- Gregory La Cava
Gregory La Cava (
March 10 ,1892 –March 1 ,1952 ) was an Americanfilm director best known for his films of the 1930s, including "My Man Godfrey " and "Stage Door ".He was born in
Towanda, Pennsylvania and studied at theArt Institute of Chicago and the Art Students' League.Around 1913, he started doing odd jobs at the studio of
Raoul Barré . By 1915, he was an animator on the "Animated Grouch Chasers " series.Towards the end of 1915,
William Randolph Hearst decided to create an animation studio to promote thecomic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new companyInternational Film Service , and he hired La Cava to run it (for double what he was making with Barré). La Cava's first employee was his co-worker at the Barré Studio,Frank Moser . Another was his fellow student in Chicago,Grim Natwick (later to achieve fame at Disney). As he developed more and more of Hearst's comics into cartoon series, he came to put semi-independent units in charge of each, leading to the growth of individual styles.La Cava also had the significant advantage over other studios of an unlimited budget: Hearst's business sense completely broke down when it came to his
Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial and the "living comic strips" they contained. La Cava's main fault as a producer and director was that his cartoons were too clearly animated comic strips, hampered by speech balloons when rivalBray Studio was creating more effective series with original characters. He was apparently aware of this fault, and he had his animators studyCharlie Chaplin films to improve their timing and characterization. But he didn't have time to achieve very much, because in July 1918, Hearst's bankers caught up with him and International Film Service was shut down.Hearst still wanted his characters animated, so he licensed various studios to continue the IFS series. La Cava and most of the IFS staff got jobs with John Terry's studio (not surprising since John Terry himself was an IFS alumnus). This only lasted a few months before Terry's studio went out of business. The animators were immediately hired by Goldwyn-Bray (as the Bray Studio was now known), but La Cava was not, since Goldwyn-Bray had several producers of its own and La Cava was not interested in starting over. Instead, he moved west to Hollywood.
By 1922, La Cava had become a live-action director of two-reel comedies, the direct competitor to animated films. Among the actors he directed in the silent era are:
*
Bebe Daniels ("Feel My Pulse", 1928)
*Richard Dix
*W. C. Fields ("So's Your Old Man", 1926 and "Running Wild", 1927) He became a good friend and drinking companion of Fields.La Cava worked his way up to feature films in the silent era, but it is for his work in sound films of the 1930s--especially comedies--that he is best known today. And though he did not always get credit, he also often had a hand in creating the screenplays for his films. Among the sound films he directed are:
*"The Half Naked Truth" (1932)
*"The Age of Consent" (1932) forRKO , which starredRichard Cromwell ,Eric Linden , andDorothy Wilson .
*"Bed of Roses" (1932) withConstance Bennett andPert Kelton
*"Gabriel Over the White House " (1933) withWalter Huston
*"What Every Woman Knows " (1934) withHelen Hayes
*"Private Worlds " (1935)
*"She Married Her Boss " (1935) withClaudette Colbert
*"My Man Godfrey " (1936, nominated for the Best Director Academy Award) withWilliam Powell andCarole Lombard
*"Stage Door" (1937, also nominated for Best Director) withKatharine Hepburn as well as his first of three consecutive film withGinger Rogers
*"5th Ave Girl ", also known as "Fifth Avenue Girl" (1939)
*"Primrose Path" (1940)His output dropped severely in the 1940s, and he only officially directed one film after 1942, "
Living In A Big Way " (1947).La Cava died nine days before his 60th birthday on
March 1 1952 inMalibu, California .References
* Joe Adamson; "The Walter Lantz Story"; G. P. Putnam's Sons; ISBN 0-399-13096-9 (1985)
* Donald Crafton; "Before Mickey: The Animated Film: 1898-1928"; The University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-11667-0 (1982, 1993)
* Leonard Maltin; "Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons"; Penguin Books; ISBN 0-452-25993-2 (1980, 1987)External links
*imdb name|id= 0478441 |name=Gregory La Cava
*
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