Gregory La Cava (March 10, 1892 – March 1, 1952) was an American film director best known for his films of the 1930s, including My Man Godfrey and Stage Door. The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... My Man Godfrey is a screwball comedy film released in 1936 by Universal Pictures. ... Stage Door is a 1937 film that tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a single boarding house. ...

He was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania and studied at the Art 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. Towanda is a borough located in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. ... The Art Institute of Chicago is a fine art museum located in Chicago, Illinois. ... The Art Students League of New York is an art school founded in 1875. ... Raoul Barré (January 29, 1874 - May 21, 1932) was a Canadian and American cartoonist, animator of the Silent Era, and artist. ... The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames. ...

Towards the end of 1915, William Randolph Hearst decided to create an animation studio to promote the comic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new company International Film Service, and he hired La Cava to run it (for double what he was making with Barré). For other people named William Randolph Hearst, see William Randolph Hearst (disambiguation) William Randolph Hearst I (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate. ... This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ... International Film Service was an American animation studio created to exploit the popularity of the comic strips controlled by William Randolph Hearst. ...

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. Myron Grim Natwick (August 16, 1890 - October 7, 1990) was an American animator and film director, regarded as one of the greatest of all time. ... The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. ...

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 the rival Bray Studio was creating more effective series with original characters. He was apparently aware of this fault, and he had his animators study Charlie Chaplin films to improve their timing and characterization. But he didn't have time to achieve very much, because in July of 1918 Hearst's bankers caught up with him and International Film Service was shut down. Bray Productions was the dominant animated series studio in the years before World War I. // History The studio was founded in December of 1914 by J. R. Bray, perhaps the first first studio entirely devoted to animation, and series animation at that (he was probably beaten a few months earlier... “Charles Chaplin” redirects here. ...

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 (no surprise, since John Terry himself was an IFS alumnus). This only lasted a few months, then John 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 his 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 were:

• Bebe Daniels (Feel My Pulse, 1928)
• Richard Dix
• W. C. Fields (So's Your Old Man, 1926 and Running Wild, 1927)

In fact, he became a good friend and drinking companion of W.C. Fields. Bebe Daniels (January 14, 1901 - March 16, 1971) was an American actress. ... Richard Dix publicity photo Richard Dix (July 18, 1893 - September 20, 1949) was an American actor. ... W. C. Fields (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946) was an American juggler, comedian, and actor. ...

La Cava had worked his way up to feature films in the silent era, but it is for his work in sound films of the 1930s--especially comedic ones--that he is best known today. And though he didn't always get credit, he also often had a hand in creating the screenplays for his films.

Among the sound films he directed:

• The Half Naked Truth (1932)
• The Age of Consent (1932) for RKO, which starred Richard Cromwell, Eric Linden, and Dorothy Wilson.
• Bed of Roses (1932) with Constance Bennett and Pert Kelton
• Gabriel Over the White House (1933) with Walter Huston
• What Every Woman Knows (1934) with Helen Hayes
• Private Worlds (1935)
• She Married Her Boss (1935) with Claudette Colbert
• My Man Godfrey (1936, nominated for the Best Director Academy Award) with William Powell and Carole Lombard
• Stage Door (1937, also nominated for Best Director) with Katharine Hepburn as well as his first of three consecutive film with Ginger Rogers
• 5th 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)). RKO could stand for: RKO Pictures The R.K.O. - finishing manoever (and initials) of WWE professional wrestler Randy Orton. ... Richard Cromwell (4 October 1626 – 12 July 1712) was the third son of Oliver Cromwell, and the second Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, for little over eight months, from 3 September 1658 until 25 May 1659. ... Eric Linden (b. ... Dorothy Clarke Wilson Dorothy Clarke Wilson (1904-2003) was an American author and playwright. ... Bed of Roses (1933) is an extremely bawdy pre-Hayes Code comedy featuring Constance Bennett and Pert Kelton (the original Alice in Jackie Gleasons The Honeymooners) as a pair of rollickingly bawdy prostitutes who occasionally get hapless male admirers drunk before robbing them, at least until the girls are... Constance Campbell Bennett (October 22, 1904 - July 24, 1965) was a US actress known as much for her elegant persona as for her acting career. ... Pert Kelton (1907-1968) was an American vaudeville, movie, and television actress. ... Gabriel Over the White House is a 1933 motion picture depicting a fictional President of the United States who has a religious experience and attempts to solve his countrys problems through authoritarian means. ... Walter Huston (April 6, 1884 – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian-born American actor. ... Helen Hayes (October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress whose successful and award-winning career spanned almost 70 years. ... Private Worlds is a 1935 film which tells the story of the staff and patients at a mental hospital, and the chief of the hospital who has problems dealing with a female psychiatrist. ... She Married Her Boss is a 1935 film directed by Gregory La Cava, and starring Claudette Colbert and Melvyn Douglas. ... Claudette Colbert (September 13, 1903 - July 30, 1996) was an Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning French-American actress in Hollywood film, stage, television and radio. ... The Academy Award for Directing is one of the awards given to directors working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ... William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 - March 5, 1984) was an American actor, noted for his sophisticated, cynical roles. ... Carole Lombard (October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress. ... Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an iconic American star of film, television and stage, widely recognized for her sharp wit, New England gentility and fierce independence. ... Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an Academy Award-winning American film and stage actress and singer. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

La Cava died 9 days before his 60th birthday on March 1 1952 in Malibu, California. is the 60th day of the year (61st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Location of Malibu in Los Angeles County, California Coordinates: , Country State County Los Angeles Incorporated (city) 1991-03-28 [2] Government  - Mayor Ken Kearsley [1] Area  - City  100. ...

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 link

• Gregory La Cava at the Internet Movie Database