Victor Fleming 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

Joan of Arc

Crew: Director

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, José Ferrer, Selena Royle, Ward Bond, Robert H. Barrat, Francis L. Sullivan, Jimmy Lydon, Cecil Kellaway, Rand Brooks

Synopsis: Director Victor Fleming's final film features Ingrid Bergman as a vivid and luminous Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French peasant girl who led the French in battle against the invading English, becoming a national hero. When she was captured, tortured, and ultimately executed by the English, she Read More

Adventure

Crew: Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Greer Garson, Joan Blondell, Thomas Mitchell, Tom Tully

Synopsis: A middle-aged Clark Gable returned from active duty in World War II to star in this MGM release that was heavily advertised as his big comeback. Gable is Harry Patterson, the bosun mate on a merchant marine vessel, a tough sailor and fighter with the proverbial girl in every port. But while in a Read More

A Guy Named Joe

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Ward Bond, James Gleason, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: Opening in England during the middle of World War II, A Guy Named Joe tells the story of Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy), a tough, devil-may-care bomber pilot who's amassed an enviable record in combat, mostly by taking chances that give his C.O. (James Gleason) the shakes, much as he and the top Read More

Tortilla Flat

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: Like the John Steinbeck novel on which it is based, Tortilla Flat is not so much a movie as a series of warm-hearted anecdotes, all linked to a small California fishing village populated by poor but happy immigrants. The focus is upon Pilon (Spencer Tracy), a good-natured, charismatic freeloader Read More

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Ian Hunter, Barton MacLane, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the second sound version of the Robert Louis Stevenson "doppelganger" tale. This time Spencer Tracy plays the benevolent Dr. Jekyll, whose experiments in releasing the evil impulses within himself transform him into the bestial Mr. Hyde. The problem here is that Read More

The Wizard of Oz

Crew: Director

Actors: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley

Synopsis: The third and definitive film adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy, this musical adventure is a genuine family classic that made Judy Garland a star for her heartfelt performance as Dorothy Gale, an orphaned young girl unhappy with her drab black-and-white existence on her aunt Read More

Test Pilot

Crew: Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Test Pilot is one of those irresistible MGM potboilers of the 1930s that coast along on sheer star power. Clark Gable plays a courageous test pilot, who compromises his achievements with his frequent bouts of drinking. Gable's mechanic, Spencer Tracy, does what he can to keep his boss out of Read More

Captains Courageous

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Freddie Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: A boy learns life-changing lessons about the importance of friendship and the dignity of labor in this adventure saga based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. Young Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is the working definition of a spoiled brat; the only child of a wealthy widowed businessman, Harvey Read More

The Good Earth

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly, Tilly Losch, Charles Grapewin

Synopsis: Based on Donald Davis and Owen Davis' stage-adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's sprawling novel, Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth is the story of a Chinese farming couple whose lives are torn apart by poverty, greed, and nature. Paul Muni stars as Wang Lung a hardworking, but poor, farmer who weds Read More

Reckless

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Rosalind Russell, Ted Healy, Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: Reckless is a delightfully breezy screwball comedy from the same director (Victor Fleming) and star (Jean Harlow) responsible for the celebratedBombshell (itself a film à clef loosely based on Clara Bow) -- with the added appeal of William Powell. One can readily see the chemistry between the two Read More

The Farmer Takes a Wife

Crew: Director

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, Charles Bickford, George "Slim" Summerville, Andy Devine

Synopsis: Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this filmization of his Broadway success The Farmer Takes a Wife. The story is set along the Erie Canal in the 1850s. Fonda plays a farmer who takes a river job to make ends meet. He falls in love with Janet Gaynor, daughter of a canal-boat cook, who thinks Read More

Treasure Island

Crew: Director

Actors: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Otto Kruger, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: This fifth film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island boasts an all-star MGM cast, headed by Wallace Beery as Long John Silver and Jackie Cooper as Jim Hawkins. The screenplay, by John Lee Mahin, John Howard Lawson and Leonard Praskins, remains faithful to the Stevenson original...up Read More

The White Sister

Crew: Director

Actors: Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Louise Closser Hale, May Robson

Synopsis: Based on the 1909 novel by F. Marion Crawford, The White Sister stars Helen Hayes as an aristocratic Italian girl who spurns the potential husband chosen by her father in favor of a handsome army lieutenant (Clark Gable). When her lover is reported killed in World War I, Hayes renounces the world Read More

Bombshell

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone, Pat O'Brien, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Jean Harlow is the "bombshell" of the title, a popular movie actress named Lola. Though she seemingly has everything a girl could possibly want, Lola is fed up with her sponging relatives, her "work til you drop" studio, and the nonsensical publicity campaigns conducted by press agent Lee Tracy. Read More

