Giant
1956
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Learn about the life and career of George Stevens, who won two Oscars and made classics like Swing Time, Giant, and The Diary of Anne Frank. He also served in World War II as a lieutenant colonel and documented the liberation of Paris and the Holocaust.
Learn about the life and career of George Stevens, one of the great American filmmakers who directed classics like Swing Time, A Place in the Sun and Shane. Explore his awards, family background, cinematography and editing skills, and social themes in his films.
- January 1, 1
- Oakland, California, USA
- January 1, 1
- Lancaster, California, USA
- Giant (1956) Mostly known for being James Dean's third and final leading film role before he died, Giant also deserves to be recognized as George Stevens's best movie.
- Shane (1953) George Stevens was again nominated for Best Director and Best Picture for Shane, which is one the greatest Westerns of all time. It follows a familiar story of a mysterious, gunslinging drifter who shows up just in time to aid a family of homesteaders in their conflict against a greedy cattle baron and his gang of thugs.
- A Place In The Sun (1951) Nearly a decade after his first Best Director nomination, George Stevens was recognized again, for A Place in the Sun, and this time he won the Oscar.
- The More The Merrier (1943) George Stevens received his first Oscar nomination for Best Director with this entertaining romantic comedy centered around a real issue of its time: the housing shortage caused by World War II.
- Overview
- Early work
- Swing Time, Gunga Din, and Woman of the Year
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George Stevens (born December 18, 1904, Oakland, California, U.S.—died March 8, 1975, Lancaster, California) American director known for films that exhibited intelligence, great humanism, and brilliant camera techniques. His classic movies include the screwball comedy Woman of the Year (1942), the action-adventure Gunga Din (1939), and the dramas A...
Stevens, who was born to professional actors, began performing onstage at the age of five. He remained in his father’s theatrical troupe as an actor and, eventually, a stage manager. While still a teenager, he entered the film industry as a cameraman, and in the early 1920s he became a cinematographer at Hal Roach Studios. His first production there was the Laurel and Hardy short Roughest Africa (1923). Stevens shot a number of other two-reelers starring the comedy duo, including Sugar Daddies (1927), Two Tars (1928), and Below Zero (1930).
In 1933 Stevens directed his first feature, The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble, a B-film for Universal. The following year, at RKO, he made the low-budget romantic comedy Bachelor Bait with Stuart Erwin and Rochelle Hudson, and Kentucky Kernels, a Bert Wheeler–Robert Woolsey farce, with George (“Spanky”) McFarland, Noah Beery, and Margaret Dumont. Wheeler and Woolsey returned for the crime comedy The Nitwits (1935), which also featured Betty Grable. Laddie (1935) was nostalgic Americana, with John Beal and Gloria Stuart.
In 1935 Stevens was given his first high-profile assignment, Alice Adams, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It starred Katharine Hepburn as a lonely small-town woman who tries desperately to become a member of the elite social circle; Fred MacMurray was her upper-class beau and Hattie McDaniel her hired maid. The film was a box-office hit, and it received an Academy Award nomination for outstanding production. In addition, Hepburn earned an Oscar nod for her nuanced performance. Stevens’s last credit from 1935 was Annie Oakley, with Barbara Stanwyck as the legendary markswoman and Preston Foster as her sharpshooting sweetheart. It was an entertaining if fanciful biopic. Stevens had even more success with Swing Time (1936), a classic musical that many consider the best teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; the Jerome Kern–Dorothy Fields score, which included such songs as “The Way You Look Tonight” and “Bojangles of Harlem,” was especially notable.
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Stevens’s string of hits ended with Quality Street (1937), a tasteful but rather bland adaptation of the J.M. Barrie play. It starred Hepburn as an “old maid” who tricks a former beau (Franchot Tone) into falling in love with her. Moviegoers also largely avoided A Damsel in Distress (1937), a musical that featured Astaire but not Rogers, who was replaced by Joan Fontaine. The film, however, was praised for the “Fun House” number, which earned Hermes Pan an Oscar for best dance direction, and for the comedy of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Stevens then directed Rogers (sans Astaire) in Vivacious Lady (1938); she played a nightclub singer who weds a professor (James Stewart) who tries to keep the marriage a secret; Charles Coburn and Beulah Bondi provided comic support. A box-office hit, the screwball comedy ended Stevens’s slump.
Stevens had even more success with Gunga Din, which was one of the best films in 1939, a year known for its numerous classic motion pictures. The action adventure, which was inspired by the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, follows a trio of maverick British sergeants (Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) as they fend off an attack on their outpost in 19th-century colonial India. The film was noted for Stevens’s direction and the fine acting, especially that of Sam Jaffe as the always solicitous Gunga Din, an Indian water carrier who longs to become a British soldier. Vigil in the Night (1940), from an A.J. Cronin novel, featured Carole Lombard as a nurse who dedicates her life to the poor denizens of a remote hospital ward after her sister (Anne Shirley), who is also a nurse, accidentally causes a patient’s death. The grim drama was atypical for Lombard, who was better known for her comedies, and the film was a box-office failure, despite its uplifting conclusion.
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Learn about George Stevens, a renowned director of classic films such as Woman of the Year, Gunga Din, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Explore his early career as a cameraman and cinematographer, his awards and honors, and his notable works.
- Michael Barson
Jul 13, 2005 · Learn about the life and career of George Stevens, a versatile and influential Hollywood director who made classics from comedies to epics. Explore his achievements, challenges, and influences through interviews, essays, and archival footage.
George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer who won three Oscars for his work. He is known for his classics such as Giant, Shane, A Place in the Sun and The Diary of Anne Frank.
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Jul 13, 2005 · A tribute to the Hollywood great by his son, George Jr., who reveals his father's childhood, war, and career experiences through interviews and archives. Learn about his Oscar-winning classics, his sensitivity to drama, and his legacy in film history.
