Mitchell Leisen

James Mitchell Leisen (October 6, 1898 – October 28, 1972) was an American director, art director, and costume designer.

Leisen grew up in St. Louis with his mother, following her divorce from his father, a brewery owner. From an early age, he suffered the effects of a poorly performed foot operation, which left him with a permanent limp. This condition had a lasting impact on his life. ^[1][2]He was sent to military school, believing it would strengthen his discipline. Leisen later attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied architecture, and subsequently worked in advertising art in Chicago. While there, he acted in local theatre productions before moving to Los Angeles in an effort to enter the film industry.^[3][2]

Although his attempts at acting were unsuccessful, Leisen found work designing sets for community theatre. He was soon hired as a costume designer by Cecil B. DeMille, beginning with Male and Female (1919). Over the next decade, he also worked as a set decorator and art director for DeMille and other filmmakers. His contributions included major productions such as Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The King of Kings (1927), and Dynamite (1929), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction.^[3][2]

He directed his first film in 1933 with Cradle Song and became known for his keen sense of aesthetics in the glossy Hollywood melodramas and screwball comedies he turned out.^[3]

He was often described as a “woman’s director” because of his strong working relationships with actresses. In many of his films, made primarily at Paramount Pictures, female characters were central to the narrative, and their perspectives shaped the story. Actresses such as Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, Olivia de Havilland, Claudette Colbert, and Carole Lombard frequently appeared in leading roles.^[3]

His best known films include Alberto Casella's adaptation of Death Takes a Holiday and Murder at the Vanities, a musical mystery story (both 1934), as well as Midnight (1939) and Hold Back the Dawn (1941), both co-scripted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Easy Living (1937), written by Preston Sturges and starring Jean Arthur, was another hit for the director, who also directed Remember the Night (1940), the last film written by Sturges before he started directing his scripts as well.^[3]

Lady in the Dark (1944), To Each His Own (1946), and No Man of Her Own (1950) were later successes. Charles Brackett's comedy The Mating Season (1951) starring Gene Tierney, Miriam Hopkins and Thelma Ritter was an updated version of Leisen's earlier screwball comedies of the 1930s, and was also his last big movie success.^[3]

When his film career ended, Leisen directed episodes of such television series as Thriller, Shirley Temple's Storybook, The Twilight Zone, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.. He later became a nightclub owner.^[4]

Mitchell Leisen married opera singer Stella Yeager in 1927, though the couple lived separately for much of their marriage and remained in contact over the years. Leisen maintained a wide social circle in Hollywood and was known for hosting elaborate gatherings and pursuing artistic interests beyond filmmaking, including costume design, interior decoration, and nightclub staging.^[2]

Leisen had long-term relationships with both women and men, reflecting a bisexual orientation that was largely private during his lifetime. One of his most significant relationships was with costume designer Natalie Visart, with whom he shared a close personal and professional bond. He also had relationships with male companions. According to Carolyn Roos, Leisen's longtime business manager's daughter, he had a very long relationship with dancer/actor/choreographer Billy Daniel until the 1950s (Daniel died in 1962).^[2][5][6] Leisen, with Daniel and dancer/actor Mary Parker, formed Hollywood Presents Inc. as a means of promoting both Daniel and Parker off-screen.^[7] Leisen died of heart disease in 1972, aged 74. His grave is located in Chapel of the Pines Crematory.^[8]

Although Mitchell Leisen was well regarded during his career, his work received less attention in later decades. From the 1950s onward, changes in the film industry and interest in his personal life contributed to a decline in his professional visibility. However, his films have since been reappraised and continue to be valued by critics and enthusiasts of classic cinema.^[1]

Leisen is now best remembered for his ability to blend genres and for his emphasis on character-driven storytelling marked by elegance and visual sophistication. His influence on narrative style and screen characterization remains evident, and his work is often referenced in discussions of classic American cinema.^[1]

He garnered his sole Academy Award nomination in 1930 for Art Direction for Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite.^[9] He directed Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.^[3]

• Chierichetti, David (1995). Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director. Photoventures. ISBN 978-0-929330-04-4. Revised version of a 1973 biography.
• Kehr, Dave (May 13, 2008). "New DVDs: Mitchell Leisen and 'The Big Trail'". The New York Times. The very model of the crack studio director, Mitchell Leisen spent much of his career at Paramount, where he tackled projects as radically different as the archly theatrical "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934) and the frothy revue film "The Big Broadcast of 1938" with the same composure and elegance. Kehr's review of the DVD releases of Easy Living (1937) and Midnight (1939).
• Melville, David (2006). "Mitchell Leisen". Senses of Cinema (37). Melville is one of several critics who have been reassessing Leisen's contributions to cinema; he writes, "Leisen, glimpsed in this new light, is no longer a swishy hack. He's a subtle and stylish auteur who could add heart and humanity to the brittle sophistication of Billy Wilder, lend grace and elegance to the boisterous Americana of Preston Sturges. In his Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson hails Leisen as "an expert at witty romantic comedies, too reliant on feeling to be screwball, too pleased with glamour to be satires – and thus less likely to attract critical attention.""
• Rappaport, Mark (2008). "Mitchell Leisen". Rouge. This essay was written as an introduction to a retrospective series of showings of Leisen's films in 2008 at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, France. As does Melville, Rappaport speculates on how some of Billy Wilder's and Preston Sturges' scripts that Leisen directed would have fared if their writers had directed them instead.
• Shadoian, Jack (September 1, 1998). "Exacting standards: Director Mitchell Leisen's film "To Each His Own" epitomizes the director's work". Film Comment. 34 (5): 40. Retrieved February 3, 2011. Seeing Leisen's films, though, kindles the urge to get up in arms, hoist a banner or two in the hope of securing the director his rightful share of the limelight. Segue to To Each His Own, a quintessential Leisen weepie – what one could unkindly call glittery trash created by the best minds of the motion picture industry, but that just might be wonder-full enough to do the job. Shadoian is a film scholar who wrote the monograph Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film (1978, 2003).

• Mitchell Leisen at IMDb