Sam Wood


Samuel Grosvenor Wood was an American film director and producer who is best known for having directed such Hollywood hits as A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Pride of the Yankees, and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and for his uncredited work directing parts of Gone with the Wind. He was also involved in a few acting and writing projects.
As a youth, Wood developed an enthusiasm for physical fitness that persisted into his senior years and influenced his interest in making sports-themed films.
Wood advanced from making largely competent yet routine pictures in the 1920s and 1930s to directing several highly regarded works during the 1940s at the peak of his abilities, among them Kings Row and Ivy.
Wood's quick, efficient and professional execution of his film assignments endeared him to studio executives, and though not a "brilliant" director, Wood's legacy represents "a long and respectable film career."

Early life and family

Samuel Grosvenor Wood was born on July 10, 1883, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to William Henry Wood and Katherine Wood. He attended M. Hall Stanton School. One of Wood's daughters, born Gloria Wood, was film and television actress K.T. Stevens.
File:Jackie Coogan & Sam Wood - Feb 1921 EH.jpg|thumb|Jackie Coogan and director Sam Wood; publicity shot for Peck's Bad Boy
Spent time in Summers around 1900 on the Atlantic City beach with friends.

Early career in Hollywood

When Wood turned 18 years old in the summer of 1901, he and a companion began a year-long trek across the United States, ultimately arriving in Los Angeles, where Wood embarked on a successful career as a real estate broker. By 1906, the then-primitive film industry in Southern California enticed Wood to gain entrée into the nascent industry by acting, adopting the screen name "Chad Applegate." He carefully concealed his ill-reputed avocation from real estate associates and clients.
In 1908, Wood married Clara Louise Roush, who encouraged her spouse to commit to a career in film. Spurred by a collapse in the real estate market, Wood obtained work as a movie production assistant and, by 1914, was serving as an assistant director to Cecil B. DeMille. During the next five years, Wood contributed to the manufacture of hundreds of movies shorts as an assistant director, mostly for Paramount Pictures.

Directorial debut: The Wallace Reid films, 1920

At the end of 1919, Wood won his first assignment as director in the Paramount feature Double Speed, the first of five films he was paired with screen star Wallace Reid, all of which were filmed and released in 1920. Wood demonstrated efficient and effective direction that made him attractive to Paramount executives. The success of these hour-long action comedies were highly praised by production head Jesse Lasky for their "assembly line" output and profitability.
Reid, injured during a shoot in 1919, suffered from chronic pain that he treated with morphine.
Despite the outstanding success of his Reid features, Wood expressed a desire to work on other projects. Paramount, "perhaps as a sign of displeasure" obliged Wood by demoting him to their subsidiary movie unit, Realart, a venue for the production of low-budget "routine programme pictures" that offered little in the way of substance. Wood endured the assignment, making four films at Realart, starring Ethel Clayton and Wanda Hawley, all filmed in 1920. Wood's perseverance at Realart earned him a reputation as a reliable studio asset.

Swanson & Wood (1921-1923)

Paramount's appreciation for Wood's "fast, efficient" delivery of film products and his excellent rapport with his cast and crew landed him the honor of directing their recently acquired actor Gloria Swanson in her first starring vehicle, The Great Moment. DeMille, whom Wood had served as an assistant director from 1914 to 1916, and Swanson, a close personal friend to Wood, each influenced Paramount's choice.
With the popular success of The Great Moment, co-starring Milton Sills Paramount proceeded to finance nine more Swanson-Wood collaborations over the next two years, beginning with Under the Lash and finishing with Bluebeard's 8th Wife. Cameraman Alfred Gilks photographed all ten of the productions. During the Wood-Swanson series of films "the costume department broke all records for Hollywood lavishness..."
Wood's pictures included an array of scenarios and settings, providing abundant opportunities for Swanson and her leading men to "besport themselves in a variety of period costumes", and to appear in the "daring modern clothing" of the Jazz Age. Swanson's silent film career was significantly enhanced by these Wood productions. However, In 1923 by mutual consent, Swanson and Wood agreed to conclude their collaboration.
Sam Wood and Swanson "had clearly found the formula for success in these romantic comedies of marriage and intrigue laced with a series of handsome leading men and a never-ending parade of fabulous gowns."

