Frank Borzage

Infobox Actor
name = Frank Borzage


imagesize = 213px
birthdate = birth date|1894|4|23
location = Salt Lake City, Utah
deathdate = death date and age|1962|6|19|1894|4|23
deathplace = Hollywood, California
spouse = Rena Rogers (div.1941)
academyawards = Best Director
1929 "Seventh Heaven"
1932 "Bad Girl"

Frank Borzage [Borzage told "The Literary Digest" his name was pronounced "in three syllables, and "g" in "get, bor-zay'gee"." (Charles Earle Funk, "What's the Name, Please?", Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)] (April 23, 1894 [To gain a professional advantage, Borzage subtracted a year from his date of birth while still a teenager; many sources thus give 1893 as his birthdate. Dumont, p. 32.] –- June 19, 1962) was an Academy Award-winning American film director and actor famed for his mystical romanticism.

Borzage's father, Luigi, was born in Roncone, Austria-Hungary in 1859. As a stone mason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg (1860, Ricken - 1947), in Zürich, where she worked in a silk factory. Luigi Borzaga immigrated to Hazleton, Pennsylvania in the early 1880s; he worked as a coal miner there and soon brought his Swiss fiancée with him.

The couple married in Hazleton in 1883, and had their first child, Henry, in Wyoming in 1885. They settled in the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake City, Utah, where they gave birth to Frank, and remained until 1919. Altogether, the couple had fourteen children, eight of whom survived childhood: Henry (1885-1971), Mary, Bill (1892-1973), Frank, Daniel (1896-1975, a performer and member of the John Ford Stock Company), Lew (1898-1974), Dolly (1901) and Susan (1905). Luigi Borzaga died in Los Angeles in a car accident in 1934; his wife died of cancer in 1947.

Borzage started working in Hollywood in 1912 as an actor, and continued until 1917. His directorial debut came in 1915 with his film "The Pitch o' Chance".

On June 7, 1916, Borzage married vaudeville and film actress Lorena "Rena" B. Rogers in Los Angeles. Although he loved her and treated her well, he and his wife were not compatible: she preferred parties, luxury, and travel, while he was less social, except in his athletic activities. Furthermore, Rena secretly had an abortion around 1921— Borzage loved children—and had several female lovers. Despite their common affection, Rena became dissatisfied with her husband, who, according to family members, had discreet affairs with Lupe Vélez, Mary Pickford, Marion Davies, Joan Crawford, and Hedy Lamarr. [Dumont, p. 290.] By 1940 the strain on their marriage had become too great. At a double celebration for Rena's birthday and their anniversary on June 7, Borzage, who then had a drinking problem, suddenly left his mansion and moved out. A divorce was granted on January 22, 1941; Rena obtained $250,000 in damages and interest. Despite this, the couple maintained contact.

Borzage was a successful director throughout the 1920s but reached his peak in the late silent and early sound era. Absorbing visual influences from the German director F.W. Murnau, who was also resident at Fox at this time, he developed his own style of lushly visual romanticism in a hugely successful series of films starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, including "Seventh Heaven" (1927), for which he won the first Academy Award for Directing, "Street Angel" (1928) and "Lucky Star" (1929). (He won a second Oscar for 1931's "Bad Girl".) Borzage's trademark was intense identification with the feelings of young lovers in the face of adversity, love in his films triumphing over such trials as World War I ("Seventh Heaven" and "A Farewell to Arms" (1932)), disability ("Lucky Star"), the Depression ("Man's Castle" (1933)), a thinly-disguised version of the Titanic disaster in "History Is Made at Night" (1937), and the rise of Nazism, a theme which Borzage had virtually to himself among Hollywood filmmakers from "Little Man, What Now?" (1933) to "Three Comrades" (1938) and "The Mortal Storm" (1940). His work after 1940, however, took a turn into religiosity in such films as "Strange Cargo" (1940) and "The Big Fisherman" (1959), and his once extremely high reputation fell as his earlier films became hard to see; of his later work only the film noir "Moonrise" (1948) has enjoyed much critical acclaim. After 1948, his output was sporadic, and his last film work was sequences in Edgar G. Ulmer's 1962 film "L'Atlantide" ("Journey Beneath The Desert"), for which he was uncredited.

