Born July 7, 1899 to Hungarian Jewish parents on New York’s Lower East Side, George Cukor’s father was a lawyer who expected him to follow in his footsteps. Instead young Cukor fell in love with the theatre and shortly after brief military service toward the end of World War I, had his first job in the theatre as a bit player and assistant stage manager. By 1920 he had become stage manager of a company of travelling players and by 1925 formed his own company which included Louis Calhern, Frank Morgan, Elizabeth Patterson, Reginald Owen and Douglass Montgomery, many of whom would appear in his later films.

His 1926 direction of the Broadway version of The Great Gatsby made critics sit up and take notice and by 1928 he was already being recruited by Hollywood. He worked as dialogue coach on 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front and received co-director credit for the same year’s The Royal Family of Broadway. Although he directed most of 1932’s One Hour With You, Ernst Lubitsch refused to allow him credit and he left Paramount in a huff for RKO where he worked for producer David O. Selznick, whom he had known since childhood.

At RKO, Cukor had great success with What Price, Hollywood?; the first screen version of A Star Is Born; A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn’s first film, and Little Women, for which he received the first of his five Oscar nominations for Best Direction.

Cukor left RKO for MGM with Selznick in 1933. His first film for MGM was the all-star smash hit, Dinner at Eight and he had subsequent major successes with the meticulously cast David Copperfield; the Norma Shearer-Leslie Howard version of Romeo and Juliet and the legendary Greta Garbo version of Camille. On loan-out to Columbia, he made one of his best comedies, the 1938 remake of Holiday with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

He turned down the opportunity to direct some of Selznick’s best known projects including the 1937 remake of A Star Is Born and the Hollywood remake of the Swedish film, Intermezzo, which introduced Ingrid Bergman to American audiences. He finally agreed to work for Selznick again on the direction of Gone With the Wind, but in the meantime was brought in as interim director of The Wizard of Oz after the firing of initial director Richard Thorpe. Although he didn’t shoot any film, he is credited with changing the look of the film from the original garish makeup; tossing out Judy Garland’s blonde wig and designing a better looking yellow brick road among other things.

Working with Selznick on Gone With the Wind was a hassle for both him and the producer. Although legend has it that Clark Gable had him fired for spending too much time with Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland and not enough with him, both Cukor and Selznick denied that was the case. Cukor claimed he was upset with what he considered Selznick’s desecration of Sidney Howard’s script and Selznick claimed he was not happy with Cukor’s slow pace. In any event when Cukor suggested to Selznick that he might be happy with another director, instead of placating him, Selznick simply said “OK”.

Cukor wasn’t idle for long. Within a month he was directing the all female cast The Women top-lining Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell. That film cemented his reputation as “a woman’s director”, a term he resented. He always said that with a good script he could make a good movie regardless of whether the principal characters were men or women.

When Katharine Hepburn bought the rights to her Broadway smash, The Philadelphia Story, she sold it to MGM with the stipulation that she would star in it herself with her pick of co-stars and director. Cukor was her choice of director, and the result was Cukor’s second Oscar nomination.

He then directed Joan Crawford in her last MGM film, A Woman’s Face; Greta Garbo in her last film period, Two-Faced Woman and finally got to work with Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight., for which she became the second performer in a film he directed to win an Oscar. Cukor, in fact, directed twenty actors and actresses to Oscar nominations and five to wins – James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story; Ronald Colman in A Double Life; Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady were the others. Cukor himself received his third and fourth nominations for A Double Life and Born Yesterday, respectively.

Cukor had been one of Hollywood’s most famous party-givers since the mid-1930s. The film Gods and Monsters, about director James Whale, alludes to Cukor’s elegant parties for Hollywood’s affluent closeted gay elite, but he was also famous for entertaining fellow directors such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel and Whale himself as well as acting legends Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall; Greta Garbo; Norma Shearer; Judy Garland and more.

