Norman Taurog

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Norman Taurog, (February 23, 1899 - April 7, 1981) was an American film director born in Chicago, Illinois. Between 1920 and 1968 he directed over 140 films. Taurog won the 1931 Oscar for Best Director for the film Skippy and still holds the record as the youngest director to win that award, 32. He was later nominated for Best Director for his 1938 film, Boys Town. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Norman Taurog has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1600 Vine Street.

It could be said that Norman Taurog had five chapters to his career. His first was a child performer on the stage from an early age, making his movie debut aged 13 in the short film Tangled Relations, produced by Thomas Ince’s studios. In the 8 years until his next screen credit he worked in theatre, mostly off-Broadway. By the time he re-entered the movies he had entered the second chapter, making the transition to director. He collaborated with Larry Semon in 1920’s The Sportsman. Taurog made 42 more films, mostly shorts, up until 1931; in this time he developed his style, his forte was light comedy though he could also deal with drama and maintain complex narratives.

In 1931 he made his breakthrough, directing Skippy, for which he won an Academy Award. Taurog's nephew Jackie Cooper was nominated for an Oscar for his performance; in his 1981 autobiography Please Don't Shoot My Dog Cooper wrote that during filming Taurog threatened to shoot his dog if the child actor could not cry for the scene. Skippy tells of the adventures of the eponymous hero, his antics and adventures with Sooky as they try to come up with a license for Sooky’s dog, prevent his shantytown from demolition, sell lemonade and save for a new bike. Based on a popular comic strip character, it’s sentiment, comedy and moral didacticism (common with movies of the time), added to a gritty realism made it a huge success. Skippy was so successful the studio immediately scheduled a sequel, Sooky, for the following year.

The next few years saw Taurog enter the third chapter of his career, as an established director who could work in a number of genres. He directed a series of well-received films: 1932's If I Had a Million showed his ability to work with an all-star cast, featuring Gary Cooper, George Raft, Charles Laughton and W.C. Fields; 1934 saw him helm We're Not Dressing, a lively Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard vehicle which also featured George Burns, Gracie Allen and Ray Milland; 1936's Rhythm on the Range; 1937's Fifty Races to Town and 1938s Mad About Music demonstrated the métier of comedy-drama and musicals in which Taurog was carving out a reputation.

1938 saw Taurog bring all his skill and experience to bear with one of the liveliest and most successful adaptations of classic literature; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was an artistic and commercial triumph. The year also brought the accomplished, and hard-hitting Boys Town, showing Taurog to be more than capable of sustaining a dramatic narrative and earning him another Academy Award nomination. It wasn't all success though, 1939's Lucky Night starring Myrna Loy and Robert Taylor was a turkey and Taurog shot test scenes for 1939's cinematic extravaganza The Wizard of Oz but Victor Fleming was chosen to direct. Taurog did, however, helm the last of MGM's big pre-war musical showcases, 1940's Broadway Melody, starring Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. He expanded his range into biographies, working with Mickey Rooney again in the well-received Young Tom Edison in 1940 and also in the sequel to Boys Town, Men of Boys Town in 1941 and A Yank at Eton in 1942. In between he got a wonderful performance from Judy Garland in Little Nellie Kelly, who he also directed in 1943's 'small-town-girl-gets-big-break' Presenting Lily Mars.

After directing re-takes for a propaganda film during the war, Rationing in 1944, Taurog entered new territory with a docudrama of the atom bomb, The Beginning or the End in 1947. It was back to his metier of light comedy for his next couple of outings, The Bride Goes Wild with Van Johnson and June Allyson and Big City, both in 1948. Remarkably he also directed a third film that year combining the genres of comedy, drama and biography and dealing with an all-star cast; Words and Music was a fictionalised biopic of the relationship between Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. It starred, among others, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Cyd Charisse. By now, Taurog had established a reputation as a director who was comfortable working in the musical and comedy genre, and who could be relied upon to work with slight material - qualities which would be useful later in his career. Following Words and Music Taurog directed Kathryn Grayson in That Midnight Kiss, 1949, Deborah Kerr in Please Believe Me, 1950 and Grayson again in The Toast of New Orleans, 1950. Each was undistinguished, if entertaining. Taurog was to direct three more films which could be said to match this description before the fourth chapter of his career, Mrs O'Malley and Mr Malone, 1950, Rich Young and Pretty, 1951 and Room for One More in 1952, starring Cary Grant.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had been a double-act since 1946 and had made five films together, three Martin and Lewis top-liners, before 1952's Taurog-directed Jumping Jacks. It is regarded by many Martin and Lewis fans as the finest of their films and Taurog worked well with the double-act. In 1953 he directed them in The Stooge, 1953, The Caddy, 1954, Living It Up, 1955 You're Never Too Young and in 1956 their penultimate film together Pardners. The experience of working with them, combining comedy, drama and singing, set Taurog up well for his fifth and final chapter. Taurog directed Lewis, without Martin, twice more in 1959's Don't Give Up the Ship and 1960's Visit to a Small Planet before his first Elvis Presley film, 1960's G.I. Blues.