The Wet Parade

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Emma Dunn, Robert Young

Synopsis: Directed by Victor Fleming, Wet Parade chronicles the effects of alcoholism and the Prohibition on the lives of two families from very different backgrounds. The Tarletons reside in New York City, where the family patriarch (Walter Huston) repeatedly drowns himself in liquor and local bars. The Read More

Red Dust

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Red Dust was lensed almost entirely on MGM's back lot; even so, we are utterly convinced that the film takes place in Indochina (never mind that everyone pronounces "Saigon" as Say-gone). Even more importantly, the audience never doubts for one moment that the relationship between "hero" Clark Gable Read More

Around the World in 80 Minutes

Crew: Director

Synopsis: An early example of a "vanity" production, this feature-length documentary is comprised of glorified home movies taken by film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. during a trip to the Orient in the company of several friends. Fairbanks doesn't exactly take us around the world, though he does offer Read More

Common Clay

Crew: Director

Actors: Constance Bennett, Lew Ayres, Tully Marshall, Matty Kemp, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: Ellen Neal (Constance Bennett) is a "nice" girl -- just turned 18 -- who's been picked up in a raid on a speakeasy where she just started working. She pleads guilty to vagrancy, but gets a lecture and warning from the judge to steer clear of places like that, and to try and find honest work. She Read More

Renegades

Crew: Director

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Noah Beery, Sr., Gregory Gaye, George Cooper

Synopsis: In this action-adventure opus, Deucalion (Warner Baxter), Machwurth (Noah Beery), Mordiconi (C. Henry Gordon) and Biloxi (George Cooper) are four members of a desert patrol fighting off godless villains amidst the sand dunes. The four soldiers are lured away from their mission by Eleanore (Myrna Read More

Wolf Song

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lupe Velez, Louis Wolheim, Constantine Romanoff, Michael Vavitch

Synopsis: If Hollywood gossip columnists can be believed, Gary Cooper and Lupe Velez were lovers -- and very passionate ones -- when they co-starred in Paramount's Wolf Song. Cooper is cast as Sam Lash, a fur trapper with a randy reputation when it comes to women. But when Sam meets tempestuous Mexican Read More

The Virginian

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Richard Arlen, Mary Brian, Chester Conklin, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Gary Cooper, as a lanky Wyoming ranch and foreman, places his gun on a poker table after being insulted by one of the gamblers and intones, "If you want to call me that . . . smile." That much quoted line's origin is in this early sound version of the Owen Wister novel, The Virginian, directed by Victor Fleming Read More

The Awakening

Crew: Director

Actors: Vilma Banky, Walter Byron, Louis Wolheim, George Davis, William Orlamond

Synopsis: Producer Sam Goldwyn gave his usual deluxe treatment to the 1928 Vilma Banky vehicle The Awakening. Her Hungarian accent unheard, Banky plays French country lass Marie Ducrot, whose name is "mud" after she is compromised by a German soldier (Walter Byron). Turning to religion, Banky becomes one of Read More

Hula

Crew: Director

Actors: Clara Bow, Clive Brook, Arnold Kent, Maude Truax

Synopsis: The tiny but voluptuous chassis of Clara Bow is given ample display in the exotic romance Hula. The story takes place in Hawaii, where pampered plantation-owner's daughter Hula Calhoun (Bow) occasionally takes a skinny-dip in the river. On one such occasion, Hula is obliged to save the life of Read More

Aaron Slick

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Jean Hersholt, Nancy Carroll, John Farrell MacDonald, Bernard Gorcey

Synopsis: Anne Nichols' Broadway comedy Abie's Irish Rose was almost universally panned when it opened in 1923. But despite the moans and wails of the critics (notably Robert Benchley, who turned his weekly drubbing of the play into an art form), the Nichols piece ended up as one of the longest-running Read More

The Way of All Flesh

Crew: Director

Actors: Emil Jannings, Belle Bennett, Phyllis Haver, Donald Keith, Fred Kohler

Synopsis: This was Emil Jannings' first American-made picture, and his portrayal is reminiscent of his characters in his previous films, The Last Laugh and Variety, and would later be echoed in The Blue Angel. Jannings' powerful performance, along with his acting in The Last Command, would win him the first Read More

The Rough Riders

Crew: Director

Actors: Frank Hopper, Charles Farrell, Charles Emmett Mack, Mary Astor, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Designed as a western "special" in the tradition of Covered Wagon and The Pony Express, The Rough Riders unfortunately proved a box office disappointment, causing Paramount Pictures to rethink its policy regarding epic films. Storywise, the film is a respectable if highly romanticized account of Read More

