George Cukor Filmography

The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind

Synopsis: This made-for-cable documentary traces the filming of the imperishable classic Gone with the Wind, from its inception to its triumphant Atlanta premiere in December of 1939. Filmmaker David Hinton interviews as many survivors of the experience as he's able to round up, but the main attraction of Read More

Rich and Famous

Crew: Director

Actors: Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Meg Ryan, David Selby, Hart Bochner, Steven Hill

Synopsis: Two women find their friendship tested when one rises from obscurity to success in this glossy remake of Old Acquaintance. Liz Hamilton (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry Noel (Candice Bergen) are close friends who met while they were freshmen at Smith College in the 1950s. Liz has become a highly Read More

The Corn Is Green

Crew: Director

Actors: Bill Fraser, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Massey, Ian Saynor

Synopsis: Welsh-born writer Emlyn Williams' 1938 play The Corn is Green originally starred Ethel Barrymore as L.C. Moffat, the strong-willed schoolteacher under whose guidance the illiterate Welsh teenager Morgan Evans matriculates as an honor student. Bette Davis played Moffat in the 1945 film version; Read More

The Blue Bird

Crew: Director

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner, Sesiliya Tayson, Cicely Tyson, Robert Morley

Synopsis: The first official co-production between the United States and the Soviet Union, The Blue Bird was the third screen adaptation of the children's story by Maurice Maeterlinck about a pair of children, Tyltyl (Todd Lookinland) and Mytyl (Patsy Kensit), who leave home to search for the Blue Bird of Read More

Love Among the Ruins

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn

Synopsis: Made for television, Love Among the Ruins was a precious one-time-only collaboration between stars Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Oliver, and director George Cukor. The scene is Victorian London, where wealthy widow Hepburn is being sued for breach of promise by her much-younger ex-fiance. Olivier Read More

Travels with My Aunt

Crew: Director

Actors: Olive Behrendt, Nora Norman, Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, Louis Gossett, Jr., Robert Stephens, Cindy Williams

Synopsis: In the lively comedy/adventure Travels with My Aunt, adapted from Graham Green's book, Henry (Alec McCowan), a timid, bookish accountant whose life seems to have died stillborn, discovers how to live with gusto thanks to the rough ministrations of his thoroughly eccentric aunt Augusta (Maggie Smith Read More

Justine

Crew: Director

Actors: Severn Darden, Anouk Aimée, Dirk Bogarde, Anna Karina, Philippe Noiret, Michael York

Synopsis: Justine (Anouk Aimee) is a Jewish prostitute living in Egypt who manages to sleep her way to the top. Marrying a financial minister, Justine works her way up from her beginnings as a hooker, but continues to use her sexual allure as a tool to win her and her husband's ends. Along the way, she Read More

My Fair Lady

Crew: Director

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper

Synopsis: At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic Read More

The Chapman Report

Crew: Director

Actors: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Shelley Winters, Jane Fonda, Claire Bloom, Glynis Johns

Synopsis: George Cukor directed this sanitized version of Irving Wallace's tawdry best-seller concerning a survey of the sexual habits of American women. Psychologist George C. Chapman (Andrew Duggan) arrives in a Los Angeles suburb with his assistant Paul Radford (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) in tow. They are Read More

Song without End

Crew: Director

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Capucine, Geneviève Page, Patricia Morison, Ivan Desny

Synopsis: Hoping to recapture the success of its 1945 Frederic Chopin biopic A Song to Remember, Columbia Pictures concocted the 1960 Technicolor costume drama Song Without End. Dirk Bogarde is cast as musical genius Franz Liszt. Bogarde's piano scenes are dubbed with another's singing voice, but this Read More

Let's Make Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan, Wilfrid Hyde-White

Synopsis: Let's Make Love is a breezy comedy about an off Broadway musical production. Jean-Marc Clement (Yves Montand) is the richest man in the world and looking for someone who loves him instead of his money. He reads in Variety he is to be satirized in the new production and tries out for the part. The Read More

Heller in Pink Tights

Crew: Director

Actors: Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, Eileen Heckart, Ramon Novarro, Margaret O'Brien, Steve Forrest

Synopsis: The talents of the cast and director George Cukor (A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady), combine to bring off this otherwise routine Western based on a Louis L'Amour novel. Sophia Loren is Angela Rossini, a woman who seems to create the situations she gets into, and Anthony Quinn is the strong, silent Read More

Hot Spell

Crew: Director

Actors: Shirley Booth, Anthony Quinn, Shirley MacLaine, Earl Holliman, Eileen Heckart, Valerie Allen

