Directing
VICTOR FLEMING
Victor Fleming
- (Victor Fleming with some of the 10 Oscars garnered by Gone with the Wind, 1940)
Biography
BIO
Victor Fleming was born in La Cañada Flintridge, California in 1889. He was working as a car mechanic when he met Allan Dwan, then a film director for American Film Manufacturing, and was hired as a driver and stunt man in 1912.
In 1915, he joined the Douglas Fairbanks unit at Triangle Film. By the outbreak of World War I, Fleming was Fairbanks' supervisory cameraman at ArtCraft Pictures. After the war, Fleming rejoined Fairbanks at Douglas Fairbanks Pictures where, in 1919, he directed his first film.
By 1922, Fleming was directing at Famous Players-Lasky which later became Paramount Pictures.
He moved to MGM in 1933 and began directing the likes of Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Janet Gaynor, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable.
Fleming took over direction of The Wizard of Oz (1939) from George Cukor who had previously committed to direct Gone with the Wind (1939). But before he could complete the picture, he was asked to replace Cukor again on the Gone with the Wind set.
After directing more than 40 feature films, Fleming's last picture, Joan of Arc, was released in 1948.
He married Lucile Rosson in 1933 and the couple raised two children.
Victor Fleming died suddenly of a heart attack in Cottonwood, Arizona, in 1949, just after completing his last film. He was 59 years old.
Additional biographical information is available at: 
