Gordon Douglas (director)
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Gordon Douglas (Gordon Douglas Brickner) (December 15, 1907 – September 29, 1993) was an American film director, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. He was a native of New York City.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Hal Roach and Our Gang
Douglas got his start as a child actor, and as a teenager became employed at the Hal Roach studio, working in the office and appearing in bit parts in various Hal Roach films. He made walk-on appearances in at least two Our Gang shorts: 1930’s Teacher’s Pet and 1932’s Birthday Blues. By 1934, Douglas was assistant to director Gus Meins, and served as assistant director on Laurel and Hardy’s 1934 film Babes in Toyland, and on the Our Gang comedies made between 1934 and mid-1936.
Beginning with Bored of Education in 1936, Our Gang moved from two-reel (twenty-minute) comedies to one-reel (ten-minute) comedies, and Douglas became the senior director of the series. Bored of Education won the 1936 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film, and was the only Our Gang entry ever honored with the award. Douglas remained with the series as director for two years. His Our Gang films, featuring Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Porky, Buckwheat, Waldo, Butch, and Woim, are the most familiar films in the series’ twenty-two year canon.
Hal Roach sold the Our Gang unit, including Douglas’ contract, to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in May 1938. Douglas only directed two MGM Our Gangs before deciding that he could not get used to the more industrialized atmosphere at the larger studio and returned to Roach. During his second tenure at Roach, Douglas directed Zenobia with Oliver Hardy and Harry Langdon, Saps at Sea with Laurel and Hardy, and All-American Co-Ed with former Our Gang kid Johnny Downs.
[edit] Later years
Douglas left Roach for RKO Radio Pictures in 1942, where he directed a number of b-movies, including the Nazi satire The Devil with Hitler (1942). He migrated from there to Columbia Pictures in 1947, and then to Warner Bros. in 1950. At Warner studios, Douglas directed a number of successful films, including Liberace's Sincerely Yours (1955), and the sci-fi classic Them!. Later films for other studios included Call Me Bwana, Frank Sinatra's The Detective, Sidney Poitier's, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! and Follow That Dream for Elvis Presley.
Douglas died of cancer on September 29, 1993 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 85.
