1889-1949
Most people will instantly think of Gone With The Wind, or even The Wizard of Oz (1939), when the name of director Victor Fleming comes up; he, in fact, though got his start in the film industry in the mid-1910's. Victor Lonzo Fleming was born on this day what is now Los Angeles County, California (then Rancho La Cañada)--he was born on a working ranch there called Banbury. He is known to have worked on the technical side of films by 1915, with a cinematographer credit on the 1915 romantic comedy short Fifty-Fifty, made for Independent Moving Pictures (IMP) and distributed by Universal. However, he is listed as an uncredited actor in a minor role in the 1914 melodrama The Envoy Extraordinary which was the work of writer/director Lorimer Johnston. Whatever the case, Fleming was a man of action strictly behind the scenes and was working in camera operations from 1915 through 1919, when he made his directorial debut in the Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) feature When Clouds Roll By (which both starred and was produced by Fairbanks and his company). In the meantime, he served mostly as a cinematographer, but did serve as a second unit director on D. W. Griffith's massive project Intolerance (1916). It was during this period that he became especially close to Fairbanks, serving as the DP on a number of features starring the elder Fairbanks, including The Americano, which was shot on location in Tijuana. After Fleming graduated to directing, he gave up camera operation on all but one additional film in his lifetime (the all mono documentary Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks in 1931). Despite that he most well known for films in the late 1930's, he actually directed more films during the 1920's than he did in all the rest of his career. He started the decade out with the Fairbanks comedy Mollycoddle (June 1920); his only film of the year, it also featured Wallace Beery and Ruth Renick. He next went to work at Constance Talmadge's production company for two pictures in 1921: Mama's Affair (January) and Woman's Place (October). He directed three films in 1922, two of which were for Paramount related studios; the other was for the production company of the married writing pair John Emerson and Anita Loos who had penned the adapted script for Mama's Affair. He upped his directing game in 1923 by directing four features, two of which were Richard Dix westerns. Of the four, To the Last Man (September 1923) is probably the most historically significant, due to it's source material coming from author Zane Grey; and that an [almost] intact copy was found in Russia and has been screened during at least one silent film festival Along with Dix, Lois Weber and Noah Beery round out the cast. In 1924, he was back to melodrama, though he was also thoroughly ensconced at Paramount, leading to his expanding his directing demands as time went on. He only made two films in 1924, as opposed to his three in 1925, but he was showing signs of becoming the exacting director that he was later known for--which meant that he tended to be a slow worker. The fact that his work product was very good, meant that Paramount did not seem to mind. His abilities to direct well framed scenes on location shoots (from the Arizona desert to Santa Catalina Island) were no doubt informed by his having been an excellent Army war photographer during the first World War; he had, in fact, been a principle presidential photographer of Woodrow Wilson in Versailles. He was also one of the only directors that could get a really excellent performance out of Wallace Beery, a notoriously difficult actor to deal with (he also directed brother Noah, who was basically the opposite of his hulking brother). One of his better known silents is the 1926 Clara Bow comedy Mantrap, filmed on location in two areas of the San Bernardino National Forest, it was based on the Sinclair Lewis serialized novel. Further, if Fleming could manhandle a great performance from Wallace Beery, why not Emil Jannings? Jannings was a difficult actor from Germany who later became gung-ho for the Nazi's, but Fleming directed him in The Way of All Flesh in 1927. It would garner Jannings a Best Actor Oscar for his trouble (it is also a lost film with the except of about 8 minute extant clip). Additionally, in 1927, he directed the war epic The Rough Riders with Charles Farrell, George Bancroft, Mary Astor and Noah Beery as "Hell's Bells;" at nearly 2 1/3 hours long at it's New York premiere and shot in locations in multiple states, it was certainly one of Paramount's most expensive productions (the film was cut to around 110 minutes for wider release). It was also a film that had hints of what was to come from Fleming in Gone With The Wind. His next film, Abie's Irish Rose (November 1928) was his first film with sound; a partial silent comedy starring Charles Rogers and Nancy Carroll, containing talking sequences by Western Electric, there was also a fully silent version for wider release. I don't think there is much doubt that his last film of that decade is historically his most well known of the decade, and was also considered by many for a long time to be his best film of the decade: The Virginian was also his first full talkie (though a fully silent version was also released). Released in November of 1929, the film starred Walter Huston, Mary Brien and, most famously, Gary Cooper. This was to be Fleming's last picture at Paramount. He started the new decade off with two films for Fox, before landing at MGM, where he would direct his most famous works mentioned above: Wizard and Wind (though Gone With the Wind was a co-production with David Selznick's company). Despite that Fleming is most closely associated with those two films, (remarkably both released in 1939), his most frequent actor in his later films was Spencer Tracy. He first directed Tracy in 1937 in Captains Courageous, a family adventure film was a large famous cast of actors that included Sam McDaniel, the brother of Hattie McDaniel who he would direct in Wind (she would be the very first African American ever nominated for an Oscar, never mind to win--she did both!). Tracy also starred in Fleming's only horror film, his rendition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde released in 1941. Clark Gable, famous for his turn as Rhett Butler, was likewise a frequent actor in later Fleming films; Fleming directed him no less than five times. His last film, Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman in the titular role, he barely finished before suffering a heart attack in Arizona on the 6th of January in 1949, he died while en route to the hospital. He was 59 years old. He is interred at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Joan of Arc, made for RKO, and released in November of 1948, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three. Fleming won his only Oscar for Best Director, of course, for Gone With the Wind.
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| [source: AJM (Find A Grave)] |
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| [source: stateofsunshine19 (Find A Grave)] |
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