G.I. Blues was a turning point for Elvis. Up until that point he had harboured ambitions of being a James Dean figure, playing brooding rebel roles in his films up to that point - Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole. However Colonel Tom Parker had different plans for the singer. G.I. Blues was Elvis's first film in two years, after his return from the army, and would set the tone for future films - a few girls, a few adventures and a few songs along the way. When well-made, this was an entertaining, light-hearted formula and Taurog, now in his sixties, was an old-hand at it. So impressed was the Colonel with his work on G.I. Blues that over the next 8 years Taurog directed 8 more of Elvis's films - Blue Hawaii, 1961, Girls! Girls! Girls!, 1962, It Happened at the World Fair, 1963, Tickle Me, 1965, Spinout, 1964, Double Trouble, 1967, Speedway, 1968 and Live a Little, Love a Little, 1968. Although some were better than others (and some were almost identical to others) Taurog ensured that the Elvis films had pace, the comedy was delivered well and the songs well executed.

This fifth chapter took Taurog to the end of his career, one year after completing Live a Little, Love a Little, he went blind. Norman Taurog died on April 7, 1981 aged 82.

[edit] Partial Filmography

1931 - Skippy - with Jackie Cooper
1931 - Newly Rich - with Mitzi Green
1931 - Huckleberry Finn - with Jackie Cooper
1931 - Sooky - with Jackie Cooper and Robert Coogan
1932 - The Phantom President - with George M. Cohan, Claudette Colbert, and Jimmy Durante
1933 - A Bedtime Story - with Maurice Chevalier
1934 - We're Not Dressing - with Bing Crosby, Carole Lombard and George Burns
1935 - The Big Broadcast of 1936 - with Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, Richard Tauber and the first appearance of Dorothy Dandridge
1936 - Rhythm on the Range - with Bing Crosby and Frances Farmer
1938 - Mad About Music - with Deanna Durbin and Herbert Marshall
1938 - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - with Tommy Kelly and Jackie Moran
1938 - Boys Town - with Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney
1940 - Broadway Melody of 1940 - with Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell
1940 - Little Nellie Kelly - with Judy Garland
1942 - A Yank at Eton - with Mickey Rooney
1943 - Presenting Lily Mars - with Judy Garland and Van Heflin
1944 - The Canterville Ghost - co-directed (uncredited) with Jules Dassin and starring Charles Laughton, Robert Young, Margaret O'Brien
1948 - The Bride Goes Wild - with Van Johnson and June Allyson
1948 - Words and Music - with June Allyson, Perry Como, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, and Cyd Charisse
1950 - Please Believe Me - with Deborah Kerr, Robert Walker and Peter Lawford
1950 - The Toast of New Orleans - with Kathryn Grayson, Mario Lanza, and David Niven
1952 - Room for One More - with Cary Grant
1952 - Jumping Jacks - with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
1953 - The Stooge - with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
1953 - The Caddy - with Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Donna Reed
1954 - Living it up - with Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Janet Leigh
1955 - You're Never Too Young - with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
1956 - Pardners - with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
1956 - The Birds and the Bees - with George Gobel, Mitzi Gaynor and David Niven
1957 - The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown - with Jane Russell
1959 - Don't Give Up the Ship - with Jerry Lewis
1960 - G. I. Blues - with Elvis Presley
1961 - All Hands on Deck - with Pat Boone
1961 - Blue Hawaii - with Elvis Presley and Angela Lansbury
1962 - Girls! Girls! Girls! - with Elvis Presley and Stella Stevens
1963 - It Happened at the World's Fair - with Elvis Presley
1965 - Tickle Me - with Elvis Presley
1965 - Sergeant Dead Head - with Frankie Avalon
1966 - Spinout - with Elvis Presley
1967 - Double Trouble - with Elvis Presley
1968 - Speedway - with Elvis Presley, Nancy Sinatra and Bill Bixby
1968 - Live a Little, Love a Little - with Elvis Presley

Preceded by Lewis Milestone for All Quiet on the Western Front	Academy Award for Best Director 1930-1931 for Skippy	Succeeded by Frank Borzage for Bad Girl