Sidney Lanfield

Sidney Lanfield (born April 20, 1898, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died June 20, 1972, Los Angeles, California) was an American film and television director who specialized in comedies—notably a series of Bob Hope movies—but his best work was arguably the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939).

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Films of the 1930s

Trained on the vaudeville and jazz circuits, in 1926 Lanfield went to Hollywood, where he joined Fox (later Twentieth Century-Fox) as a gagman and screenwriter. In 1930 he directed his first films, El barbero de Napoleón (“The Barber of Napoleon”) and Cheer Up and Smile. He then worked steadily, and his early credits included the drama Three Girls Lost (1931), with John Wayne and Loretta Young; Hat Check Girl (1932), a comedy featuring Sally Eilers and Ginger Rogers; and Society Girl (1932), with James Dunn and Spencer Tracy as a prizefighter and his manager, respectively. In 1934 Lanfield made the musical Moulin Rouge, starring Constance Bennett. He then directed the screwball comedy Red Salute (1935), a reworking of Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) with a heavy dose of anticommunism. Barbara Stanwyck played a college student who begins dating a radical (Hardie Albright), much to the chagrin of her father, a U.S. Army general. He has her sent to Mexico, where she meets an AWOL soldier (Robert Young), and they later fall in love.

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In 1936 Lanfield made two musicals with Alice Faye that helped make her a star: King of Burlesque and Sing, Baby, Sing. In the latter film, Faye starred as a nightclub singer, with Adolphe Menjou as a movie star and Gregory Ratoff as her madcap agent; the Ritz Brothers provided comic relief. The popular musical comedy One in a Million (1936) was Norwegian skating star Sonja Henie’s first Hollywood film; Don Ameche played her love interest, and Menjou was cast as a Florenz Ziegfeld-like character. Lanfield and Faye reteamed for Wake Up and Live (1937), a satire about a mock feud between journalist Walter Winchell and bandleader Ben Bernie, both of whom played themselves. The film was enormously successful, as was Thin Ice (1937), featuring Henie as a ski instructor romanced by a prince (Tyrone Power) who is impersonating a journalist. Love and Hisses (1937) continues the Winchell-Bernie feud, with a singer (Simone Simon) being the cause of their dispute.

In 1939 Lanfield directed perhaps his best film, The Hound of the Baskervilles, which marked the debut of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Regarded as a classic, the film—which was based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel of the same name—was long the standard against which other Holmes films were judged.

Second Fiddle (1939) was another popular musical comedy starring Henie; she played a skating teacher who is discovered by a public relations agent (Tyrone Power) during a casting search. Lanfield closed out the decade with Swanee River (1939), a biopic of songwriter Stephen Foster, though Al Jolson stole the show as minstrel singer Edwin P. Christy.

Later films

After leaving Fox, Lanfield made the musical You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) for Columbia. It was the first screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth and was notable for their dance numbers and a fine Cole Porter score. The director then signed with Paramount, where his first assignment was The Lady Has Plans (1942), a spy farce starring Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland.

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In 1942 Lanfield directed My Favorite Blonde, the first of several hugely popular films starring Bob Hope. One of the comedian’s best vehicles, it featured Hope as a vaudevillian who becomes involved with a British spy (Madeleine Carroll) being chased by Nazis. Less successful was The Meanest Man in the World (1943), a 57-minute movie featuring Jack Benny as an easygoing lawyer who becomes ruthless in order to boost business. Lanfield and Hope reteamed for Let’s Face It (1943), a screwball comedy that also featured Betty Hutton. Standing Room Only (1944) centres on a business executive (Fred MacMurray) and his secretary (Goddard) who, during a trip to Washington, D.C., are unable to find hotel accommodations and decide to work as live-in servants. Bring on the Girls (1945) was a musical comedy with Eddie Bracken and Veronica Lake, and The Well-Groomed Bride (1946) miscast Olivia de Havilland in a wedding farce with Milland.

More popular was Where There’s Life (1947), with Hope as a disc jockey who discovers that he is the sole heir of the recently assassinated king of a small European country. Lanfield shifted gears with Station West (1948), a gritty western featuring Dick Powell and Jane Greer. Hope then starred with Lucille Ball in Sorrowful Jones (1949), a loose remake of the Shirley Temple classic Little Miss Marker (1934), and he returned for The Lemon Drop Kid (1951), portraying a bookie who runs afoul of a gangster. Follow the Sun (1951) was a change of pace—a biopic of golf great Ben Hogan starring Glenn Ford and Anne Baxter. Lanfield’s last picture was Skirts Ahoy! (1952), an Esther Williams outing with Debbie Reynolds and Vivian Blaine.

Television work

In the mid-1950s Lanfield moved to the new medium of television and ended up with nearly 200 episodes to his credit. His most-notable work was for Wagon Train, McHale’s Navy, and The Addams Family; for each of the latter two programs, he directed some 50 episodes. Lanfield retired from directing in 1967.