H. Bruce Humberstone

Biography

A juvenile actor, Bruce Humberstone started his career as a script clerk, later serving as assistant director for the likes of King Vidor, Edmund Goulding and Allan Dwan. One of the 28 founders of the Directors Guild of America, Humberstone worked in a number of capacities on several silent films. With no distinct directing style of his own, Humberstone was able to direct comedies, dramas, westerns, melodramas or thrillers without any problem. He's known for directing several Charlie Chan films at 20th Century-Fox and came up with the "technique" of keeping star Warner Oland drunk so that he could deliver his lines in a style that was appropriate to the Chan character. During the 1950s Humberstone worked mainly for television, and retired in 1962.