Home > Gregory La Cava

He was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students' League. Around 1913, he started doing odd jobs at the studio of Raoul Barré. By 1915 he was an animator on the Animated Grouch Chasers series.

Towards the end of 1915, William Randolph Hearst decided to create an animation studio to promote the comic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new company International Film ServiceInternational Film Service was an American animation studio created to exploit the popularity of the comic strips controlled by William Randolph Hearst. History In 1914, William Randolph Hearst expanded his International News Service wire syndicate into t, and he hired La Cava to run it (for double what he was making with Barré). La Cava's first employee was his co-worker at the Barré Studio, Frank Moser . Another was his fellow student in Chicago, Grim Natwick (later to achieve fame at DisneyAlternate meanings: Disney (disambiguation The Walt Disney Company (also known as Disney Enterprises, Inc. or simply Disney was founded in 1923 by Walt Disney and is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. It is the number tw). As he developed more and more of Hearst's comics into cartoon series, he came to put semi-independent units in charge of each, leading to the growth of individual styles. La Cava also had the significant advantage over other studios of an unlimited budget: Hearst's business sense completely broke down when it came to his Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial and the "living comic strips" they contained. Indeed, La Cava's main fault as a producer and director was that his cartoons were too clearly animated comic strips, hampered by speech balloons when the rival Bray Studio was creating more effective series with original characters. He was apparently aware of this fault, and he had his animators study Charlie ChaplinFor the Jamaican musician named Charlie Chaplin, see Charlie Chaplin (singer). Sir Charles "Charlie" Spencer Chaplin ( April 16, 1889 December 25, 1977) was the most famous actor in early to mid Hollywood cinema, and later also a notable director. His pri films to improve their timing and characterization. But he didn't have time to achieve very much, because in July of 1918Events January January 8 President Woodrow Wilson announces his " Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I. February February 3 The Twin Peaks Tunnel begins service in San Francisco as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world (11,920 feet long). Hearst's bankers caught up with him and International Film Service was shut down.

Hearst still wanted his characters animated, so he licensed various studios to continue the IFS series. Gregory La Cava and most of the IFS staff got jobs with John Terry's studio (no surprise, since John Terry himself was an IFS alumnus). This only lasted a few months, then John Terry's studio went out of business. The animators were immediately hired by Goldwyn-Bray (as the Bray Studio was now known), but La Cava was not, since Goldwyn-Bray had several producers of his own and La Cava was not interested in starting over. Instead, he moved west to Hollywood.

By 1922, Gregory La Cava had become a live-action director of two-reel comedies, the direct competitor to animated films. Among the comedians he directed in the silent era were Richard DixRichard Dix ( July 18, 1893 September 20, 1949) was an American actor. Born Ernest Carlton Brimmer in St. Paul, Minnesota, he had studied to be a surgeon, but he took most of the leading roles while studying drama in school, and after dropping out of the, Bebe DanielsBebe Daniels in the 1920s Bebe Daniels ( 14 January, 1901 15 March, 1971) was a United States actress. She started out in Hollywood in the silent movie era, and later starred on radio and television in England. She was born as Phylis Daniels in Dallas, Te (Feel My Pulse, 1928Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 See also 1928 in aviation 1928 in film 1928 in literature 1928 in mu), and W. C. FieldsFields ( January 29, 1880 December 25, 1946) was an American comedian and actor. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century a misanthrope who teetered on the edge of buffoonery but never quite fell in, an (So's Your Old Man, 1926 and Running Wild, 1927). He had worked his way up to features by the time sound arrived, and it is for his films of the 1930's (both comedic and serious) that he is best known today: The Half Naked Truth ( 1932), Bed of Roses (1932), Gabriel Over the White House (1933), What Every Woman Knows ( 1934), Private Worlds ( 1935), My Man Godfrey ( 1936, nominated for the Best Director Academy Award), Stage Door ( 1937, also nominated for Best Director), and The Primrose Path ( 1940). He died on March 1, 1952, in Malibu, California.