Gregory La Cava
Gregory La Cava ( born March 10, 1892 in Towanda, Pennsylvania, † March 1, 1952 in Malibu ) was an American film director and cartoonist.
Career
Gregory La Cava came during the First World War as a cartoonist to Hollywood He drew cartoons for Walter Lantz, as in The Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and Jeff. Later he worked as an editor for the Hearst comic Film International to also lead from the mid 1920s to direct myself.
After he had turned in 1933 with Gabriel Over the House With a satire about politics and corruption, he was appointed the following year with two other films. The Affairs of Cellini was the first major film, the Darryl F. Zanuck produced for his new company 20th Century; in What Every Woman Knows, he worked with the actress Helen Hayes.
The most famous is still his film My Man Godfrey in 1936 with Carole Lombard and William Powell in the lead roles. The following year, the stagnant career of Katharine Hepburn by La Cavas Drama Stage Door ( Stage Door ) was revived, and he succeeded in doing this, to draw attention to Hepburn's comedic talent. With Ginger Rogers, who played in Stage Door, the second main role, he made two more films: the comedy Fifth Avenue Girl from 1939, in which a drunken millionaire asks the drenching rain Rogers: " Why do not you step out of Those wet clothes and into a dry martini? ", and Primrose Path, which in its portrayal of prostitution and domestic violence of his time went in 1940 to the limits of censorship is permissible.
After two less successful films at Universal with Irene Dunne, Unfinished Business and Lady in a Jam, La Cava was greatly private problems and retired for a few years completely out of the film business. His last film Living in a Big Way, for its rotation in 1947 he took for over ten months, proved to be a flop. Filming for One Touch of Venus then he could not stop.
In his book People Will Talk from the 1985 film historian John Kobal has recorded an interview with the actor Joel McCrea, in which he spoke very openly about his friendship with La Cava and his personal problems.
La Cava was twice nominated for an Oscar for best director.