Synopsis: Anthony Quinn and Shirley Booth play a married couple who cling and claw like cats in a bathtub in this sudsy melodrama set in steamy New Orleans. Booth does most of the clinging as a neglected wife struggling to reassemble her battered marriage to Quinn who plays a faithless husband in love with Read More

Wild Is the Wind

Crew: Director

Actors: Anna Magnani, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Franciosa, Dolores Hart, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: Wild Is the Wind represents a (perhaps deliberate) reversal of the situation in The Rose Tattoo (1955). Whereas in Tattoo, Anna Magnani played a widow who could never find a man to measure up to her late husband, in Wind her character, Giola, marries widowed rancher Gino (Anthony Quinn), who is Read More

Les Girls

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac

Synopsis: Les Girls is the Rashomon of MGM musicals. The film is told in flashback, as Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg, two-thirds of a popular cabaret trio, attempt to legally block the third, Kay Kendall, from writing her memoirs. Each of "Les Girls" has her own interpretation of the group's previous Read More

Bhowani Junction

Crew: Director

Actors: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, Abraham Sofaer, Francis Matthews

Synopsis: Ava Gardner was never more alluring than as the half-caste heroine of Bhowani Junction. Set during India's battle for independence from Britain, the film begins with Gardner returning to her native land after spending several years in England. Her true loyalties, and her own sense of who she Read More

A Star is Born

Crew: Director

Actors: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan

Synopsis: The 1954 musical remake of A Star is Born could have been titled A Star is Reborn, in that it represented the triumphal return to the screen of Judy Garland after a four-year absence. The remake adheres closely to the plotline of the 1937 original: An alcoholic film star, on his last Read More

It Should Happen to You

Crew: Director

Actors: Judy Holliday, Peter Lawford, Jack Lemmon, Michael O'Shea, Vaughan Taylor

Synopsis: Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday) is an unsuccessful model and actress who believes that a jolt of publicity will do her career a world of good. She gets that publicity by renting a billboard in the middle of Manhattan, emblazoned with her name and photograph. As a result, Gladys is showered with Read More

The Actress

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins, Ian Wolfe

Synopsis: The Actress is based on Years Ago, one of several autobiographies by actress/playwright Ruth Gordon. Jean Simmons stars as blossoming teenager Ruth Gordon Jones, who is determined to become a famous stage star despite the objections of her stubborn ex-sea captain father Clinton Jones (Spencer Tracy Read More

Pat and Mike

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray, Jim Backus, William Ching, Sammy White

Synopsis: Pat (Katharine Hepburn), a college phys-ed instructor, enters into professional competition as a golf and tennis player. Mike (Spencer Tracy), a likeable but unscrupulous sports promoter, first attempts to bribe Pat to lose, but later becomes her manager. Pat performs brilliantly until her Read More

The Marrying Kind

Crew: Director

Actors: Judy Holliday, Aldo Ray, Madge Kennedy, Sheila Bond, John Alexander, Mickey Shaughnessy, Griff Barnett

Synopsis: A master blend of comedy, domestic drama and sudden tragedy, The Marrying Kind remains one of the best collaborations between star Judy Holliday, screenwriters Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and director George Cukor. The film begins at the end, with married couple Florence and Chet Keefer (Judy Holliday Read More

The Model and the Marriage Broker

Crew: Director

Actors: Jeanne Crain, Scott Brady, Thelma Ritter, Zero Mostel, Michael O'Shea

Synopsis: The model (Jeanne Crain) is stuck in an unhappy relationship with a married man. The marriage broker (Thelma Ritter) doesn't like this and tries to match the model with a lonely x-ray technician (Scott Brady). The model is so grateful that she tries to find an eligible bachelor for the broker. The Read More

A Life of Her Own

Crew: Director

Actors: Lana Turner, Ray Milland, Tom Ewell, Louis Calhern, Ann Dvorak, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Lana Turner stars as an ambitious model who seeks her fortune in New York City. She is befriended by over-the-hill cover-girl Ann Dvorak, whose performance carries the story until she commits suicide twenty minutes into the film. Turner promises herself that she won't end up burned out like Read More

Born Yesterday

Crew: Director

Actors: Broderick Crawford, Judy Holliday, William Holden, Howard St. John, Frank Otto

Synopsis: Garson Kanin's Broadway hit was transferred to the screen with only a few passing nods to the stricter censorship required by films. Judy Holliday won an Oscar for her portrayal of Billie Dawn, a strident, dim-bulbed ex-chorus girl who is the mistress of millionaire junk tycoon Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford Read More

