George Cooper Stevens (December 18, 1904 – March 8, 1975) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956).
Born in Oakland, California, George Stevens worked in his parents' West Coast touring stock theater company as a child actor and stage manager. When cinema was replacing live theater, Stevens's parents relocated to Los Angeles. At the age of 17, Stevens was hired as an assistant cameraman, working on several Western films produced by Hal Roach. Within three years, Stevens became a cameraman on the Our Gang series. Impressed with Stevens's visual knowledge, Roach then appointed him to direct installments of The Boy Friends series.
Stevens next moved to Universal Pictures and then to RKO Pictures. There, he directed several genre films, including Alice Adams starring Katharine Hepburn; Swing Time starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; and Gunga Din starring Cary Grant. Stevens was loaned to MGM to direct Woman of the Year (1942) based on Hepburn's suggestion, whereby she was paired with Spencer Tracy for the first time. He also directed The Talk of the Town (1942) and The More the Merrier (1943).
In 1941, the United States entered World War II, in which Stevens joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and headed a film unit. Using his personal 16 mm film camera, Stevens shot color footage of the Liberation of Paris and the entry of American soldiers into the Dachau concentration camp. Stevens returned to Hollywood and directed more serious films, starting with I Remember Mama (1948).
Between 1951 and 1956, Stevens directed his American Trilogy, which includes A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), and Giant (1956). He next directed widescreen biographical films, The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). His final film was The Only Game in Town (1970) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. Stevens died on March 8, 1975, at the age of 70.
Famed film critic Pauline Kael says of Stevens, that he made films with "good moments" and later became highly regarded for creating expansive films with "obese nuances."
Stevens was born on December 18, 1904, in Oakland, California, the son of Landers Stevens and Georgie Cooper, both stage actors. A brother of theatre critic Ashton Stevens, Landers Stevens began his acting career at age 20, and established his own theatrical stock company when he was 24. Landers met Cooper where she was performing at the Tivoli Theatre in San Francisco, and the two were married in 1902.
George had two brothers, Jack, a cinematographer, and writer Aston Stevens. He learned about the stage by watching his parents, and himself, acting in plays in San Francisco. George remembered, "As a kid I helped my father, setting up the entrances and marking the script and holding the lines. Because he was usually acting in the play and because he also was directing, I helped, holding the script."
At the age of 5, George made his stage debut in the play Sappho, appearing alongside Nance O'Neill, at the Alcazar Theatre. At the age of 10, his mother gave him a Brownie camera, and he began photographing the city and portraits of his mother. Landers's theatre troupe toured throughout the West Coast, Utah, Vancouver, and Canada. By 1920, the theatre stock company had waned in popularity, and Stevens's parents set up a tent show in downtown San Francisco.
Stevens's parents relocated to Sonoma County, California, where Jack and George were enrolled in the Flowery School and then Sonora Union High School. The 1920–1921 theatre season was financially unsuccessful, so much that Landers closed his theatre company. Decades later, George reflected: "A movie palace was built right across the street from the theatre where my father worked. First one was built on this corner, then one was built on that corner, and the people were going to them in great numbers. I remember my father peeking out through the brass ring before the curtain went up on his stage show, and there weren't many people out front."
In 1921, the family relocated once more to Glendale so Landers could pursue work in Hollywood. By the age of 16, George was forced to drop out of high school to drive his father to acting auditions. To compensate for his lack of a formal education, George regularly visited the Glendale Public Library.
1922–1933: Assistant cameraman
Stevens worked as an assistant cameraman on Heroes of the Street (1922), a silent drama directed by William Beaudine. He then moved to Ince Studio where he worked on The Destroying Angel (1923) and several Westerns, including The Virginian (1923) released by Preferred Pictures. He was an uncredited assistant cameraman on the 1923 short film Roughest Africa, starring Stan Laurel.
At the age of 17, Stevens was employed at Hal Roach Studios as an assistant cameraman to Fred Jackman. His first project was The Battling Orioles (1923) and was followed by The White Sheep (1924). Within a year, Stevens worked on Black Cyclone (1924), an installment of a silent Western film serial featuring Rex the Wonder Horse.
The next installment was The Devil Horse (1925). Directed by Fred Jackman, Stevens was one of the two cameramen, collaborating with Floyd Jackman (Fred's brother). While trick photography had been used previously, Stevens experimented with using filters on the panchromatic film, by which he filtered "the sky black for night sequences, instead of just tinting it blue, and using long telephoto lenses to bring the background up, things that a kid would do."
The Jackman brothers left Hal Roach Studios, but Stevens stayed to photograph a series of short comedies starring Laurel and Hardy. Oliver Hardy had been under contract with the studio, but Roach hired Stan Laurel from Universal Pictures to write gag stories. Stevens's first project with the duo was Slipping Wives (1927), whereby he worked as director of photography and a gag writer on 35 of their short films, including Bacon Grabbers (1929) and Night Owls (1930). According to Stevens, he learned from this experience that comedy could be "graceful and human".
Filming for one short proved difficult when Laurel's blue eyes failed to register on orthochromatic film, but Stevens made a successful test of him using panchromatic film. By 1930, Stevens began directing film serial installments of The Boy Friends. At one point, Stevens grew tired of directing two-reel gag comedies and refused to direct another film that Roach had asked him. He told Leonard Maltin, in 1970: "[Roach] told me a story he wanted me to do. I couldn't see it at all, and I'd just started on something else. So I thought it over, and I said, 'Hal, I can't do it. I don't understand it.'" A half-hour later, Stevens was informed by a studio manager that he was fired, with the termination effective on New Year's Eve 1931.
1933–1935: Early feature works