Adverse (1936).  The globe-trotting love story was a big hit at the box office and kudos went to LeRoy and his stars, Fredric March and Olivia deHavilland.  The following year came a departure of sorts... a serious film about current-day events.  They Won't Forget featured the debut of a young, brunette Lana Turner as a smalltown girl who is raped and murdered, putting the town on high alert.  Neither LeRoy nor the public would forget Lana.

There is a 1939 film where you know all of the characters and there's a little dog and a popular song and a yellow brick road.  You might even know Shirley Temple was supposed to star in it or that Gone With the Wind director, Victor Fleming, is this film's director, too.  But did you know Mervyn LeRoy was the producer, the man, on The Wizard of Oz?  Thanks Mervyn.

He was now at Metro Goldwyn Mayer and he would be there for some 15 years.  The deal was too good to pass up.  He would become Head of Production.  It was a lofty position once held by the studio god, Irving Thalberg.  In addition to overseeing all films made at MGM, he would head his own production area and put his stamp on the films he wanted.  He could also direct these films if he wanted and he could direct films he was not producing.  He was the man.  Old L. B. even liked him.

Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh

First he directed Waterloo Bridge (1940), a romantic tearjerker with two of the film world's most beautiful people, Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.  It was their second pairing and hearts were a-flutter and hearts would break.  Both Leigh and Taylor considered it their favorite films.  LeRoy was pleased to have this one under his belt early on at his new digs and it was a monster hit.

Almost immediately he became buddy-buddy with Greer Garson, the studio's reigning queen and L. B. Mayer's favorite employee.  She and LeRoy made four films together: Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Random Harvest (1942), the immensely popular Madame Curie (1943) and a B-western, Strange Lady in Town (1955), a mistake for both of them.

In 1941 came Johnny Eager, the violent and seductive film noir about a gangster who falls for a district attorney's earthy daughter, the same man who once sent him to prison.  The film still radiates with the animal magnetism that was Robert Taylor and Lana Turner.  She was now the blonde movie goddess at MGM and a sensation to behold.  This is the film that made her famous for... for... well, whatever it is that she was famous for.  Blustery Edward Arnold pulls it off as the overbearing DA father and Van Heflin won an Oscar as Johnny's alcoholic buddy.

War movies made in the 40's were understandably propaganda-oriented and right up there is LeRoy's Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944).  At its core is the famous Doolittle Raid but there is romance here and good war scenes as well.  It was another major crowd-pleaser thanks, in part, to Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Robert Mitchum and Phyllis Thaxter.

In 1945 LeRoy and Warner divorced and the following year he married his beloved Kitty with whom he would share the remainder of his life.  

His 11-minute 1945 documentary, The House I Live In attracted a lot of attention.  Frank Sinatra teaches some young bullies about prejudice and bias and sings the title tune (unabashedly Americana), lessons learned, the end.  It won an honorary award at the Oscars.

In 1949 came the first remake of Little Women.  It had worked in the 30s and it could work again.  LeRoy knew there were at least four actresses in the studio commissary at any time who could play the March sisters.  He was particularly sold on June Allyson as Jo and Margaret O'Brien as Beth.  It was a done deal when Elizabeth Taylor and Janet Leigh joined the family and all became a rollicking success.

Also in 1949 LeRoy made the stylish East Side West Side about a Manhattan socialite couple... he cheats, she investigates.  They are impeccably played by James Mason and Barbara Stanwyck.  In real life, Ava Gardner was playing around with Stanwyck's husband, Robert Taylor, and in the film Gardner is playing around with Stanwyck's husband, Mason.  Oh my.  And Stanwyck doesn't like Gardner and doesn't like having to play a scene where she confronts Gardner.  This movie is such fun on several levels.

One of the actresses in a minor (but well done) role in ESWS is Nancy Davis.  LeRoy thought she'd be a good match for his friend and former WB coworker, Ronald Reagan, so he introduced them.  Isn't that special?  I thought you should know.

LeRoy considered Stanwyck and Taylor good friends and he felt for her as the marriage was unraveling during their film together.  Who knew that as the marriage was stumbling on its last leg in 1951, LeRoy would be directing Taylor in Quo Vadis?  He was there for each of them.

A dazzling spectacle, done up in all the ways you know MGM could do, Quo Vadis stars Taylor as Roman commander Marcus Vinicius who falls for a Christian hostage (a most fetching Deborah Kerr) as he is questioning the leadership of his leader, Nero.  Seeing Peter Ustinov play Nero should not be missed.  If religious epics are your thing, this one still spills allure.  At the time, after counting box office receipts, Quo Vadis became the second highest-grossing film in MGM history (behind GWTW).  

With Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr in Rome

LeRoy would now enter a period of some mediocrity.  Lovely to Look At (1952), a remake of Roberta, was an attempt to capitalize on the success Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel had with Show Boat but it was nowhere near that.  Also in '52 came The Million Dollar Mermaid, arguably the best movie Esther Williams ever made but it was still just an Esther Williams movie.  Another film with Turner, Latin Lovers (1953), found little love and a remake of Rose Marie (1954) with Keel and Ann Blyth wasn't quite what was hoped for.  This film also ended LeRoy's tenure at MGM.

He returned to his old home at Warners for most of his remaining films.  He was back in the spotlight with the naval comedy-drama, Mister Roberts (1955) with Fonda, Cagney, Powell and Lemmon but LeRoy came to it only after director John Ford was fired for punching Fonda in the mouth.  LeRoy and Ford received dual directing credit.  For LeRoy this film marked the beginning of his making films mainly from Broadway plays.

Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed

The second was The Bad Seed (1956) featuring Patty McCormack repeating her stage success as a child murderer.  Those folks from the censorship arena must have gotten their knickers twisted over this one.  They did rip some pages up but still, what's left still throws a punch.  When I finally saw it some years later, I found it spellbinding.  And McCormack... I can only work up a wow.  

In 1958 Andy Griffith repeated his Broadway role in the military comedy No Time for Sergeants.  I'll never forget going with my parents and kicking and screaming the whole way.  Why did I want to see this hokey thing?  Well, I've never forgotten how much I laughed.  I thought it was hysterical.  Griffith is a country bumpkin who drives everyone crazy.  He is terrific in the part as is Nick Adams in an early role.

Home Before Dark (1958), is my favorite of all LeRoy's films and among my top favorites of all time.  It is chiefly due to  Jean Simmons' heartfelt performance as a mental patient learning to readjust to her husband and family after a stay in a sanitarium.  It is a glorious performance and a film that deserves to be seen by more people.  WB didn't get behind it as they should have.  

Rhonda Fleming, Jean Simmons & Mabel Albertson in Home 

The FBI Story (1959) returned LeRoy to his crime-drama roots but this time his lead was the good guy for a change.  It's an entertaining movie and I expect that was all it intended to be.  James Stewart stars as an agent who seems to come up against every dirtbag killer from the 1930s.  Vera Miles plays his wife as she would three years later in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The director's two 1961 films, The Devil at 4 O'Clock with Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, and A Majority of One with Rosalind Russell and Alec Guinness, were not successful and that put LeRoy in a funk.  He wouldn't work for two years.

With Jack Warner and Natalie Wood on set of Gypsy

In 1963 he would make his final good film, and a return to musicals, with Gypsy.  The story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee's rise to fame with her ever-present stage mother, Mama Rose, was a hit for most everyone.  Russell, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden became great pals, they all loved LeRoy, and the set was a happy place to be.

The following year LeRoy adapted Broadway's Mary Mary as a film for Debbie Reynolds, Barry Nelson, Michael Rennie and Diane McBain.  I have always remembered it as having such witty lines and I could not understand why it wasn't more popular.  It concerns a divorced couple who meet to handle some personal matters and though involved with others, there seems to be a spark remaining.  Perhaps its lack of a strong showing is due to LeRoy's choice to film it as a play rather than open it up and dress it up some.  Oh well... 

The director hopped over to Universal to make his final film, Moment to Moment (1966).  Starring Jean Seberg, Honor Blackman and newcomer Sean Garrison, the thriller concerns a naval wife who accidentally kills a man she was having an affair with... or did she kill him?  I adored Seberg and thought Garrison was a super hunk but his apparent lack of acting skills sent the film to the dumpster.  I liked it anyway.

LeRoy dancing with Jean Seberg, showing Sean Garrison what he wants

LeRoy was again down about how his career was going.  Perhaps he concluded that he'd lost his touch.  I am not aware of him announcing his retirement but he made no more films.  

He enjoyed his life with his wife, their children and grandchildren.  He enjoyed horse-racing as his favorite pastime and he wrote an autobiography.  In it he said nowadays movies are not made by great creative minds but by a cartel of businessmen on the one hand and a haphazard group of young and undisciplined rookies on the other.  Today's films are made too fast and too dirty and cost either too much or too little.  Too many directors today make movies that puzzle and offend and confuse the audience.  They seem to equate bafflement with art.

After months of being bedridden, Mervyn LeRoy died in his Beverly Hills home in 1987, at age 86, from Alzheimer's. 

He was very proud of his accomplishments and he had every right to be.  He made a host of wonderful films.  If he made some not-so-good films at the end, he could stand tall beside a hell of a lot of others.  He was one of the pillars of the film community and one of those who gave the Golden Age its gold.  He had a director's eye along with a spectator's eye.  He brought an infectious energy and enthusiasm to his film sets.  Folks loved working with him.  He loved making movies.  He said the aim was always to entertain.  He looked for projects that were believable, had a good strong story and a lot of heart."

The movie industry owes a debt of gratitude to Mervyn LeRoy.


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one of those glittering casts