Mantrap

Crew: Director

Actors: Ernest Torrence, Clara Bow, Percy Marmont, Eugene Pallette, Tom Kennedy

Synopsis: Clara Bow plays an inveterate flirt who impulsively marries much-older mountain man Ernest Torrence. When city lawyer Percy Marmont shows up on a camping trip, Bow can't help but lead the poor fellow on. He resists her advances, but finally succumbs, leading to disaster. Very typical of the silent Read More

The Blind Goddess

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Holt, Ernest Torrence, Esther Ralston, Louise Dresser, Ward Crane

Synopsis: Even though Big Bill Devens (Ernest Torrence) is a powerful politician, he still sticks to his working man's roots. His wife walked out on him 20 years before and his daughter, Moira (Esther Ralston), believes she is dead. Moira falls in love with Hugh Dillon, a handsome young attorney (Jack Read More

Lord Jim

Crew: Director

Actors: Percy Marmont, Shirley Mason, Noah Beery, Sr., Raymond Hatton, Joseph J. Dowling

Synopsis: Almost 30 years before the Peter O'Toole picture, Joseph Conrad's novel was first filmed as a silent. It was directed in typically virile manner by Victor Fleming, starred Percy Marmont as Jim, and was actually truer to the novel than the 1964 version. Jim is a seaman under the despicable Captain Read More

Son of His Father

Crew: Director

Actors: Bessie Love, Warner Baxter, Raymond Hatton, Walter McGrail, Carl Stockdale

Synopsis: Based on a story by Harold Bell Wright, this average silent western starred Warner Baxter as the son who almost loses his ranch to cover his late father's debts. Star-billed Bessie Love had little to do other than looking pretty as Baxter's Irish romantic interest. A former leading man with the Read More

The Devil's Cargo

Crew: Director

Actors: Wallace Beery, Pauline Starke, Claire Adams, William Collier, Jr., Raymond Hatton

Synopsis: The subject matter to this Victor Fleming-directed drama is typically virile -- it takes place in Sacramento during the Gold Rush days of 1849. And the star who stands out the most is also the most manly: big Wallace Beery. John Joyce (William Collier Jr.) arrives in Sacramento with his sister Read More

Adventure

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Tom Moore, Pauline Starke, Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Walter McGrail

Synopsis: Adventure was an appropriate title for a book by Jack London, and when his tale of the South Seas was made into a film, the virile Victor Fleming was the right man to direct it. David Shelton, a plantation owner (Tom Moore), is faced with ruin because some of his native workers are sick and the Read More

Code of the Sea

Crew: Director

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Jacqueline Logan, George Fawcett, Maurice B. Flynn, Luke Cosgrave

Synopsis: The story to this sea melodrama was written by Byron Morgan. Morgan was best known for the fast-paced auto tales he wrote for Wallace Reid, so this was quite a departure for him. When Bruce McDow (Rod LaRocque) refuses to go aloft to fix a rigging during a storm, and he is branded a coward. McDow Read More

Empty Hands

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Holt, Norma Shearer, Charles Clary, Ward Crane, Charles Stevens

Synopsis: Claire Endicott (Norma Shearer) throws a wild party and her father (Charles Clary) walks in to find her flirting with the very married Milt Bisnet (Ward Crane). In an attempt to straighten her out, Endicott sends Claire to the Canadian northwoods, where his field engineer, Grimshaw (Jack Holt), is Read More

Law of the Lawless

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Dalton, Theodore Kosloff, Charles de Roche, Tully Marshall, Fred Huntley

Synopsis: Dorothy Dalton stars in this colorful gypsy tale. Co-starring is Charles de Roche, in his first American film (later in the year, De Roche would be seen as Rameses in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments). Tartar girl Sahande (Dalton) is auctioned off to help pay the debts of her father, Osman (Fred Huntley Read More

Dark Secrets

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Dalton, Robert Ellis, Ellen Cassity, Pat Hartigan

Synopsis: The plot to this routine Paramount drama was apparently inspired by current interest in the work of Emile Coue, a hypnotist and pioneer in autosuggestion (he's the one responsible for the quote, "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better"). The talents of lively Dorothy Dalton are Read More

Call of the Canyon

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Marjorie Daw, Noah Beery, Sr., Ricardo Cortez

Synopsis: As might be expected, director Victor Fleming, who always did well with outdoorsy material, deftly handles this adaptation of Zane Grey's novel. Glenn Kilbourne (Richard Dix) was gassed during the war. When he comes home to New York he discovers that his fiancée, Carley Burch (Lois Wilson), has Read More

To the Last Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Sr., Robert Edeson, Frank Campeau

Synopsis: Leading lady Lois Wilson considered this fine western her favorite of six films she starred in opposite virile leading man Richard Dix. (The others were The Call of the Canyon, 1923, Icebound, 1924, The Vanishing American, 1925, Let's Get Married, 1926, and the talkie Lovin' the Ladies, 1930.) Read More

