Gregory La Cava

Hollywood Stars : Gregory La Cava

Gregory La Cava, 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.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 BarrГ©. By 1915, he was an animator on the Animated Grouch Chasers series.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 BarrГ©). La Cavas first employee was his co-worker at the BarrГ© 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 Hearsts comics into cartoon series, he came to put semi-independent units in charge of each, leading to the growth of individual styles.La Cava also had the significant advantage over other studios of an unlimited budget: Hearsts business sense completely broke down when it came to his Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial and the living comic strips they contained. La Cavas main fault as a producer and director was that his cartoons were too clearly animated comic strips, hampered by speech balloons when 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 didnt have time to achieve very much, because in July 1918, Hearsts bankers caught up with him and International Film Service was shut down.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 Terrys studio (not surprising since John Terry himself was an IFS alumnus). This only lasted a few months before Terrys 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 its 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 are:Bebe Daniels (Feel My Pulse, 1928)Richard DixW. C. Fields (Sos Your Old Man, 1926 and Running Wild, 1927) He became a good friend and drinking companion of Fields.La Cava worked his way up to feature films in the silent era, but it is for his work in sound films of the 1930s—especially comedies—that he is best known today. And though he did not always get credit, he also often had a hand in creating the screenplays for his films. Among the sound films he directed are: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 KeltonGabriel Over the White House (1933) with Walter HustonWhat Every Woman Knows (1934) with Helen HayesPrivate Worlds (1935)She Married Her Boss (1935) with Claudette ColbertMy Man Godfrey (1936, nominated for the Best Director Academy Award) with William Powell and Carole LombardStage Door (1937, also nominated for Best Director) with Katharine Hepburn as well as his first of three consecutive film with Ginger RogersFifth 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).La Cava died nine days before his 60th birthday on March 1, 1952 in Malibu, California. His remains were buried at Chapel of the Pines Crematory.[edit] Filmography[edit] ReferencesJoe Adamson; The Walter Lantz Story; G. P. Putnams 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)[edit] External linksGregory La Cava at the Internet Movie DatabaseGregory La Cava at Find a GravePersondataNameLacava, GregoryAlternative namesShort descriptionDate of birthMarch 10, 1892Place of birthDate of deathMarch 1, 1952Place of deathRetrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_La_CavaCategories: 1892 births | 1952 deaths | American film directors | English-language film directors | Animated film directors | People from Towanda, Pennsylvania | School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumniPersonal toolsLog in / create accountNamespacesArticleDiscussionVariantsViewsReadEditView historyActionsSearchNavigationMain pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom articleDonate to WikipediaInteractionHelpAbout WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesContact WikipediaToolboxWhat links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkCite this pagePrint/exportCreate a bookDownload as PDFPrintable versionLanguagesCatalГ DeutschEuskaraFranГ§aisItalianoSuomi This page was last modified on 25 February 2011 at 19:07.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;additional terms may apply.See Terms of Use for details.Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.Contact usPrivacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersif ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.config.set({wgCanonicalNamespace: , wgCanonicalSpecialPageName: false, wgNamespaceNumber: 0, wgPageName: Gregory_La_Cava, wgTitle: Gregory La Cava, wgAction: view, wgArticleId: 489635, wgIsArticle: true, wgUserName: null, wgUserGroups: [*], wgCurRevisionId: 415908795, wgCategories: [1892 births, 1952 deaths, American film directors, English-language film directors, Animated film directors, People from Towanda, Pennsylvania, School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni], wgBreakFrames: false, wgRestrictionEdit: [], wgRestrictionMove: [], wgSearchNamespaces: [0], wgFlaggedRevsParams: {tags: {status: {levels: 1, quality: 2, pristine: 3}}}, wgStableRevisionId: null, wgRevContents: {error: Unable to get content., waiting: Waiting for content}, wgWikimediaMobileUrl: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki, wgCollapsibleNavBucketTest: false, wgCollapsibleNavForceNewVersion: false, wgArticleAssessmentJUIPath: http://bits.wikimedia.org/w/extensions-1.17/UsabilityInitiative/js/js2stopgap/jui.combined.min.js, Geo: {city: , country: }, wgNoticeProject: wikipedia});}if ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.loader.load([mediawiki.legacy.wikibits, mediawiki.util, mediawiki.legacy.ajax, mediawiki.legacy.mwsuggest, ext.vector.collapsibleNav, ext.vector.collapsibleTabs, ext.vector.editWarning, ext.vector.simpleSearch]);mediaWiki.loader.go();}if ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.user.options.set({ccmeonemails:0,cols:80,contextchars:50,contextlines:5,date:default,diffonly:0,disablemail:0,disablesuggest:0,editfont:default,editondblclick:0,editsection:1,editsectiononrightclick:0,enotifminoredits:0,enotifrevealaddr:0,enotifusertalkpages:1,enotifwatchlistpages:0,extendwatchlist:0,externaldiff:0,externaleditor:0,fancysig:0,forceeditsummary:0,gender:unknown,hideminor:0,hidepatrolled:0,highlightbroken:1,imagesize:2,justify:0,math:1,minordefault:0,newpageshidepatrolled:0,nocache:0,noconvertlink:0,norollbackdiff:0,numberheadings:0,previewonfirst:0,previewontop:1,quickbar:1,rcdays:7,rclimit:50,rememberpassword:0,rows:25,searchlimit:20,showhiddencats:0,showjumplinks:1,shownumberswatching:1,showtoc:1,showtoolbar:1,skin:vector,stubthreshold:0,thumbsize:4,underline:2,uselivepreview:0,usenewrc:0,watchcreations:1,watchdefault:0,watchdeletion:0,watchlistdays:3,watchlisthideanons:0,watchlisthidebots:0,watchlisthideliu:0,watchlisthideminor:0,watchlisthideown:0,watchlisthidepatrolled:0,watchmoves:0,wllimit:250,flaggedrevssimpleui:1,flaggedrevsstable:false,flaggedrevseditdiffs:true,flaggedrevsviewdiffs:false,vector-simplesearch:1,useeditwarning:1,vector-collapsiblenav:1,usebetatoolbar:1,usebetatoolbar-cgd:1,variant:en,language:en,searchNs0:true,searchNs1:false,searchNs2:false,searchNs3:false,searchNs4:false,searchNs5:false,searchNs6:false,searchNs7:false,searchNs8:false,searchNs9:false,searchNs10:false,searchNs11:false,searchNs12:false,searchNs13:false,searchNs14:false,searchNs15:false,searchNs100:false,searchNs101:false,searchNs108:false,searchNs109:false});mediaWiki.loader.state({user.options:ready});/* cache key: enwiki:resourceloader:filter:minify-js:3:ae2156c08a06314b12473d37e57711e2 */} if ( window.isMSIE55 ) fixalpha();