On Our Merry Way

George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer. Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank , nominated for Best Director, Giant , winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane , Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun , winner of Oscar for Best... Director. He was born in Oakland, California, and his family included his father Landers Stevens and his mother Georgie Cooper, both stage actors. His uncle was drama critic Ashton Stevens. He also had two brothers, Jack and writer Aston Stevens. He learned about the stage from his parents and worked and toured with them, on his way to filmmaking. He broke into the movie business as a cameraman, working on many Laurel and Hardy short films, such as Night Owls . His first feature film was The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble in 1933. In 1934 he got his first directing job, the slapstick Kentucky Kernels. His big break came when he directed Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams in 1935. He went on in the late 1930s to direct several Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies, not only with the two actors together, but on their own.
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Leslie Fenton was an English-born American actor and film director. He appeared in 62 films between 1923 and 1945. Fenton went to America with his mother, Elizabeth, and his brothers when he was six years old - they sailed as steerage passengers on board the R.M.S. Celtic, which departed from the... Port of Liverpool, 11 September 1909, and arrived at the Port of New York, where they were ferried over to Ellis Island for "U.S. Immigrant Inspection" on 19 September; they were quickly admitted and continued their journey by rail to join his father, Reginald Fenton, in Mifflin, Ohio. As a young immigrant, Leslie worked in a shoe factory then ran away to New York and began a career on the stage. His film career began later with Fox Studios. During the Second World War he was commissioned in the Royal Navy. In 1942 in command of a Motor Launch he took part in the St Nazaire Raid. He also directed 19 films between 1938 and 1951. He married American actress Ann Dvorak in 1932; the union was childless and ended in divorce in 1945. His younger brother was Frank Fenton, the noted screenwriter and novelist. Fenton died in Montecito, California, aged 76.
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King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades. In 1979 he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." He was nominated five times for a Best Director... Oscar, and won eight international film awards during his career. He was born in Galveston, Texas, where he survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. His grandfather, Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s. A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, Vidor made his debut as a director in 1913 with The Grand Military Parade. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked as a screenwriter and as director of a series of six short juvenile-delinquency films for Judge Willis Brown before directing his first feature, The Turn in the Road, in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o' My Heart in 1922 got him a long term contract with Goldwyn Studios, later to be absorbed into MGM.
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