| Michael Gordon | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 6, 1909 Baltimore, Maryland |
| Died | April 29, 1993 (aged 83) Century City, California |
| Spouse | ? Cohn |
Michael Gordon (September 6, 1909 – April 29, 1993) was an American stage actor and stage and film director.
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Gordon was born in Baltimore and raised in a middle class Jewish community.[1] He was a member of the Group Theatre (1935–1940), and was blacklisted as a Communist in the days of McCarthyism.[2] He later joined the faculty of the UCLA Theatre Arts Department. Gordon was the maternal grandfather of actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.[3] Gordon summered at Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut. Pinebrook is best known for becoming the summer home of the Group Theatre. Some of the other artists who summered there were: Elia Kazan, Harry Morgan, John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Will Geer, Clifford Odets, Howard Da Silva and Irwin Shaw.[4][5]
Because of his being blacklisted, Gordon's Hollywood career falls into two phases. In 1940, he started as a dialogue director and went on to direct B-movies. In the late 1940s, he distinguished himself by directing not just some action movies but also melodramas and films noir. He also directed the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac, for which José Ferrer won a Best Actor Academy Award. After his blacklisting, he was forced to stop directing films temporarily, but was called back to Hollywood at the end of the 1950s by producer Ross Hunter, who wanted him to direct Pillow Talk, a vehicle for Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Subsequently, Gordon's second creative phase was concerned with light-hearted comedy films.