Cukor’s best films of the late forties and early fifties were probably the two Tracy-Hepburn comedies, Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike. In 1954 he directed the legendary third (and best) film version of A Star Is Born with Judy Garland and James Mason. He continued to work on major projects but did not have another critical success of that caliber until My Fair Lady a decade later, for which he finally won his own Oscar.

Cukor’s best post-Lady films were 1972’s Travels With My Aunt with Maggie Smith taking over for Katharine Hepburn and Hepburn herself in their last collaboration, the 1979 TV remake of The Corn Is Green. His last film was 1981’s Rich and Famous with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in a remake the 1943 chestnut, Old Acquaintance with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins.

George Cukor died January 24, 1983 after working on the restoration of A Star Is Born.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

DINNER AT EIGHT (1933)

Grand Hotel may have been the first all-star cast narrative film, but Cukor’s film of the Edna Ferber-George F. Kaufman play has a more fully integrated story.

Billie Burke is the exasperated party-giver, Lionel Barrymore her ship-building tycoon husband and Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Lee Tracy, Karen Morley, Madge Evans, Phillips Holmes, Edmund Lowe, Grant Mitchell, Louise Closser Hale, May Robson and Elizabeth Patterson the various guests, relatives, employees and hangers-on. Cukor’s reputation as a “woman’s director” was already emerging with Dressler as a veteran stage star, Harlow as a dim bulb trophy wife and Burke generally considered to have given the film’s most outstanding performances.

DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935)

Charles Dickens’ beloved novel has been filmed many times, but never more lovingly than in Cukor’s absorbing version in which all the actors seem born to play their parts – Freddie Bartholomew as David as a boy; Frank Lawton as David as a young man; W.C. Fields as Macawber; Lionel Barrymore as Peggotty; Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsy Trotwood; Madge Evans as Agnes; Maureen O’Sullivan as Dora; Elizabeth Allan as David’s mother; Basil Rathbone as Mr. Murdstone; Roland Young as Uriah Heep; Lewis Stone as Mr. Wickfield; Jessie Ralph as Nurse Peggotty; Herbert Mundin as Barkis; Jean Cadell as Mrs. Macawber; Una O’Connor as Mrs. Gummidge; Elsa Lanchester as Clickett and on and on.

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)

Katharine Hepburn at her luminous best as the spoiled heiress, Cary Grant at his most charming as her ex-husband and James Stewart as the reporter who despises everything Hepburn stands for, but ends up falling in love with her, are just the tip of the iceberg under Cukor’s sparkling direction. He also gets marvelous performances from Ruth Hussey as Stewart’s lovelorn photographer; Virginia Weidler as Hepburn’s wise-cracking little sister; Mary Nash as her bemused mother; John Halliday as her philandering father and marvelous Roland Young as her twinkly-eyed uncle.

A STAR IS BORN (1954)

Cukor directed the original version, called What Price Hollywood?, in 1932, turned down the 1937 remake, but returned to the material in the legendary third version with Judy Garland at the peak of her powers both as a singer and an actress. He also gets marvelous performances from James Mason, Charles Bickford, Jack Carson and Tommy Noonan. Under pressure from theatre owners, Jack Warner had the film cut after its initial road show engagements while Cukor was in India scouting locations for Bhowani Junction. The soundtrack was restored in 1982 and the film re-released in his original version with stills covering the missing footage. Hope springs eternal that a fully restored version will someday be available.

MY FAIR LADY (1964)

Faithful screen adaptations of Broadway plays often betray their origins, but Cukor supported by the best artisans Hollywood had to offer, as well as a superb cast, gives us a world that is at once artificial and real as it transports us back to 1912 London. Much had been made of Audrey Hepburn’s salary and lack of singing ability, but she is charming, even in the early scenes when this most elegant of actresses is supposed to be a Cockney flower Girl. Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper and Mona Washbourne are superb as one might expect and Cukor finally earned the Oscar which had eluded him for more than thirty years of exemplary work.

GEORGE CUKOR AND OSCAR

• Little Women (1933)
• The Philadelphia Story (1940)
• A Double Life (1947)
• Born Yesterday (1950)
• My Fair Lady (1964) Oscar