Roy del Ruth
| Roy Del Ruth | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 18, 1893 |
| Died | April 27, 1961 (aged 67) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1929–1961 |
| Spouse(s) | Winnie Lightner |
Roy Del Ruth (October 18, 1895, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – April 27, 1961) was an American film director.
Beginning his Hollywood career as a writer for Mack Sennett in 1915, Del Ruth later directed his first short film Hungry Lions (1919) for the producer. By the early 1920s, he had moved over to features including Asleep at the Switch (1923), The Hollywood Kid (1924), Eve's Lover (1925) and The Little Irish Girl (1926).
Following several more titles, many now lost, he directed The First Auto (1927), a charming look at the introduction of the first automobile to a small rural town. Also once believed lost, the film's almost entirely unsynchronised soundtrack features several elaborate sound effects for the time.
Del Ruth directed another half dozen projects before the musical The Desert Song (1929), the first color film ever released by Warner Bros. That same year, Del Ruth directed Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Warner's second two-strip Technicolor, all-talking feature that also became a big box office hit. Having successfully segued into the talkie era, Del Ruth directed two more two-strip color musicals, Hold Everything (1930) and The Life of the Party (1930), before directing James Cagney and Joan Blondell in the cheerfully amoral gangster film, Blonde Crazy (1931).
That same year, he directed the first version of Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon (1931). Ricardo Cortez portrayed the roguish private eye whose investigation of a murder case entwines him in a plot involving unsavory people searching for a fabled, jewel-encrusted falcon. While the plot somewhat mirrors the 1941 remake, this pre-Code version features sexual innuendo, including Bebe Daniels bathing in the nude, overt references to homosexuality and one instance of cursing.
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