1963
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Lloyd Francis Bacon (December 4, 1889 – November 15, 1955) was an American screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director. [2] As a director, he made films in virtually all genres, including westerns, musicals, comedies, gangster films, and crime dramas.
Lloyd Bacon. Director: Wonder Bar. One of the workhorses in Warner Brothers' stable of directors in the 1930s, Lloyd Bacon didn't have a career as loaded with classic films as many of his more famous contemporaries.
- January 1, 1
- San Jose, California, USA
- January 1, 1
- Burbank, California, USA
- Overview
- Early work
- Warner Brothers
Lloyd Bacon (born December 4, 1889, San Jose, California, U.S.—died November 15, 1955, Burbank, California) American director who made some 100 films and was known for his efficiency and businesslike approach; his popular movies included 42nd Street (1933) and It Happens Every Spring (1949).
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
In 1911 Bacon became a member of David Belasco’s Los Angeles stock company of actors. He broke into films four years later as a heavy in comedy shorts. He worked with Charlie Chaplin in the mid-1910s before entering the military as a photographer for the U.S. Navy. After completing his service, Bacon returned to bit roles in Chaplin movies; between...
In 1926 Bacon joined Warner Brothers, where he would stay for nearly 18 years, during which time he became one of its top directors. His first feature for the studio was the cautionary melodrama Broken Hearts of Hollywood (1926). In 1928 he directed Women They Talk About and The Lion and the Mouse, both of which featured some spoken dialogue. Bacon then helmed The Singing Fool (1928), the follow-up to Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927), which was the first feature-length movie with synchronized dialogue and marked the ascendancy of “talkies.” In Bacon’s production, Jolson again regaled audiences with his singing, and the film was enormously popular.
In 1929 Bacon released five films, including Honky Tonk, with Sophie Tucker, and So Long Letty, a musical comedy via Broadway that included the standard “Am I Blue?” Moby Dick was the most enduring of Bacon’s efforts in 1930, with John Barrymore in the role of Captain Ahab. Over the next two years, Bacon helmed 11 films, ranging from the largely forgettable productions 50 Million Frenchmen and Gold Dust Gertie (both 1931), a pair of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson comedies, to Crooner (1932), a dissection of the rise and fall of a radio star (David Manners) whose hubris is the instrument of his destruction.
In 1933 Bacon directed his most successful film to date, 42nd Street; he replaced the ailing Mervyn LeRoy. The archetypal backstage musical, it featured Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, and Warner Baxter. Even more critical to its success were the contributions of composers Al Dubin and Harry Warren and dance director Busby Berkeley. Picture Snatcher (1933) was not as big a hit, but it featured a notable performance by James Cagney as an unscrupulous news photographer who snaps a photograph no one else can get. The melodrama Mary Stevens, M.D., the classic backstage musical Footlight Parade, and Son of a Sailor, a solid vehicle for Joe E. Brown, rounded out 1933 for Bacon.
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Wonder Bar (1934) transported the Warner Brothers musical formula to a Parisian nightclub with uneven results, the nadir being Jolson’s number “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule,” sung in blackface to 200 black children dressed as angels. Bacon could not elevate either Here Comes the Navy or He Was Her Man despite the presence of Cagney, while both A Very Honorable Guy and 6 Day Bike Rider (all 1934) featured Brown again. Devil Dogs of the Air (1935) provided Cagney with the promising setting of the U.S. Marine Air Corps and an on-screen rivalry with Pat O’Brien, but again the result was unimpressive.
- Michael Barson
Lloyd Bacon. Director: Wonder Bar. One of the workhorses in Warner Brothers' stable of directors in the 1930s, Lloyd Bacon didn't have a career as loaded with classic films as many of his more famous contemporaries.
- December 4, 1889
- November 15, 1955
Lloyd Francis Bacon (December 4, 1889 – November 15, 1955) was an American screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director. [2] As a director, he made films in virtually all genres, including westerns, musicals, comedies, gangster films, and crime dramas.
Lloyd Bacon is probably best known for his director's credit on such classic Warner Bros. films as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Knute Rockne—All American, and Action in the North Atlantic.
Lloyd Bacon was an American stage and silent-era screen actor who is most remembered as a film director, making films in virtually all genres. Among the 130 films he directed is the 1933 Warner Bros. classic 42nd Street.
