Mitchell Leisen
Mitchell Leisen (* October 6, 1898 in Menominee, Michigan, USA, † October 28, 1972 in Woodland Hills, California ) was an American director, producer and costume designer.
Career
Irons began his career under Cecil B. DeMille, with its despotic nature he was one of the few well coped with Paramount. As DeMille once demanded an unusual saddle pad for an elephant in a crowd scene, asked Makers:
After some initial trials as a director, he had his breakthrough in 1935. The movie Hands Across the Table made from Carole Lombard to the greatest female star of the Paramount after Claudette Colbert and helped iron, to become the leading woman director of the studio. Particularly well he got along with Colbert, he in Midnight - brought to one of her best representations unveiling at midnight. The actress, known for her neurosis to show only the left side of their profile and otherwise extremely concerned about their appearance, was of iron in aesthetic questions always right, but otherwise almost no stage directions. His philosophy:
Even with another actress with a very specific chocolate side ( the right time ) came Leisen good: Jean Arthur delivered in Easy Living one of her best performances and the film itself is a classic screwball comedy of. Mid- forties, he turned two opulent costume strips: The Pirate and the Lady with Joan Fontaine as a classy lady by day and a pirate's bride at night. Such melodramas were at the same time very popular in England. Phyllis Calvert played a similar role in Madonna of the Seven Moons and Margaret Lockwood had with The Wicked Lady the biggest financial success of their career. The other strip was Kitty, a Cinderellageschichte, the Paulette Goddard turned out great.
His version of the musical Lady in the Dark by Kurt Weill were by critics, despite a high budget and some well-staged numbers ( particularly spectacular, the dream sequences of the heroine, played by Ginger Rogers ) received mixed. The comparison with the Broadway show in which Gertrude Lawrence and Danny Kaye had important roles, was mostly negative. In 1946, he helped Olivia de Havilland, with her portrayal of a single mother in mother's heart to win the Oscar. The film was the first strip after de Havilland had fought its long-standing legal dispute with Warner Brothers to the Supreme Court of the United States. The actress won the case.
Towards the end of the decade Leisen had a creative crisis and with the exception of stripes No Man of Her Own by 1950, his films of inferior quality. The film presents Barbara Stanwyck in a typical Joan Crawford role: a young woman leaves her brutal lover, decreases after a train accident on the identity of a dead and experienced happy hours, until the truth comes to light.
Leisen, who has never made a secret of his homosexuality was life close friend of Carole Lombard. A well-known anecdote, quoted among others by Kenneth Anger in his book Hollywood Babylon goes like this: Clark Gable, the current husband of Lombard, she asked one day why she was friends with almost every man in Hollywood, but apparently have claimed not a single friend. Lombard, known for their wit dryly: