Andrew L. Stone

American writer-director-producer Andrew L. Stone attended the University of California and then joined the San Francisco Film Exchange. He began in Hollywood with Universal in 1918, serving his initial apprenticeship in a film laboratory. After several more years of toil in Universal's prop department he graduated to directing short films. He financed his first two-reel effort, The Elegy (1927), himself. The following year he helmed his first feature film. Stone could hardly be described as a prolific film maker until at least the late 30s when he began contributing several story lines for light entertainments, such as The Hard-Boiled Canary (1941) and Hi Diddle Diddle (1943). He achieved his first critical acclaim as a director for his all-black musical Stormy Weather (1943), starring the exuberant Lena Horne. The New York Times (July 22) praised Stone's 'knowing direction' and the film as 'moving smoothly' and 'being paced just right'. Stone worked under contract at Paramount (1938