The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and... Camille . He was replaced as the director of Gone with the Wind , but he went on to direct The Philadelphia Story , Adam's Rib , Born Yesterday , A Star Is Born and My Fair Lady . He continued to work into the 1980s. Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of New York City, the younger child and only son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants Victor, an assistant district attorney, and Helen Ilona Cukor. His parents selected his middle name in honor of Spanish–American War hero George Dewey. Unlike the Jews of Poland and Russia whose first language was Yiddish, Hungarian Jews did not adopt Yiddish as their primary language. Therefore, the Cukor family, subscribing to the norm of their country of origin, was not a Yiddish speaking household.
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Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director, and screenwriter. Between 1920 and 1968, Taurog directed over 140 films, and directed Elvis Presley in more movies than any other director . He won the 1931 Academy Award for Best Director for the film Skippy and still holds the record as the... youngest director to win it. He was later nominated for Best Director for the 1938 film, Boys Town. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Norman Taurog has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1600 Vine Street. It could be said that Norman Taurog had five chapters to his career. His first was as a child performer on the stage from an early age, making his movie debut aged 13 in the short film Tangled Relations, produced by Thomas Ince's studios. In the eight years until his next screen credit, he worked in theatre, mostly off-Broadway. By the time he re-entered the movie industry, he made the transition to director. He collaborated with Larry Semon in 1920's The Sportsman.
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William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation... themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well regarded satirical comedies. Wellman directed the 1927 film Wings, which became the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony. Wellman's father, Arthur Gouverneur Wellman, was a New England Brahmin of English-Welsh-Scottish and Irish descent. William was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1640. William was a great-great-great grandson of Francis Lewis of New York, one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. His much beloved mother was an Irish immigrant named Cecilia McCarthy. Wellman was expelled from Newton High School in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, for dropping a stink bomb on the principal's head.
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Henry Codman Potter was an American theatrical producer/director and a motion picture director. H.C. Potter was born in New York City, the grandson of the Right Rev. Henry Codman Potter, Episcopal Bishop of New York, and son of Alonzo Potter, New York investment banker. He attended St. Marks... School and graduated from Yale University in 1936, where he was a member of the Yale Dramatic Association and Scroll and Key. He attended the Yale School of Drama in the era of George Pierce Baker, and with George Haight founded the Hampton Players, one of the first summer theaters in America, based in Southampton, Long Island 1927–33. With Haight as producer, he directed numerous Broadway productions 1927–35, then moved to Hollywood where he directed over 20 feature films, earning a reputation as a specialist in "gag" comedy. He married Lucilla Annie Wylie in 1926. Their three sons were Daniel J. Potter M.D. , Robert A. Potter and Earl Wylie Potter.
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