Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Z. Leonard (born October 7, 1889, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died August 27, 1968, Los Angeles, California) was an American film director who was one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s premier directors for some 30 years, best known for a series of popular musicals.

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Early work

Leonard studied law at the University of Colorado before moving to Hollywood in 1907. The following year he began acting in short films, and his credits included The Courtship of Miles Standish (1910) and Robinson Crusoe (1917). His directorial debut was on the 1913 drama A Woman’s Folly. In 1914 he helmed nearly 30 shorts, including a series of comedies in which he portrayed a boorish character—The Boob’s Honeymoon, The Sherlock Boob, and The Boob’s Nemesis, among others. Leonard worked prolifically through the 1910s, and many of his films during this period starred his first wife, Mae Murray (divorced 1925). In 1921 he joined Metro Pictures (later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM]) as the producer and director on Peacock Alley, and he stayed there for the next 34 years—one of the longest continuous stints at a Hollywood studio by a director.

From silent to sound

The Demi-Bride (1927) was the first of five films Leonard made with Norma Shearer; in 1928 he helmed her last silent film, A Lady of Chance. He then directed Marion Davies in her first sound picture, Marianne (1929). Leonard’s first talkie with Shearer, The Divorcee (1930), was their most successful collaboration. Leonard was nominated for an Academy Award, as was the film itself, and Shearer won her only Oscar for her performance as a sexually emancipated woman. Shearer played a similar role in Let Us Be Gay (1930), though the film was not as successful.

Leonard then worked with Davies on a series of movies: The Bachelor Father (1931), in which the actress starred as the illegitimate daughter of a man (C. Aubrey Smith) who wants to reunite with his children; the comedy It’s a Wise Child (1931); and Five and Ten (1931), a soap opera that also featured Leslie Howard. The 1931 melodrama Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) was notable for being the first and only pairing of Greta Garbo and rising star Clark Gable, who returned (along with Shearer) for Strange Interlude (1932), a flawed adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s nine-hour Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Dancing Lady to Ziegfeld Girl

The next phase of Leonard’s career was largely defined by a number of successful musicals. In 1933 he directed Dancing Lady, one of the biggest hits in MGM’s history to that point. The backstage musical starred Joan Crawford opposite Gable, and Fred Astaire made his film debut. It was also notable for featuring the Three Stooges in one of the comedy team’s earliest films. Outcast Lady (1934) found Constance Bennett in the role essayed by Garbo earlier in Clarence Brown’s A Woman of Affairs (1928); both were based on Michael Arlen’s best-selling novel The Green Hat. Leonard’s drama, which was constrained by the Production Code, was less impressive than the earlier version, largely because of changes aimed at appeasing censors.

In 1935 Leonard made After Office Hours, a lacklustre melodrama about a socialite-turned-reporter (Bennett) who is exploited by a wily newspaper editor (Gable). Escapade (1935), however, was more successful. The comedy, which was set in prewar Vienna, featured Luise Rainer, in her Hollywood debut, opposite William Powell. Next was The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Leonard’s best and biggest hit. The lavish biopic of flamboyant showman Flo Ziegfeld starred MGM’s number-one team, Powell and Myrna Loy. However, it was Rainer in the tear-suffused role of Flo’s neglected wife, Anna Held, who stole the show, winning the best actress Oscar. The musical won the Academy Award for best picture, and Leonard received his second nomination for best director. That smash was followed by Piccadilly Jim (1936), a merely adequate adaptation of a P.G. Wodehouse story.

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Leonard was then entrusted with the career of Jeanette MacDonald, one of the industry’s most-reliable attractions at the box office. Over the next four years he made five consecutive musicals with her: Maytime (1937), an enormously popular version of the old Broadway show, with MacDonald as an opera star who marries her voice instructor (John Barrymore) but later falls in love with a fellow performer (Nelson Eddy, her frequent costar); The Firefly (1937), which less successfully installed Allan Jones as her love interest; The Girl of the Golden West (1938), a revival of the David Belasco play, with Eddy back on board, playing a Mexican bandit; Broadway Serenade (1939), a rare contemporary vehicle for MacDonald (sans Eddy) that illustrated why the public preferred her in period spectaculars; and New Moon (1940), a remake of the 1930 Lawrence Tibbett–Grace Moore film, with a fine Sigmund Romberg–Oscar Hammerstein score.