Adam's Rib

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell, David Wayne

Synopsis: Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Adam's Rib is a peerless comedy predicated on the double standard. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play Adam and Amanda Bonner, a husband-and-wife attorney team, both drawn to a case of attempted murder. The defendant (Judy Holliday) had tearfully Read More

Edward, My Son

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr, Ian Hunter, James Donald, Mervyn Johns, Leucen MacGrath

Synopsis: Businessman Spencer Tracy is devoted beyond all reason to his son Edward. Tracy lies, cheats, steals, commits arson, and drives two people to suicide in order to smooth Edward's path in life. The boy repays this loyalty by becoming an ungrateful wastrel, who fathers a child out of wedlock and ends Read More

A Double Life

Crew: Director

Actors: Whit Bissell, Ronald Colman, Signe Hasso, Betsy Blair, David Bond, Edmond O'Brien, Shelley Winters, Harlan Briggs, Georgia Caine, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Ronald Colman won an Academy Award for his portrayal of an off-the-beam actor in A Double Life. A beloved stage star, Anthony John (Colman), has problems with his private life due to his unpredictable outbursts of temper. This trait has already cost him his wife, Brita (Signe Hasso), and threatens Read More

Desire Me

Crew: Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Robert Mitchum, Richard Hart, George Zucco, Cecil Humphreys, Morris Ankrum

Synopsis: Marise Aubert (Greer Garson) has begun seeing a psychiatrist to treat her overwhelming guilt. It seems that Marise was married to Paul (Robert Mitchum), who was sent overseas in World War II. She loved Paul deeply and remained faithful to him. She then receives tragic news that Paul died in Read More

I'll Be Seeing You

Crew: Director

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Spring Byington, Tom Tully

Synopsis: Ginger Rogers gives a dramatic performance in this moving romantic drama in which a woman named Mary Marshall, who was convicted of manslaughter (she defended herself when her lecherous boss attempted to rape her and she accidentally killed him), is granted a ten-day furlough for Christmas to Read More

Gaslight

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for this suspense thriller, crafted with surprising tautness by normally genteel "women's picture" director George Cukor. Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a late 19th century English singer studying music in Italy. However, Paula abandons her studies Read More

Winged Victory

Crew: Director

Actors: Mark Daniels, Lon McCallister, Don Taylor, Jo Carroll Dennison, Red Buttons, Edmond O'Brien, Geraldine Wall

Synopsis: Moss Hart's hit Broadway play Winged Victory was brought to the screen in 1944, with most of its original cast intact. The story, concerning regular Joes from all walks of life joining the Army Air Force, is secondary to such theatrical setpieces as a camp show wherein several virile Hollywood Read More

Keeper of the Flame

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Margaret Wycherly, Forrest Tucker

Synopsis: If you're wondering what Citizen Kane might have looked like had it been produced by MGM, we submit for your approval Keeper of the Flame. War correspondent Spencer Tracy is assigned to write the life story of a recently deceased super-patriot. One would suppose that the much-beloved decedent's Read More

Her Cardboard Lover

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, George Sanders, Frank McHugh, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: No one will ever know what possessed MGM's reigning screen queen Norma Shearer to select the tired old stage farce Her Cardboard Lover as her final film. Set in Florida, the creaky plotline finds Consuelo Croyden (Shearer) attempting to make her disinterested sweetheart Tony Barling (George Read More

Two-Faced Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Ruth Gordon, Robert Sterling, Roland Young

Synopsis: Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Read More

A Woman's Face

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt, Osa Massen, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: A remake of the Swedish film of the same name (see entry 55092), MGM's A Woman's Face was reshaped into one of Joan Crawford's best vehicles. Told in flashback from the vantage point of a murder trial, the story concerns a female criminal whose face is disfigured by a hideous scar. The Read More

Susan and God

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth

Synopsis: Rachel Crothers' thoughtful stage play Susan and God was tastefully adapted for the screen by Anita Loos. Joan Crawford stars as Susan, whose unquestioning devotion to various religious organizations causes a great deal of strain between herself and her family. When Susan embraces a "New Thought" Read More

The Philadelphia Story

Crew: Director

Actors: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard

Synopsis: We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar Read More

Zaza

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Bert Lahr, Helen Westley, Constance Collier

Synopsis: The old David Belasco theatrical warhorse Zaza, which starred Mrs. Leslie Carter way back in 1899, had already been filmed by Pauline Frederick in 1915 and by Gloria Swanson in 1923 when this Claudette Colbert version hit the screens in early 1939. Doing her own singing and dancing, Colbert plays Read More

The Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard

Synopsis: Based on the Clare Booth Luce play of the same name, this MGM comedy is justly famous for its all-female cast and deft direction by George Cukor. The plot centers on a group of gossipy high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily wedded Read More

Holiday

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Both film versions of Phillip Barry's stage comedy Holiday have their merits, but the 1938 version has the added advantage of supercharged star power. Katharine Hepburn and Doris Nolan play Linda and Julia Seton, two daughters of a very well-to-do family. Linda feels a bit lost in the shuffle as Read More

I Met My Love Again

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Bennett, Henry Fonda, Alan Marshal, Louise Platt

Synopsis: An undying love is chronicled in this "women's picture." The sweeping tale begins in a quiet New England village during the late '20s. There an introverted young man and a restless young woman (Henry Fonda and Joan Bennett) are happily in love until a dashing, sophisticated fellow (Alan Marshall) Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Mary Astor, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Ronald Colman stars in David O. Selznick's classic production of Anthony Hope's swashbuckling adventure. The film takes place in a mythical Central European kingdom with Colman in a dual role as King Rudolf V and Rudolph Rassendyl, a visitor from England who's a distant cousin to the prince. Read More

Romeo and Juliet

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore, Edna May Oliver, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: Director George Cukor and producer Irving G. Thalberg's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, a lavish production of Shakespeare's tale about two star-crossed lovers, is extremely well-produced and acted. In fact, it is so well-done, that it is easy to forget that Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer are too Read More

Camille

Crew: Director

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille Read More

No More Ladies

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charlie Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: MGM regularly churned out films in the 1930s that were all "star power" and very little plot. No More Ladies is a good example of this. Joan Crawford marries bon vivant Robert Montgomery, hoping to mend his wastrel ways. Montgomery refuses to assumes the proper responsibilities of a husband, so Read More

David Copperfield

Crew: Director

Actors: W.C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Freddie Bartholomew, Maureen O'Sullivan, Madge Evans, Frank Lawton, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: David Copperfield was MGM's major Christmas release for its 1934-1935 season and also the first of producer David O. Selznick's major "literary" films for that studio. While a great deal of editing and streamlining was necessary to distill Charles Dickens' massive novel into 133 minutes of screen Read More

Sylvia Scarlett

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Paley

Synopsis: This big-budget 1936 RKO Studios picture lost money, perhaps due to a cool box-office reception to the idea of leading lady Katharine Hepburn in drag, and a rare-for-its-day screen kiss between two women. Edmund Gwenn plays the title character's father Henry, who is obsessed with gambling. His Read More

Little Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Frances Dee, Jean Parker, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: George Cukor directed this classic adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's sentimental novel with a shimmering lavishness that is a prime example of the classic Hollywood style at its best. The story concerns the lives of four New England sisters -- Jo (Katharine Hepburn), Amy (Joan Bennett), Meg Read More

Our Betters

Crew: Director

Actors: Constance Bennett, Gilbert Roland, Charles Starrett, Anita Louise, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: Our Betters is adapted from Somerset Maugham's play about the shallowness and hypocrisy of the idle rich. American heiress Constance Bennett snares a titled British husband (Alan Mobray), but when she discovers that he is merely marrying her for her money, she decides to carry on a few affairs of Read More

Dinner at Eight

Crew: Director

Actors: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore Read More

The Animal Kingdom

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Harding, Leslie Howard, Myrna Loy, William Gargan, Neil Hamilton

Synopsis: The first film version of Philip Barry's Broadway play The Animal Kingdom stars Ann Harding, Leslie Howard and Myrna Loy. Howard plays a wealthy publisher who decides to marry the socially prominent Loy, leaving his mistress Harding in the lurch. In comically convoluted fashion, Loy behaves like a Read More

A Bill of Divorcement

Crew: Director

Actors: John Barrymore, Billie Burke, Katharine Hepburn, David Manners, Bramwell Fletcher

Synopsis: Katharine Hepburn made her auspicious film debut in the otherwise undistinguished A Bill of Divorcement. Based on a play by Clemence Dane, the film is set on the day that Hepburn's mother, Billie Burke, is to divorce her insane and long-institutionalized husband John Barrymore. But Barrymore Read More

Rockabye

Crew: Director

Actors: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, Paul Lukas, Walter Pidgeon, Jobyna Howland

Synopsis: Despite a troubled production that witnessed the exits of both leading man (Phillips Holmes) and director (George Fitzmaurice), this tearjerker was a winner at the box office in November of 1932. Constance Bennett plays Broadway diva Judy Carroll who loses custody of a wee orphan after testifying