Borzage died of cancer in 1962 at the age of 68, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. For his contributions to film, Borzage was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

elected Filmography

* 1913 : "The Mystery of Yellow Aster Mine"
* 1913 : "The Battle of Gettysburg"
* 1914 : "Samson"
* 1915 : "The Pitch o' Chance"
* 1916 : "The Pride and the Man"
* 1916 : "Dollars of Dross"
* 1916 : "Life's Harmony"
* 1916 : "The Silken Spider"
* 1916 : "The Code of Honor"
* 1916 : "Two Bits"
* 1916 : "A Flickering Light"
* 1916 : "Unlucky Luke"
* 1916 : "Jack"
* 1916 : "The Pilgrim"
* 1916 : "The Demon of Fear"
* 1916 : "The Quicksands of Deceit"
* 1916 : "Nugget Jim's Pardner"
* 1916 : "That Gal of Burke's"
* 1916 : "The Courtin' of Calliope Clew"
* 1916 : "Nell Dale's Men Folks"
* 1916 : "The Forgotten Prayer"
* 1916 : "Matchin' Jim"
* 1916 : "Land o' Lizards"
* 1916 : "Immediate Lee"
* 1917 : "Flying Colors"
* 1917 : "Until They Get Me"
* 1918 : "The Gun Woman"
* 1918 : "The Curse of Iku"
* 1918 : "The Shoes That Danced"
* 1918 : "Innocent's Progress"
* 1918 : "Society for Sale"
* 1918 : "An Honest Man"
* 1918 : "Who Is to Blame?"
* 1918 : "The Ghost Flower"
* 1918 : "The Atom"
* 1919 : "Toton the Apache"
* 1919 : "Whom the Gods Would Destroy"
* 1919 : "Prudence on Broadway"
* 1920 : "Humoresque"
* 1921 : "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford"
* 1921 : "The Duke of Chimney Butte"
* 1922 : "Back Pay"
* 1922 : "Billy Jim"
* 1922 : "The Good Provider"
* 1922 : "The Valley of Silent Men"
* 1922 : "The Pride of Palomar"
* 1923 : "The Nth Commandment"
* 1923 : "Children of the Dust"
* 1923 : "The Age of Desire"
* 1924 : "Secrets"
* 1925 : "The Lady"
* 1925 : "Daddy's Gone A-Hunting"
* 1925 : "The Circle"
* 1925 : "Lazybones"
* 1925 : "Wages for Wives"
* 1926 : "The First Year"
* 1926 : "The Dixie Merchant"
* 1926 : "Early to Wed"
* 1926 : "Marriage License?"
* 1927 : "Seventh Heaven"
* 1928 : "Street Angel"
* 1929 : "Lucky Star"
* 1929 : "They Had to See Paris"
* 1929 : "The River"
* 1930 : "Song o' My Heart"
* 1930 : "Liliom"
* 1931 : "Doctors' Wives"
* 1931 : "Young as You Feel"
* 1931 : "Bad Girl"
* 1932 : "After Tomorrow"
* 1932 : "Young America"
* 1932 : "A Farewell to Arms"
* 1933 : "Secrets"
* 1933 : "Man's Castle"
* 1934 : "No Greater Glory"
* 1934 : "Little Man, What Now?"
* 1934 : "Flirtation Walk"
* 1935 : "Living on Velvet"
* 1935 : "Stranded"
* 1935 : "Shipmates Forever"
* 1936 : "Desire"
* 1936 : "Hearts Divided"
* 1937 : "Green Light"
* 1937 : "History Is Made at Night"
* 1937 : "Big City"
* 1937 : "Mannequin"
* 1938 : "Three Comrades"
* 1938 : "The Shining Hour"
* 1939 : "Disputed Passage"
* 1940 : "I Take This Woman"
* 1940 : "Strange Cargo"
* 1940 : "The Mortal Storm"
* 1940 : "Flight Command"
* 1941 : "Billy the Kid (1941 film)"
* 1941 : "Smilin' Through"
* 1942 : "The Vanishing Virginian"
* 1942 : "Seven Sweethearts"
* 1943 : "Stage Door Canteen"
* 1943 : "His Butler's Sister"
* 1944 : "Till We Meet Again"
* 1945 : "The Spanish Main"
* 1946 : "I've Always Loved You"
* 1946 : "Magnificent Doll"
* 1947 : "That's My Man"
* 1948 : "Moonrise"
* 1958 : "China Doll"
* 1959 : "The Big Fisherman"
* 1961 : "L'Atlantide"

Notes and references

Further reading

* Dumont, Hervé. "Frank Borzage: the Life and Times of a Hollywood Romantic". McFarland, 2006.
* Lamster, Frederick. "Souls Made Great Through Love and Adversity": the Film Work of Frank Borzage". Scarecrow, 1981.

External links

*imdb name|0097648
*amg name|2:82529
* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/borzage.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database]
* [http://www.theyshootpictures.com/borzagefrank.htm They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
* [http://www.archive.org/details/farewell_to_arms "A Farewell to Arms" (1932)] - This Borzage-directed adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel has fallen into the public domain and is available online through the Internet Archive.
* [http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2006/08/frank-borzage-and-classical-hollywood.html Frank Borzage and the Classic Hollywood Style]

Persondata
NAME= Borzage, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Film director
DATE OF BIRTH= 1894-4-23
PLACE OF BIRTH= Salt Lake City, Utah
DATE OF DEATH= 1962-6-19
PLACE OF DEATH= Hollywood, California