About Leo McCarey
Thomas Leo McCarey was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was involved in nearly 200 films, including the critically acclaimed Duck Soup, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth, Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's, My Son John, and An Affair to Remember. Invited to Columbia later in 1937, McCarey earned his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Awful Truth, with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. In 1944 he directed Going My Way, a story about an enterprising priest, the youthful Father Chuck O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, for which he won his second Best Director Oscar and Crosby won a Best Actor Oscar. He was not the only director of his time to work this way: fellow comedy directors Gregory La Cava, Howard Hawks and George Stevens – the last also a Roach graduate – were known for their use of improvisation on the set. In later years it became canonical, and even considered by some as McCarey's masterpiece, due to perceptive champions such as Bertrand Tavernier, Charles Silver and Robin Wood.
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