Cukor, George

Cukor, George (1899-1983), American director born in New York, who worked on Broadway from the mid-1920s onwards.

In Hollywood from the advent of sound films, or talkies, Cukor quickly achieved a reputation for his sophisticated, literate films, often adapted from novels or plays. Examples include: Dinner at Eight (1933) with Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler; Little Women (1933) with Katharine Hepburn, with whom he worked 11 times, including 2 films for television; David Copperfield (1935) with W. C. Fields as Micawber; and Romeo and Juliet (1936) with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer. Working with Hepburn, Garbo (outstanding in Camille in 1937), Ingrid Bergman, and Judy Holliday (both winning Oscars for their work in Gaslight, 1944, and Born Yesterday, 1950, respectively), Cukor acquired a reputation as a “women's director”, which irritated him, since James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story, 1940), Ronald Colman ( A Double Life, 1947), and Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady, 1964) all won Oscars under his direction.

Cukor's greatest professional disappointment was being removed from Gone With the Wind (1939), for which he had minutely prepared, although he went on to excel with the 1954 version of A Star is Born and directed some timeless comedies written by Ruth Gordon and/or Garson Kanin.