John M. Stahl

 

He was born Jacob Morris Strelitsky in Baku (Azerbaijan) to a Russian Jewish family.^[1][2] When he was a child, his family left the Russian Empire and moved to the United States, settling in New York City. At a young age he took the name John Malcolm Stahl and began working, first as a theatre actor and then in the city's growing motion picture industry. He directed his first silent film short in 1913.

 

In 1919 he signed on with Louis B. Mayer Pictures in Hollywood. In 1924 he was part of the Mayer team that founded MGM Studios. In 1927, Stahl was one of the thirty-six founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. With the industry's transition to talkies and feature-length films, Stahl successfully made the adjustment. From 1927 through 1929 Stahl was an executive at the short-lived independent studio Tiffany Pictures, and renamed the company "Tiffany-Stahl Productions".

In 1930, he joined Universal Pictures where he began by directing several pre-code films. These included titles such as 1932's Back Street, starring Irene Dunne and John Boles; and the following year's Only Yesterday, again with Boles, and Margaret Sullavan, in her film debut. In 1934, he directed the film Imitation of Life, starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. (It lost to It Happened One Night, which also earned Colbert her own Academy Award for Best Actress.) The following year, he directed Magnificent Obsession, starring Dunne, once more, and Robert Taylor. Both films were later remade in the 1950s by director Douglas Sirk.

Stahl continued to produce and direct major productions as well as filler shorts up to the time of his death. Some of his other notable directorial work was for The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and Leave Her to Heaven (1945). The former film starred Gregory Peck, while the latter starred Gene Tierney. They each received Academy Award nominations in the leading categories (Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively) at the 18th Oscars ceremony.

Stahl died in Hollywood in 1950. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

He was married to actress and writer Frances Irene Reels from 1918 to her death in 1926; and to actress Roxana McGowan from 1931 to his death.

On February 8, 1960, for his contributions to the motion pictures industry, Stahl received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6546 Hollywood Boulevard.^[3][4]

 

• Charles Barr, Bruce Babington (2018). The Call of the Heart: John M Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama. John Libbey. ISBN 978-0-86196-736-0.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John M. Stahl.

• John M. Stahl at IMDb
• John M. Stahl; AllMovie/biography