Finished working with MacDonald, Leonard made Pride and Prejudice (1940), an acclaimed adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, with Laurence Olivier, Greer Garson, and Maureen O’Sullivan heading the cast; the script was cowritten by English novelist Aldous Huxley. After the lacklustre screwball comedy Third Finger, Left Hand (1940), Leonard was back in his element with Ziegfeld Girl (1941), an all-stops-out backstage musical about three aspiring performers (Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner). Busby Berkeley directed the lavish musical numbers, and the film was an enormous box-office hit. None of Leonard’s subsequent movies would attain this level of success, though he continued to direct for another 15 years.

Later films

When Ladies Meet (1941) was a stilted remake of the 1933 film that failed to meld the talents of Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, and Greer Garson. We Were Dancing (1942), a laboured adaptation of Noël Coward’s Tonight at 8:30, was notable for being one of Shearer’s last pictures. Leonard made a rare foray into the war genre with Stand By for Action (1942), a patriotic World War II yarn featuring Taylor as a U.S. Navy officer who avoids battle until he is transferred from his desk job to a destroyer. The Man from Down Under (1943) was a heartwarming comedy starring Charles Laughton, who raises a couple of orphans in Australia.

Week-End at the Waldorf (1945) was a glossy but unnecessary remake of Gottfried Reinhardt’s Grand Hotel (1932). However, the film was buoyed by a cast that included Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Ginger Rogers, and Van Johnson, and audiences flocked to see the musical. Somewhat better was The Secret Heart (1946), an unusual drama with a gothic flair, which featured June Allyson, Pidgeon, and Claudette Colbert. Cynthia (1947), from a Viña Delmar play, was little more than an excuse for the young Elizabeth Taylor to get her first screen kiss, while B.F.’s Daughter (1948) was a static adaptation of the J.P. Marquand novel, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin. The Bribe (1949) was Leonard’s first encounter with film noir, and the film received largely positive reviews, thanks in part to a strong cast that included Ava Gardner, Robert Taylor, and Vincent Price. Leonard next directed Garland in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), an appealing musical remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940).

Leonard’s subsequent films were largely lower-profile productions that typically lacked the studio’s big-name stars. Nancy Goes to Rio (1950) was a remake of a Deanna Durbin musical with a second-rate script (by Sidney Sheldon) and cast, and Duchess of Idaho (1950) featured Esther Williams and Johnson, with Lena Horne and Mel Tormé notable for their singing. Grounds for Marriage (1951) was a romantic comedy about an opera singer (Kathryn Grayson) who still loves her ex-husband (Johnson). Too Young to Kiss (1951) was an entertaining romance about a pianist (Allyson) who disguises herself as a 14-year-old prodigy in order to land an audition with a promoter (Johnson).

Leonard next directed Everything I Have Is Yours (1952) with Marge and Gower Champion, but even their considerable dance skills could not energize the mundane musical. The Clown (1953) cast Red Skelton as a former vaudeville star whose career is destroyed by alcohol, but his loving son encourages him to stage a comeback; the drama was a clever recycling of The Champ, a 1931 tearjerker directed by King Vidor. Skelton returned for The Great Diamond Robbery (1954), but the film failed to find an audience, and it was Skelton’s last work for MGM. Her Twelve Men (1954) offered Garson as a schoolteacher adored by her students, and it also was her final MGM vehicle.

After a series of disappointments, Leonard made his best film in years, The King’s Thief (1955), a costume drama starring David Niven and Ann Blyth. That film turned out to be Leonard’s last at MGM. His last two films were the Italian production Beautiful but Dangerous (1955; La donna più bella del mondo) with Gina Lollobrigida and Kelly and Me (1957), another Johnson musical. Leonard then retired from filmmaking.