Search results
Walter Lang was an American film director who worked for 20th Century Fox and directed musicals such as The King and I and State Fair. He was born in Tennessee, married to actress Madalynne Field, and died in California in 1972.
Walter Lang. Director: The King and I. Walter Lang entered the film industry in New York when he got a job as a clerk in the office of a film production company. He worked his way up to assistant director, and directed his first film in 1926.
- January 1, 1
- Memphis, Tennessee, USA
- January 1, 1
- Palm Springs, California, USA
- Overview
- Films of the 1920s and ’30s
- Films of the 1940s
- Films of the 1950s and ’60s
Walter Lang (born August 10, 1896, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.—died February 7, 1972, Palm Springs, California) American film director best known for films such as The Little Princess (1939), The King and I (1956), and Desk Set (1957). Lang made over 50 sound pictures, most at Twentieth Century-Fox over a 25-year span.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II
Lang served in France with the U.S. Army during World War I. In the early 1920s he entered film as an assistant director. He was given his chance to direct by Dorothy Davenport, who hired him to direct her in The Red Kimona (1925), and over the next four years he made a number of silents at various studios. Working at tiny companies such as Sono Art-World Wide and Tiffany, Lang made several talkies in 1929 and 1930.
Brothers (1930), based on a stage play about identical twins with vastly different characters, was made at the then-minor studio Columbia Pictures, but most of Lang’s work at that time was for companies with even less prestige, and he briefly gave up directing to move to Paris and paint. However, he was soon back in Hollywood, directing Carole Lombard in No More Orchids (1932), a glossy melodrama that was not particularly successful; nor were Meet the Baron (1933) and The Party’s Over (1934).
The Little Princess was enough of a success to warrant putting Temple in another lavish fairy tale, but The Blue Bird (1940), based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s allegorical play, became her first outright flop. The first of the many romantic musicals Lang directed and that defined Fox in the 1940s was Tin Pan Alley (1940), a period piece with the formidable cast of Betty Grable and Alice Faye as singers. Moon over Miami (1941) was an even bigger hit, with Grable and her sister (Carole Landis) husband-hunting.
Special offer for students! Check out our special academic rate and excel this spring semester!
Learn More
The nonmusical comedy The Magnificent Dope (1942) had Henry Fonda as a lazy backcountry fellow who is more than a match for a scheming self-help-school operator (Don Ameche), and Coney Island (1943) was another colourful period musical starring Grable. Set during Prohibition, Greenwich Village (1944) offered Ameche as a classical composer whose music is stolen by a nightclub owner (William Bendix) for his latest show.
State Fair (1945) starred Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, Dick Haymes, and Vivian Blaine putting across such Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes as the Academy Award-winning “It Might as Well Be Spring” with brio. Sentimental Journey (1946) was a melodrama about a Broadway couple (John Payne and Maureen O’Hara) who adopt a little girl, only for the mother to pass away. Mother Wore Tights (1947) was another period musical for Grable, here as half of a husband-and-wife vaudeville song-and-dance team.
Sitting Pretty (1948) was one of the year’s biggest comedy hits. Clifton Webb was nominated for an Oscar as the imperious Mr. Belvedere, an author doing research on life in suburbia. To that end he offers his services as a babysitter to a couple (Robert Young and O’Hara) whose three wild children have driven away every other caregiver; the film was popular enough to spawn two sequels.
Webb and Lang joined forces again for Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), a well-mounted adaptation of the popular memoir by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, with Webb as the stern paterfamilias of a brood of 12 children and Myrna Loy as his patient wife. The Jackpot (1950) was a satire about radio quiz shows, with James Stewart as the “lucky” winner who now cannot pay the taxes on his booty, and On the Riviera (1951) starred Danny Kaye as a music-hall star whose impersonation of a millionaire is so accurate that even his wife (Gene Tierney) is deceived. The biopic With a Song in My Heart (1952) starred Susan Hayward as singer Jane Froman, who had been gravely injured in a plane crash and struggled to make a heroic comeback.
The 1953 Call Me Madam, a long, loud version of the Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Broadway hit, had Ethel Merman as the ambassador to Lichtenburg belting out Irving Berlin songs (“It’s a Lovely Day Today” and “You’re Just in Love”) while being wooed by the foreign minister (George Sanders). Merman appeared again in There’s No Business like Show Business (1954), another Irving Berlin songfest, with Johnnie Ray, Mitzi Gaynor, and Marilyn Monroe.
As Fox’s top director of musicals, Lang naturally was given the challenge of adapting the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein show The King and I, which premiered on Broadway in 1951, into a film; this he did, with splendid results. He had the advantage of having Yul Brynner recreate his Broadway role and Deborah Kerr star as British governess Anna Leonowens. The film received nine Oscar nominations including best picture and Lang’s only Oscar nomination for best director.
Desk Set (1957) was a pleasant Spencer Tracy–Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy, with Hepburn as the head of a television network’s research department resisting the introduction of an advanced computer by an engineer (Tracy). Lang was loaned to Paramount for the tart But Not for Me (1959), with a middle-aged producer (Clark Gable) trying to sweep a young aspiring actress (Carroll Baker) off her feet.
- Michael Barson
Walter Lang. Director: The King and I. Walter Lang entered the film industry in New York when he got a job as a clerk in the office of a film production company. He worked his way up to assistant director, and directed his first film in 1926.
- August 10, 1896
- February 7, 1972
10 titles. 1. The King and I (1956) G | 133 min | Biography, Drama, Musical. 7.4. Rate. 72 Metascore. A widow accepts a job as a live-in governess to the King of Siam's children. Director: Walter Lang | Stars: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson.
Quick Reference. (1896–1972). Film director. A master at glossy, entertaining comedies and musicals, he helmed some of the best screen versions of Broadway hits. Lang was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and worked ... From: Lang, Walter in The Oxford Companion to the American Musical ».
People also ask
What does Walter Lang do?
How did Walter Lang become a director?
What films did Walter Lang make?
Who is Walter Lang wife Madalynne Field?
Walter Lang was an American film director.
