Oscar Profile #143: Mervyn LeRoy

Born October 15, 1900 in San Francisco, California, Mervyn LeRoy’s paternal grandfather owned a successful department store in the city that was wiped out by the 1906 earthquake. Although LeRoy and his father survived, the family was in financial ruin. The youngster sold newspapers and entered talent contests as a singer to make money. Eventually he and a young friend became popular vaudeville players. When the act broke up, he went to Hollywood to work for his cousin, producer Jesse L. Lasky.

He got his start as a director in 1927, the same year he married his first wife, actress Edna Murphy. His third film, 1928’s Harold Teen was a huge success and he followed it more light and fluffy films until the landmark 1931 gangster film, Little Caesar made him one of Hollywood’s top directors. He followed it with such early 1930s masterworks as Five Star Final; Three on a Match; I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang; Gold Diggers of 1933 and Tugboat Annie.

Divorced from Murphy in 1933, he married Doris Warner, daughter of Harry Warner, in 1934 and would remain married to her into the 1940s after which he would marry third wife Kitty Spiegel in 1946, with whom he would remain married for the rest of his life. His only child, a son by Warner was the actor Warner LeRoy.

LeRoy’s late 1930s output included such fondly remembered films as Oil for the Lamps of China; Anthony Adverse; They Won’t Forget and The Wizard of Oz which he produced and took over the direction of when Victor Fleming left for Gone With the Wind.

In the early 1940s, the years of his greatest output, LeRoy directed such classics as Waterloo Bridge; Blossom sin the Dust; Random Harvesty for which he received his only Oscar nod for direction; Madame Curie; Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and the short, The House I Live In, for which he received an honorary Oscar.

LeRoy continued to direct high profile films through the mid-1960s including Quo Vadis; Mister Roberts, the direction of which he took over after John Ford left the project; The Bad Seed; No Time for Sergeants; Home Before Dark; A Majority of One and Gypsy. His last credited direction was of 1965’s Moment to Moment. His last actual direction was his un-credited assistance on John Wayne’s 1968 film, The Green Berets.

Greer Garson received three of her six Oscar nominations for films directed by LeRoy, who directed another twelve actors to Oscar nominations. They were Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Ronald Colman, Susan Peters, Walter Pidgeon, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Nancy Kelly, Eileen Heckart and Patty McCormack.

LeRoy, who received the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award at the 1965 Oscars, died of Alzheimer’s Disease on September 13, 1987 at the age of 86.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1933)

LeRoy shot to the forefront of film directors with the 1931 gangster classic, Little Caesar starring Edward G. Robinson as a vicious gangster. Paul Muni achieved major film stardom as an even more vicious gangster in 1932’s earlier Scarface. Together they turned the genre on its ears with this enormously successful film about a wrongly accused man who suffers through intolerable conditions on a Georgia chain gang. Based on a true story, the film was instrumental in changing laws throughout the country.

The film’s unforgettable ending in which the film fades to black after Muni’s last line was actually the result of a lightning strike that caused a power outage at the perfect moment.

RANDOM HARVEST (1942)

LeRoy received his only Oscar nomination as a director for this beautifully filmed adaptation of James Hitlon’s stirring novel.

Ronald Colman had one of his best roles in the 1937 adaptation of Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Greer Garson became a star in the 1939 adaptation of Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Together they created another masterpiece under LeRoy’s astute direction.

Colman is an amnesiac World War I veteran who falls in love with show girl Garson in the Scottish town adjacent to the mental hospital at which he had been treated. One day on a business trip to London he has another bump on the head and regains his earlier memory but can remember nothing about his relationship with Garson. She turns up as his secretary and they eventually enter into a marriage of convenience but neither is happy with the arrangement. Then one day he takes a business trip to Scotland and his lost memory starts to return, setting up yet another unforgettable ending.

QUO VADIS (1951)

This was the fourth official film version of Henryk Aleksander’s classic 19th Century novel, the first of which had first been filmed in 1091. Cecil B. DeMille’s slightly altered 1932 film about the Christians and the lions, The Sign of the Cross, was an unofficial version.

Years in the making, it was the first of numerous biblical based films of the next decade and a half. A miscast Robert Taylor is rather stiff as the Roman general who falls in love with Christian Deborah Kerr, but Kerr is first-rate as usual. The film’s hallmark, though, are its impressive sets and strong supporting cast which includes Leo Genn as Petroneus; Peter Ustinov as Nero; Patricia Laffan as Poppaea; Finlay Currie as Peter and Abraham Sofaer as Paul as well as Felix Aylmer, Nora Swinburne, Peter Miles and Buddy Baer as members of Kerr’s household.

THE BAD SEED (1956)

Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Eileen Heckart and Henry Jones all repeated their Broadway triumphs in this macabre film version of the infamous stage play, three of them (Kelly, McCormack, Heckart) earning Oscar nominations for their efforts. The eerie tale of a child murderer whose mother fears she created the monster by carrying a “bad seed” has been imitated many times, but never improved upon. Still, the film is not entirely successful due to a silly censor imposed coda in which Kelly spanks McCormack.

This was the eighth and final time LeRoy directed any of his actors to Oscar nominations, but not to a Golden Globe nod and win.

A MAJORITY OF ONE/GYPSY (1961/62)

Rosalind Russell was nominated for four Oscars and lost all of them, but she was also nominated for five Golden Globe awards, all of which she won. Her fourth and fifth back-to-back wins were for two stage adaptations she made under LeRoy’s assured direction.

In the first she essayed the Jewish widow role created by Gertrude Berg opposite Sir Cedric Hardwicke in A Majority of One. Russell’s co-star was Alec Guinness. Russell was no more Jewish than Guinness was Japanese, but the two effectively played people of other cultures with great distinction. Russell, known for her flamboyant characters in her later films played her character with a quiet dignity that is very moving. Guinness played his Japanese widower with the same reserve.

The better known Gypsy gets a bum rap because Russell dared to play a part immortalized on stage by Ethel Merman, but Merman was never a great screen actress. Russell may play her more like Aunite Mame, her greatest role, but it works and LeRoy’s decision to blend Russell’s singing with that of Lisa Kirk provides the film with a musical energy that may not rival Merman’s, but is very good in its own right.