Red Hot Romance

Crew: Director

Actors: Basil Sydney, Henry Warwick

Synopsis: This fast-paced comedy came from the pen of husband and wife screenwriting team Anita Loos and John Emerson. After his father's death, Roland Stone (Basil Sidney) learns that his will stipulates that he must go to the South American country of Bunkonia and sell life insurance. Stone doesn't find Read More

Anna Ascends

Crew: Director

Actors: Alice Brady, Robert Ellis, Dave Powell, Nita Naldi, Charles Gerrard

Synopsis: Victor Fleming was still a relatively new director when he helmed this melodrama, an adaptation of the stage play by Harry Chapman Ford. Alice Brady starred on Broadway, and she stars here, too, as Anna Ayyob, a Syrian immigrant living in New York and working at a coffee house owned by Siad Coury (Edouard Durand Read More

Lane That Had No Turning

Crew: Director

Actors: Agnes Ayres, Theodore Kosloff, Mahlon Hamilton, Wilton Taylor, Frank Campeau

Synopsis: Paramount starred Agnes Ayers for the first time in this tragedy, adapted from the novel by Sir Gilbert Parker. Unfortunately, it wasn't a terribly auspicious debut -- the picture was morbid and depressing. A French Canadian pair, Madelinette (Ayers) and Louis Racine (Theodore Kosloff) wed. One of Read More

Mama's Affair

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Eve Orrin (Constance Talmadge) is at the mercy of her possessive mother (Effie Shannon), who has a case of "nerves" every time her daughter tries to show a mind of her own. Mrs. Orrin and her friend, Mrs. Marchant (Katherine Kaelred), have determined that Eve will marry Mrs. Marchant's milquetoast Read More

Woman's Place

Crew: Director

Actors: Constance Talmadge, Kenneth Harlan, Hasssard Short, Florence Short, Ina Rorke

Synopsis: This picture had three things in its favor right from the start -- its star, Constance Talmadge; the fact that women had recently won the right to vote; and its release date, which was shortly before the November elections. The Women's Political League decides to find a female candidate for mayor Read More

The Mollycoddle

Crew: Director

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: After finishing his first costumer swashbuckler The Mark of Zorro, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. reverted to his standard formula with the contemporary action comedy The Mollycoddle. Doug plays the title character, a dandified American who returns to his home in the Wild West after being educated in Read More

When the Clouds Roll By

Crew: Director

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: This lively silent romantic comedy was the second film made by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. for the new United Artists company. Much of the film is a satiric broadside aimed at the then-innovational field of psychiatry. Wealthy young bachelor Fairbanks allows a pompous head-shrinker to influence his Read More

His Majesty the American

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: When Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists, they had a dilemma -- only one of them was contractually free to make a film for the fledgling studio -- and that was Fairbanks. But he came through with this winning picture, playing his usual Read More

The Man from Painted Post

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Rancher Warren Bronson (Herbert Standing) is plagued by cattle rustlers, so he gets Western detective Fancy Jim Sherwood (Douglas Fairbanks) on the case. Fancy Jim disguises himself as an Eastern wimp and easily discovers that Bull Madden (Frank Campeau) is the head of the rustlers. Jim also falls Read More

Down to Earth

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks recalls James M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton in the 1917 silent Down to Earth. Billy Gaynor (Fairbanks) takes over an asylum where his girl, Ethel (Eileen Percy), is resting after a supposed nervous breakdown. "Doctor" Gaynor realizes that Ethel is perfectly healthy; all Read More

A Modern Musketeer

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks Sr. stars as Ned Thacker, who is born during a Kansas cyclone (coincidentally the same manner in which Fairbanks' real-life contemporary Buster Keaton came into the world!) and is thus imbued with the spirit of adventure. Having been virtually weaned on Alexandre Dumas' novel The Read More

In Again-Out Again

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: This was only one of many films that proved that the team of silent star Douglas Fairbanks, director John Emerson, and scenarist/wit Anita Loos was unbeatable when it came to comic adventure. Teddy Rutherford (Fairbanks) goes on a bender when he discovers that his sweetie (Helen Greene) loves Read More

Reaching for the Moon

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Daydreaming clerk Douglas Fairbanks discovers that he's of royal blood. In fact, if his information is correct, he's next in line for the throne of Vulgaria. Leaving his job behind, Fairbanks travels to the home of his forefathers to quell a takeover attempt by villainous nobleman Frank Campeau. Read More

The Good Bad Man

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: The Good Bad Man is at once a straight western and a gentle spoof of the genre. Douglas Fairbanks plays a fellow who calls himself "Passin' Through." Orphaned at birth, Our Hero grows up to be a Robin-Hood-like bandit, robbing the rich so that he can finance a home for unwanted children. In this Read More