George B. Seitz

Biography

George B. Seitz traded Broadway footlights for California sunshine in 1913, arriving just as the infant movie business craved cliff-hangers. Within months he was cranking out breathless episodes for The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Exploits of Elaine (1914) and The Iron Claw (1916), scripting brawls, train-top rescues and last-frame rescues, then stepping in front of the camera when an extra body was needed. By 1916 he was calling “Action!” himself, proving as nimble behind the lens as in front of it. While other silent-era directors stumbled when sound arrived, Seitz simply swapped title cards for dialogue and kept moving. Westerns, courtroom thrillers, slapstick comedies—he piloted them all, bouncing from Columbia to RKO to Paramount with the ease of a commuter changing streetcars. In 1937 MGM lured him into its dream factory and never let go; there he shepherded Mickey Rooney through sixteen outings as small-town scamp Andy Hardy, turning the Hardy household into America’s favorite living room and sealing Seitz’s reputation as the studio’s most reliable hit-maker.