Richard Thorpe (born Rollo Smolt Thorpe; February 24, 1896 – May 1, 1991) was an American film director best known for his long career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
His obituary called him "a capable and versatile director willing to take on any assignment the studio handed him." He said "I just take them on as they come."
Thorpe also said "I'm happy to do any kind of picture. If there's a good script I think any director can make a good picture. Actually if it says in the script what you do, I don't see why anybody can't make it."
One associate said “He was a company man, a very pleasant, good-looking, nice, well-behaved guy who took pride in being efficient like some businessman would take pride in the way he ran his bank.”
His two favorite films were Night Must Fall (1937) and Two Girls and a Sailor (1944). "They were new and different experiences," said Thorpe.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Thorpe has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd. In 2003 a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in Palm Springs, California was dedicated to him and his son Jerry.
Born Rollo Smolt Thorpe on February 24, 1896 in Hutchinson, Kansas, Richard Thorpe began his entertainment career performing in vaudeville and onstage. In 1921 he began in motion pictures as an actor and directed his first silent film in 1923. He went on to direct more than one hundred and eighty films.
He worked frequently at the Poverty Row studio Chesterfield Pictures during the 1930s.
Thorpe later estimated he "did 72 Westerns, four comedies, 12 serials and 36 independent productions before coming to Metro."
The first full-length motion picture he directed for MGM was Last of the Pagans (1935) starring Ray Mala. Thorpe was assigned to Tarzan Escapes which was a huge success as was Night Must Fall.
Thorpe is known as the original director of The Wizard of Oz (1939). He was fired after two weeks of shooting because it was felt that his scenes did not have the right air of fantasy about them. Thorpe notoriously gave Judy Garland a blonde wig and cutesy "baby-doll" makeup that made her look like a girl in her late teens rather than an innocent Kansas farm girl of about 13. Both makeup and wig were discarded at the suggestion of George Cukor, who was brought in temporarily. Stills from Thorpe's work on the film survive today. Further, it is understood that bits of his filmed footage of Toto escaping from the Wicked Witch's castle are featured in the film, albeit uncredited.
Thorpe was going to direct Kim with Mickey Rooney but the movie was cancelled.
Two Girls and a Sailor would be the first of eleven films Thorpe would make with producer Joe Pasternak. The film was a big hit and helped make a star of Van Johnson.
Thorpe made a number of films with Esther Williams, starting with Thrill of a Romance. She recalled, "He was nothing if not efficient, and I soon began to wonder if he hadn’t missed his calling as an accountant. He was cranky, especially in the morning, until he’d downed a pot of coffee; it was wise to keep your distance. Dick didn’t like people who were too cheerful, which meant that he took an instant dislike to me." Williams says Thorpe constantly bullied and berated her during filming although she says he stopped it after she left the set crying.
Williams says that while making Fiesta, Thorpe "was in a worse mood... than he’d been before. He hated Mexico; he hated bullfighting, and above all he hated Ricardo Montalban, who was at least as cheerful as I was." She did not want to make This Time for Keeps with Thorpe but the studio insisted.
Thorpe later said the only film he turned down at MGM was The Black Hand. “I didn’t think I could handle Gene Kelly because he had been a director. And after an hour and a half, Schary said, ‘Well, you go ahead and do it.’ So I went ahead and did it.”
At MGM, he teamed up with producer Pandro S. Berman, with whom he made Ivanhoe (1952). This was a huge commercial success (earning a DGA nomination for Thorpe) and led to a series of expensive epics produced by Berman, including The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), Knights of the Round Table (1953), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953) and The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955). Pandro Berman later called Thorpe "the most efficient director I ever knew in terms of things technical. The beauty of Thorpe was that if you had a script he liked, he just shot it."
Joan Fontaine, who starred in Ivanhoe later wrote "I found that director Thorpe cared more about the performance of the horses than the actors."