William Clark Gable was an American film actor. Often referred to as the "King of Hollywood", he had roles in more than 60 films in a variety of genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as the pirate Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were Gone with the Wind, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director, and The Wizard of Oz. Fleming has those same two films listed in the top 10 of the American Film Institute's 2007 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list.
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather production staff, and make profitable films, including Grand Hotel, China Seas, A Night at the Opera, Mutiny on the Bounty, Camille and The Good Earth. His films carved out an international market, "projecting a seductive image of American life brimming with vitality and rooted in democracy and personal freedom", states biographer Roland Flamini.
Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.
John Lee Mahin was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Hell Divers is a 1932 American pre-Code black-and-white film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Wallace Beery and Clark Gable as a pair of competing chief petty officers in early naval aviation. The film, made with the cooperation of the United States Navy, features considerable footage of flight operations aboard the Navy's second aircraft carrier, the USS Saratoga, including dramatic shots of takeoffs and landings filmed from the Curtiss F8C-4 Helldiver dive bombers after which the movie was named.
Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian-American actor of film, stage, and television. One of the premier character actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tamiroff developed a prolific career despite his thick accent, appearing in at least 80 motion pictures over a span of 37 years.
Red Dust is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor. It is based on the 1928 play of the same name by Wilson Collison, and was adapted for the screen by John Mahin. Red Dust is the second of six movies Gable and Harlow made together. More than 20 years later, Gable starred in a remake, Mogambo (1953), with Ava Gardner starring in a variation on the role Harlow played and Grace Kelly playing a part similar to one portrayed by Astor in Red Dust.
George William Hill was an American film director and cinematographer.
Paul Bern was a German-born American film director, screenwriter, and producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he became the assistant to Irving Thalberg. He helped launch the career of Jean Harlow, whom he married in July 1932; two months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, leaving what appeared to be a suicide note. Various alternative theories of his death have been proposed. MGM writer and film producer Samuel Marx believed that he was killed by his ex-common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who jumped to her death from a ferry two days afterward.
Bombshell is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic screwball comedy film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, C. Aubrey Smith, Mary Forbes and Franchot Tone. It is based on the unproduced play of the same name by Caroline Francke and Mack Crane, and was adapted for the screen by John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman.
Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 American historical adventure drama film directed by Frank Lloyd and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It dramatizes the mutiny of HMS Bounty, and is adapted from the novels Mutiny on the Bounty and Men Against the Sea by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. It stars Charles Laughton as William Bligh, Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian, and Franchot Tone as Roger Byam.
Hugh Ryan "Jack" Conway was an American film director and film producer, as well as an actor of many films in the first half of the 20th century.
The Secret Six is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film starring Wallace Beery as "Slaughterhouse Scorpio", a character very loosely based on Al Capone, and featuring Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau and Ralph Bellamy. The film was written by Frances Marion and directed by George W. Hill for MGM.
Billy the Kid is a 1930 American pre-Code Western film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid and lawman Pat Garrett. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
The Beast of the City is a 1932 American pre-Code gangster film featuring cops as vigilantes and known for its singularly vicious ending. Written by W.R. Burnett, Ben Hecht (uncredited), and John Lee Mahin, and directed by Charles Brabin, the film stars Walter Huston, Jean Harlow, Wallace Ford, Jean Hersholt, and Tully Marshall.
The Buccaneer is a 1938 American adventure film made by Paramount Pictures starring Fredric March and based on Jean Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. The picture was produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille from a screenplay by Harold Lamb, Edwin Justus Mayer and C. Gardner Sullivan adapted by Jeanie MacPherson from the 1930 novel Lafitte the Pirate by Lyle Saxon. The music score was by George Antheil and the cinematography by Victor Milner.
Eskimo is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It is based on the books Der Eskimo and Die Flucht ins weisse Land by Danish explorer and author Peter Freuchen. The film stars Ray Mala as Mala, Lulu Wong Wing as Mala's first wife Aba, Lotus Long as Mala's second wife Iva, Peter Freuchen as the Ship Captain, W. S. Van Dyke as Inspector White, and Joseph Sauers as Sergeant Hunt.
Hold Your Man is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by an uncredited Sam Wood and starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, the third of their six films together. The screenplay by Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers was based on a story by Loos.
