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His comedy skills took him from the nightclubs in Philadelphia to Hollywood - and then ended up in ministry! Learning from his comedy hero Red Skelton, Gordon's comedy mixes real life stories with "off the wall" physical comedy and his own hilarious view of life.
Mar 20, 2023 · Gordon Douglas is a professional comedian, philanthropist, advocate for life, and parent extraordinaire.
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- Overview
- Early work
- Warner Brothers
- Later films
Gordon Douglas (born December 15, 1907, New York City, New York, U.S.—died September 29, 1993, Los Angeles, California) American filmmaker who was noted for his versatility; he directed popular Our Gang shorts before launching a feature-film career that included musicals, westerns, film noirs, and crime dramas.
Douglas acted onstage as a child. He made his way to Hollywood just as sound pictures were taking hold and ended up at Hal Roach’s studio. In 1930 he appeared in the first of numerous comedy shorts, often uncredited. Five years later he turned to directing, and he soon gained attention for his work on the popular Our Gang (also known as Little Rascals) series, which centred on the antics of a group of children that included Spanky, Alfalfa, and Buckwheat. Douglas helmed more than 30 Our Gang shorts, including the Academy Award-winning Bored of Education (1936). He also codirected the Our Gang feature General Spanky (1936), which was set during the American Civil War. Douglas’s first solo feature was Zenobia (1939), a comedy starring Oliver Hardy. He next directed Saps at Sea (1940), one of Laurel and Hardy’s best late vehicles. In 1941 Douglas took a break from directing to cowrite Topper Returns.
In 1942 Douglas left Roach for RKO, where he was put to work on a series of films inspired by a popular radio show about a colourful character named Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. Douglas’s other RKO credits included the mysteries A Night of Adventure (1944) and The Falcon in Hollywood (1944), the horror movie Zombies on Broadway (1945), and First Yank into Tokyo (1945), a World War II drama about a U.S. pilot (played by Tom Neal) who infiltrates a Japanese POW camp. In the melodrama San Quentin (1946), Lawrence Tierney played an ex-convict who is tasked with finding a violent prison escapee. In 1948 Douglas turned to musicals with If You Knew Susie, which starred Eddie Cantor in his last credited appearance on the big screen.
In the early 1950s Douglas moved to Warner Brothers, where he worked for more than a decade. His first film with the studio was the formulaic cavalry-versus-Indians picture Only the Valiant (1951), with Gregory Peck and Barbara Payton. Other films from 1951 were Come Fill the Cup—about alcoholism, featuring Cagney and a memorable performance by Gig Young—and the red-baiting drama I Was a Communist for the FBI, with Frank Lovejoy as an undercover agent who infiltrates the Communist Party. Strangely, the latter film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary.
Mara Maru (1952) was a treasure-hunt adventure starring the aging Errol Flynn, while the biopic The Iron Mistress (1952) recounts the exploits of Jim Bowie (Alan Ladd) before he became a hero in the Texas Revolution. In 1953 Douglas directed She’s Back on Broadway, a musical drama with Virginia Mayo and Steve Cochran, and The Charge at Feather River, a 3-D western starring Guy Madison and Vera Miles. The following year Douglas made his first foray into science fiction with Them!, a critical and commercial success. Arguably the best of the “giant atomic-mutant creature” movies of the 1950s, it became a sci-fi classic and is widely considered Douglas’s best work.
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Douglas made movies for another 20 years, but his best work was behind him. Of his last two dozen pictures—which were for various studios—only a handful were of note. After directing Elvis Presley in Follow That Dream (1962), he helmed Call Me Bwana (1963), an unfunny Bob Hope comedy, brightened somewhat by the presence of Anita Ekberg and Edie Adams. The entertaining Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) was the last film featuring the “Rat Pack”—Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra, who sang “My Kind of Town.” After the solid western Rio Conchos (1964), Douglas directed Carroll Baker in Sylvia and the sensationalistic biopic Harlow (both 1965).
Douglas’s 1966 remake of John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), with Ann-Margret and Bing Crosby, paled in comparison to the original, and Way…Way Out (1966) was a charmless Jerry Lewis vehicle. Douglas later made three hard-boiled Sinatra films: Tony Rome (1967) and its sequel Lady in Cement (1968) and (arguably the best of the trio) The Detective (1968), which featured the notable cast of Robert Duvall, Lee Remick, Ralph Meeker, and Jack Klugman.
- Michael Barson
Oct 2, 1993 · Douglas, who won an Academy Award for “Bored of Education,” a 1936 one-reel short subject that was among his 30 “Our Gang” films, was 85 when he died Wednesday in a Los Angeles convalescent home....
Oct 2, 1993 · Gordon Douglas, a film director who made dozens of "Our Gang" episodes, including an Oscar winner, died on Wednesday at the Hancock Park Convalescent Home after an undisclosed illness. He was...
Gordon Douglas (1907-1993) Gordon Douglas. Director. Actor. Writer. IMDbPro Starmeter See rank. Starting out as a child actor, Gordon Douglas was eventually hired by Hal Roach as a gag writer. His first directorial assignments were for Roach's "Our Gang" series. Graduating to features, Douglas stayed with comedies, directing Oliver Hardy in ...
Gordon Douglas is more than funny! With genuine humility, honesty, and passion, Gordon often weaves life lessons into his programs through things he’s learned from the ordinary and often painful events in his life. These include some tragic deaths, his wife’s victorious battle with cancer, and his dad's many years confined to a wheelchair.
