Defining the dependable, versatile and prolific big-studio director, George Marshall (1891-1975) specialized in comedy and brought characteristic touches of humor to his dramas, action pictures and musicals.

Chicago-born Marshall was expelled from the University of Chicago and entered films as an extra in 1912. After graduating to featured roles, he wrote screenplays for comedy shorts and directed his first feature, Love's Lariat, in 1916. He continued directing shorts and features into the 1920s, and in 1925 was put in charge of the entire shorts output for Fox studios. After performing similar duties at Pathe in 1928-29, he returned to features in 1932.

TCM's tribute to Marshall picks up at this point in his career and includes the Laurel and Hardy short Towed in a Hole (1932), in which the boys play traveling fishmongers. The Samuel Goldwyn production The Goldwyn Follies (1938), planned by the producer as an annual event, had no sequels even though Marshall directed such acts as The Ritz Brothers and Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, to entertaining effect. Destry Rides Again (1939), a rowdy Western starring James Stewart as a gun-shy deputy sheriff and Marlene Dietrich as a saloon singer, became one of the biggest hits of the movies' Golden Year. A haunted-house comedy, The Ghost Breakers (1940) was the first of nine films in which Marshall directed Bob Hope.

Other comics with whom Marshall did memorable work are W.C. Fields (You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, 1939), Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Scared Stiff, 1953) and Jackie Gleason (Papa's Delicate Condition, 1963). Other notable titles among Marshall's 150-plus feature films include the comedy Murder, He Says (1945), the mystery The Blue Dahlia (1946), the film biography Houdini (1953), and "The Railroad" portion of the epic Western How the West Was Won (1962). Three days before his death, Marshall was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.

by Roger Fristoe