Principal Pictures (1924-1925)

In late 1923, Wood's relationship with Paramount began deteriorating due to his discontent over the quality of his project assignments. Wood completed the "heavy-handed morality tale" His Children's Children at the end of 1923, and only made Bluff with Agnes Ayers under protest due to his low appraisal of Ayers' star potential.
Wood accepted two offers from producer Irving "Sol" Lesser of the newly formed Principal Pictures to make "a most unusual film", The Female, set in the South African Veld starring Betty Compson, as well as a Western and Wood's first effort in this genre, The Mine with the Iron Door with Dorothy Mackaill. Wood consented to make another film with Dorothy Mackaill for Paramount in The Next Corner that despite its "expensive production values" was burdened with a "meager plot". Wood and Paramount reached an impasse when he refused to direct another Agnes Ayers vehicle. Wood was officially suspended from Paramount and the other major studios for a year.
Sol Lesser at Principal Pictures reached out to Wood to direct a film version of novelist Harold Bell Wright's The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, a soap opera. When Wood's adaptation proved a box office success, Paramount executives sought to lure Wood back to the studio, bestowing on him a lavishly financed production, Fascinating Youth. Wood completed the "light comedy" but remained convinced that he had no future with Paramount and successfully arranged for a release from his contract.
Wood's separation from Paramount proved to be fortuitous for the director. Indeed, it was "a major turning point in his career." In 1927, he briefly directed films for Cole-Robertson Pictures, a small Boston outfit, and simultaneously negotiated a long-term commitment to Hollywood's dominant studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Cole-Robertson Pictures (1926-1927)

Robertson-Cole Pictures instantly picked up the now available Wood. Production manager Joseph P. Kennedy had famous sports hero "Red" Grange under contract and Wood, a gridiron enthusiast, welcomed the opportunity to deliver a compelling football story, One Minute to Play. Wood directed Grange a second time in a small epic honoring horse racing. Emphasizing the virtues of the sport rather than the less than impressive acting performance by Grange, A Racing Romeo, completed Wood's duties for Cole-Robertson.

Early MGM years

Wood's first two assignments for MGM, Rookies, with Karl Dane and George K. Arthur, and The Fair Co-Ed with Marion Davies were comedies, both made in 1927, earning him a long-term contract with the studio for whom he would almost exclusively make films for over ten years.
Wood proceeded to bring his signature speed and efficiency to MGM, directing their top stars and supplied with screenplays "of the slimmest material": Norma Shearer in The Latest from Paris, William Haines in Telling the World, the Duncan Sisters in It's a Great Life and in his first sound film in 1929, introduced actor Robert Montgomery.
Wood was renowned for consistently delivering his features "on time and on budget", but these virtues, which pleased the Front Office, "militated against his getting worthier assignments."
Two more comedies followed in 1930, The Girl Said No and They Learned About Women, the latter with a baseball theme and a sentimental vehicle starring German actor Louis Mann in a fine performance, and with co-star Robert Montgomery.
Wood directed silent matinee idol John Gilbert in a maritime romance-adventure Way for a Sailor, a vehicle that the actor hoped would redeem his reputation in the emerging "talkies". Gilbert was poorly cast as a tough seaman opposite Wallace Beery. Legend has it that M-G-M's studio chief Louis B. Mayer was complicit in miscasting Gilbert in a virile role that did not suit his image, and Wood failed to salvage his performance. Concentrating on action scenes depicting high seas shipwrecks and rescues, Wood invested Way for the Sailor with no more than a measure of realism.
Silent movie flapper and rising talkie star Joan Crawford was paired with Wood for Paid, a crime drama that benefited from Wood's "taut" execution and Charles Rosher's cinematography,
Wood followed with two less fortunate assignments and the last two of the four features he would make with William Haines: A Tailor Made Man and New Adventures of Get Rich Quick Wallingford, both 1931. Haines would subsequently retire from acting to become a successful interior decorator. Wood finished off the year by directing his final and successful film with Robert Montgomery, The Man in Possession, a "knockabout comedy." He was credited only as a producer on this last film; although Wood did direct The Man in Possession, the film bears no director credit.