Trivia

Credited with renaming "Judy" Turner as Lana Turner.

Did not mention being married to Edna Murphy in his 1974 autobiography, even though they were married for almost six years.

Directed 13 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Greer Garson, Van Heflin, Ronald Colman, Susan Peters, Walter Pidgeon, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Jack Lemmon, Nancy Kelly, Eileen Heckart and Patty McCormack. Sondergaard, Lemmon and Heflin won Oscars for their performances in one of LeRoy's movies.

Introduced Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan, who eventually married.

Cousin of Jesse L. Lasky.

Directed nine films nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture: Five Star Final (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Anthony Adverse (1936), The Wizard of Oz (1939) (uncredited), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Random Harvest (1942), Madame Curie (1943), Quo Vadis (1951) and Mister Roberts (1955).

He has directed five films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Little Caesar (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), The Wizard of Oz (1939) (uncredited) and The House I Live In (1945).

Although he would later take credit for discovering Loretta Young, Young's daughter Judy Lewis wrote that actually silent film actress Colleen Moore discovered Young.

Interred at Forest Lawn (Glendale), Glendale, CA, in the Garden of Honor.

Father of Warner LeRoy, the restaurant impresario who created NYC's Maxwell's Plum and Tavern on the Green and who revamped the Russian Tea Room, and also created the amusement park Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ. Warner married twice and had four children--Bridget, Carolyn, Max and Jenny Oz LeRoy. He died in 2001.

Since 1980, the Mervyn Le Roy Handicap has been run at Hollywood Park. LeRoy was one of the organizers of the racetrack and its president until 1985.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 527-530. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

Daughter with wife Doris Warner: Linda LeRoy Janklow, wife of literary agent Mort Janklow.

Profiled in "American Classic Screen Interviews" (Scarecrow Press). (2010)

Heavily influenced family friend, producer/director Thomas R. Bond II.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 651-657. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Mentioned in Reminiscing About Last New Year's (1953).

In his autobiography, "Take One," LeRoy claims he directed James Cagney in one of his first movies, "Hot Stuff" (1929). Cagney was not only not in "Hot Stuff," he wasn't even in Hollywood in 1929.