Rowland Lee

Rowland Vance Lee was born on September 6, 1891, in Findlay, Ohio, the son of a suffragette who founded a newspaper. He studied at Columbia University before serving in the infantry during World War I. Lee went on to build a career as an actor, director, writer, and producer, working across stage and screen over several decades before his death on December 21, 1975, in Palm Desert, California.

Lee's stage work included a Broadway appearance in 1916 in Seven Chances. His early screen acting credits from 1917 include Wild Winship's Widow, Time Locks and Diamonds, The Mother Instinct, Polly Ann, The Stainless Barrier, The Maternal Spark, and They're Off the following year. By 1920 he had appeared in The Woman in the Suitcase, Water, Water, Everywhere, His Own Law alongside Hobart Bosworth, and Her Husband's Friend.

It was producer Thomas H. Ince who prompted Lee to choose between acting and directing. Lee moved into directing with A Thousand to One in 1920, followed by Cupid's Brand and The Cup of Life in 1921. He directed two further films that year featuring his former co-star Bosworth, Blind Hearts and The Sea Lion. A string of additional titles followed through 1922, among them Money to Burn, The Men of Zanzibar, His Back Against the Wall, A Self-Made Man, Dust Flower, and Mixed Faces.

At Fox, Lee directed Shirley of the Circus in 1923 and scripted an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel Alice Adams that same year, a project that significantly advanced his career. He then directed Desire at Metro in 1923, during the making of which he fell ill, before returning to Fox for Gentle Julia, another Tarkington adaptation. Following that film, Lee spent several months studying filmmaking in Europe, a practice he continued for the next decade. Further credits from this period include You Can't Get Away with It, In Love with Love with Marguerite De La Motte, The Man Without a Country, Havoc, The Outsider with Walter Pidgeon, The Silver Treasure based on Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, and The Whirlwind of Youth.

Lee joined Paramount in 1926, where he directed Pola Negri in Barbed Wire and The Secret Hour, both in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Doomsday starred Florence Vidor and Gary Cooper, and Lee reunited with Negri for Three Sinners and Loves of an Actress, both in 1928. That same year he directed The First Kiss with Cooper and Fay Wray. In 1929 he directed The Wolf of Wall Street featuring George Bancroft, followed by A Dangerous Woman starring Olga Baclanova, and then the first sound Fu Manchu film, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. Lee contributed to the all-star revue Paramount on Parade in 1930 and directed its sequel, The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, the same year, along with Ladies Love Brutes, Derelict with Bancroft, and A Man from Wyoming with Cooper.

Moving to Warners, Lee directed The Ruling Voice with Walter Huston in 1931, then based himself in England for two years. During that period he wrote an English-language script for Captain Craddock, directed The Guilty Generation at Columbia, and made That Night in London for Paramount in England, the latter starring Robert Donat. Back at Fox, he directed Zoo in Budapest and I Am Suzanne in 1933, and Gambling in 1934, the last of which starred George M. Cohan.

Producer Edward Small engaged Lee to write and direct an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo for United Artists in 1934, again starring Donat. The film was a major success and helped launch a cycle of swashbuckling productions. Darryl F. Zanuck, production head of the newly merged 20th Century-Fox, then hired Lee to direct Cardinal Richelieu, a biopic starring George Arliss and one of the studio's first releases. RKO subsequently brought Lee in to write and direct The Three Musketeers in 1935. For United Artists he completed One Rainy Afternoon in 1936 and an English-shot Agatha Christie adaptation, Love from a Stranger, in 1937. He reunited with Small at RKO for The Toast of New York, a biopic that performed poorly, and followed it with Mother Carey's Chickens in 1938.

After signing with Universal, Lee directed Service de Luxe in 1938 and achieved considerable success with Son of Frankenstein in 1939, starring Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. That same year he directed The Sun Never Sets with Rathbone and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Tower of London, again pairing Rathbone and Karloff. He made another swashbuckler for Small, The Son of Monte Cristo, in 1940, then returned to RKO for Powder Town in 1942. For independent producer Benedict Bogeaus he directed The Bridge of San Luis Rey in 1944 and the swashbuckler Captain Kidd in 1945, after which Lee retired from directing.

Beyond his filmmaking work, Lee was one of the founding members of the Screen Directors Guild in 1936, the organization now known as the Directors Guild of America, established to protect directors' rights. In 1935 he purchased a ranch in the San Fernando Valley where he raised cattle and alfalfa. He later converted a portion of the property overlooking the Chatsworth Reservoir into a motion picture location, and films shot there included Strangers on a Train, The Night of the Hunter, Friendly Persuasion, The Light in the Forest, and Back Street, among others. Lee also produced The Big Fisherman, adapted from the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, for which he co-wrote the script with Howard Estabrook and hired Frank Borzage to direct.

At the time of his death, Lee had just completed writing a screenplay titled The Belt. He was survived by his wife, Eleanor, and his brother, Donald W. Lee, a former Hollywood film writer. Lee holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.