Director

Male

1 series in the catalog

Reginald LeBorg (born Harry Gröbel; 11 December 1902 – 25 March 1989) was an Austrian-American film director. He directed 68 films between 1936 and 1974.

LeBorg is perhaps best known for the horror films he made at Universal studios in the 1940s for the Inner Sanctum Mystery series, including Calling Dr. Death (1943) and Weird Woman (1944).

A perennial director of low-budget "B movie" Hollywood productions, LeBorg was notable for striving to render "every nuance and visual flair" from even the most mediocre screenplay.

LeBorg's accomplishment is the scope of his oeuvre, spanning every film genre, including opera, musicals, crime drama, romantic comedy, westerns, science fiction and horror.

Early life and education

Harry Gröbel (Harry Groebel) was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. His father, Julius, was a wealthy banker-financier, art collector, and a patron of the arts; his mother, Regina Joseph Burte, was a musically talented housewife. According to her son, she was a "strong woman". Harry had two younger brothers. The family owned an ancestral estate outside Vienna where racing horses were bred, as well as an aviation company and other investments in the United States. He completed his primary schooling and studied piano and violin at home. He earned a degree in political economy at the University of Vienna and later attended the Arnold Schonberg's Composition Seminar for a year.

Career in finance: 1923–1929

Groebel was deployed by his father to oversee the family banking concerns around Europe in the early 1920s, spending two years at Banque de Pays de L'Europe Centrale. He habitually frequented theatres, neglecting his duties. In Paris he performed sketches at the Folies Bergère. He lived in New York City off and on between 1923 and 1929 representing his father's financial interests and working at brokerage houses. As a rich 20-something, LeBorg mixed with figures from the music and entertainment world, including George Gershwin. He also took courses in literature at Columbia University.

When the stock market crashed in the Panic of 1929, the family lost their fortune. His father, who was advanced in years and in poor health, died not long afterwards. Groebel abandoned finance and began looking for work as a playwright or an off-Broadway actor in New York, without success. In 1930, he returned to Europe and studied with impresario Max Reinhardt at his school in Vienna, staging a number of operas and musical comedies in Central Europe.

Film career

In 1934, Groebel moved to Hollywood, California to seek employment as a screenwriter, adopting the forename "Reginald" (from his mother's name) and spelling his family name backwards to create the professional surname "LeBorg".

Columbia Pictures hired him to stage and direct the opera scenes for the musical Love Me Forever (1934) starring opera diva Grace Moore. He was enlisted to stage other opera scenes for a number of major and independent studios. During this period he studied the craft of film editing and occasionally played bit parts in films directed by Josef von Sternberg.

On 27 July 1937, LeBorg became a US citizen. In his naturalization petition, he changed his name legally from Harry Groebel to Reginald LeBorg.

Soundies and big band swing shorts: 1937–1942

Between 1936 and 1942, LeBorg directed a number of soundies, featuring 3-minute musical performances viewed on special jukebox machines. Popular in arcades and restaurants, LeBorg was paid $100 for each short. While at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, LeBorg was also tasked with making Big band 10-minute shorts, such as Swing Banditry (1936) and No Place Like Rome (1937). In 1936 he wrote the scenario for Heavenly Music (1943), which later won the Academy Award for "Best Short Subject - 2 Reel" in 1943.

Second Unit director

From 1937 to 1939, LeBorg served as Second Unit director on five films, including Selznick's Intermezzo (1939) starring Ingrid Bergman. The scenes in which Bergman "plays" a piano are dubbed by a professional musician. LeBorg instructed her in body language and technique to create a convincing appearance seated at a "mute" piano. LeBorg also did the second unit musical numbers for A Day at the Races (1937) starring the Marx Brothers, directed by Sam Wood.

Military service: 1942–1943

In 1941, LeBorg joined Universal Pictures to film 20-minute swing band shorts, hoping to be promoted to feature film director. (See Directorial Credits below) Although in his early 40s, the unmarried LeBorg was drafted into the army in 1942 and served by making films for the Office of War Information and the Army Training division. In 1943, he was discharged and received a citation for his service. He returned to Universal studios and was given his first assignment as a house director: She's for Me (1943) starring David Bruce and Jeanette MacDonald. A minor low-budget success, Universal next assigned him to direct a series of films "for which he would be best known", the Inner Sanctum horror pictures.

Universal Pictures: 1943–1945

Inner Sanctum Mystery series

When Blue Network began airing the popular Inner Sanctum Mystery on radio in 1941, Universal Pictures acquired the screen rights from Simon & Schuster to adapt the series to film.

LeBorg was reluctant to take on this assignment of adapting this series, preferring to make musicals. Indeed, "he openly disdained his work on the Inner Sanctum series." His Inner Sanctum oeuvre consists of five films: Calling Dr. Death (1943), Dead Man's Eyes (1944) and Weird Woman (1944). Aside from his proficiency in delivering these films, Universal recognized LeBorg's talent for creating the "proper mood and atmosphere" in the horror genre, a talent that manifested itself at the box office. He also did works for other series by Universal, such as Jungle Woman (1944) and The Mummy's Ghost (1944), The popularity of these pictures was such that LeBorg became "typed as a horror director", much to his disgust.

Lon Chaney, Jr., famous for his role as Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941), starred in four of these films. An actor of limited expressive range, he delivered some of his most "disciplined performances" under LeBorg's direction. Ironically, despite LeBorg's low opinion of his Inner Sanctum films, they enjoyed perennial revivals in television re-runs in subsequent years.

LeBorg's open contempt for his horror films, expressed at film industry social gatherings, gained him a reputation as a malcontent among studio executives.

"Program" director

Universal typically assigned LeBorg to direct program pictures. His acumen for delivering these "on time and under budget" was prized at Universal, and LeBorg was ranked a "house director." As such, LeBorg performed in a two-tier system, in which studios offered a double-feature per theatre showing: a higher budget production, followed by a low-budget program. Biographer Wheeler Winston Dixon notes the implications for LeBorg's artistic aspirations as a filmmaker: Because of his unremitting efficiency on the set, Reginald LeBorg in a sense worked against his own best interests - he was never given a real 'A' picture because he was so indispensable to the 'B' unit."

LeBorg was an avid screenplay writer, spending months or more developing projects, only to have studio executives reject the material after encouraging his efforts. Dixon notes that LeBorg was well aware of the mediocrity of the scripts he was offered. Nonetheless, LeBorg was serious-minded in his efforts to make the most of the material within the imposed financial and time constraints.

San Diego, I Love You (1944): An opportunity to escape his low-budget B movie projects materialized when LeBorg was allowed to film a comedy based on a screenplay written in part by Ruth McKenney, author of My Sister Eileen (1938). San Diego, I Love You (1944) was LeBorg's biggest budget film to date. LeBorg adroit handling of the material and the actors, including Louise Allbritton, Edward Everett…