The Wizard Of Oz

Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen and William... Alonzo "Lon" Fleming, who worked in the water industry in Pasadena. His mother was of part German descent. Fleming served in the photographic section during World War I, and acted as chief photographer for President Woodrow Wilson in Versailles, France. He showed a mechanical aptitude early in life; while working as a car mechanic he met the director Allan Dwan, who took him on as a camera assistant. Fleming soon rose to the rank of cinematographer, working with both Dwan and D. W. Griffith, and directed his first film in 1919. Many of Fleming's silent films were action movies, often starring Douglas Fairbanks, or Westerns, and with his robust attitude and love of outdoor sports he became known as a "man's director". But he also proved an effective director of women.
more

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.
more

Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, film producer and sometime actor. Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake. To make money, young Mervyn sold newspapers and entered talent shows as a singer. Through this he worked his way into... vaudeville. When his act broke up, he and his cousin, Jesse Lasky, went to Hollywood. LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films. His first directing job was in 1927's No Place to Go. When his movies made lots of money without costing too much, he became well-received in the movie business. In 1931 he directed two key films which launched Edward G. Robinson into major stardom, the Oscar-nominated critique of tabloid journalism Five Star Final, and the classic gangster epic Little Caesar.
more