Born October 3, 1896, (Thomas) Leo McCarey began in films as Assistant Director to horror legend Tod Browning in 1920, but soon found his niche as a comedy writer for Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. He later brought Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together and guided their early joint career. By 1929 he was VP in charge of production for Hal Roach Studios.

He became a highly sought after director with the coming of sound and directed someof the biggest stars of the day, including Gloria Swanson, W. C. Fields and Harold Lloyd in some of their best reviewed films. One early highlight was the Marx Bros. classic, Duck Soup generally regarded as their best film.

In 1937 he directed two enduring masterpieces, Make Way for Tomorrow about the problems of old age in the pre-Social Security age, which he regarded as his finest film and the ultimate screenball comedy, The Awful Truth, which was the box-office smash Make Way for Tomorrow was not. When he won his Best Director Oscar for The Awful Truth he famously remarked “thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture”.

He was nominated for Best Original Story for 1939’s bittersweet Love Affair and 1940’s return to screwball comedy, My Favorite Wife, but he relegated the direction of the latter to Garson Kanin.

In 1944 he wrote, produced and directed the classic comedy,Going My Way with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald as priests with different outlooks, which made him the first director whose film won all three Oscar categories in the same year, although he is not officially credited with having won for producing. But then, who needs another Oscar when your percentage of profits when the year’s most successful film made you the highest paid individual in the country that year?

The 1945 sequel to Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s with Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, proved equally successful at the box office and McCarey was again nominated for an Oscar for his direction.

A devout Roman Catholic, McCarey became more socially conservative as the years wore on. His 1952 film, My Son John was a poorly made film regardless of which side of the political issue – Communism – you happen to be on. Nevertheless the writers’ branch of the Academy liked it well enough to nominate him for a sixth Oscar for his Original Story.

It was another five years before he made another film, 1957’s An Affair to Remember, a remake of his 1939 hit, Love Affair with Deborah Kerr and cary substituting for Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. It brought McCarey his seventh and final Oscar nomination, albeit one in a new category: Best Song, having co-written the lyrics for the film’s title tune.

His follow-up film, the disappointing Rally Round the Flag Boys! was a comedy that suggested Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward should stick to drama.

His final film, 1962’s Satan Never Sleeps was not well-received by the critics. Nevertheless Clifton Webb in his last film gives one of his best performances as as a tired old priest being chased out of China by the Communists.

Leo McCarey died of emphysema July 5, 1969 at 72.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935)

A Best Picture Oscar nominee, McCarey’s Anglo-American relationship comedy is superlatively acted, especially by Charles Laughton whose performance won him the New York Film Critics Award along with the same year’s Mutiny on the Bounty. Laughton plays a third-generation butler won by Red Gap, Washingtonians Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland. The highlight of the film is the famed bar scene in which none of the locals can recite the Gettysburg Address, but Ruggles (Laughton) can and does. This is the first major film in which McCarey’s humanism was on equal display with his comedic skills.

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)

The plight of the elderly in the days before Social Security presents the very real situation of aging Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore facing foreclosure on their home. Their only solution is for the two to break up, with one coming to live with a son and the other with a daughter. Heartache and laughter abide side by side in this lovely film in which neither the oldsters nor the younger generation (Fay Bainter, Thomas Mitchell, et. al.) is depicted as being the villain in their impossible situation. Bondi and Moore’s brief reunion and their final parting scene are especially poignant.

THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937)

There were previous versions of the story in 1925 and 1929 and there would be a musical remake in 1953 with Jane Wyman and Ray Milland called Let’s Do It Again, but none of them hold a candle to this almost totally improvised masterpiece. Cary Grant, in the role that solidified his stardom, is a total joy mimicking McCarey throughout and Irene Dunne is sheer perfection as the ex-wife who still loves him. Ralph Bellamy, Alexander D’Arcy, Cecil Cunningham, and of course, Asta, the dog from The Thin Man, are all marvelous.

THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S (1945)

As big a hit as the multi-Oscar winning Going My Way the year before, but with a better, funnier script and the sublime Ingrid Bergman at the pinnacle of her career instead of Barry Fitzgerald as Bing Crosby’s foil make this one that hasn’t aged a bit. The supporting cast includes the endearing Henry Travers as the soft tough millionaire and a host of other memorable players.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957)

McCarey remade his own 1939 hit Love Affair with the same script but with Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant and Cathleen Nesbitt in glorious Cinemascope and Technicolor instead of Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer and Maria Ouspenskaya in black-and-white and the result was an even more memorable film. It has since been remade, copied, parodied and played tribute to too many to count but no matter how many times you’ve seen it, just try to get through that last scene without a lump in your throat or a tear in your eye. Just try!

LEO McCAREY AND OSCAR

• The Awful Truth (1937) – Oscar – Best Director
• Love Affair (1939) – Nominated – Best Original Story
• My Favorite Wife (1940) Nominated – Best Original Story
• Going My Way (1944) – Oscar – Best Director
• Going My Way (1944) – Oscar – Best Original Story
• My Son John (1953) – Nominated – Best Original Story
• An Affair to Remember (1957) – Nominated – Best Original Song