Stuart Heisler

Director Stuart Heisler began his film-industry career as a prop man in 1913, joining Mack Sennett at Keystone the following year. He worked as an editor for Samuel Goldwyn at United Artists from 1924-25 and again from 1929-34 and at Paramount from 1935-36. He graduated to second-unit director with John Ford's The Hurricane (1937). He started his directorial career at Paramount in 1940 and stayed there until 1942, turning out mostly "B"-grade films but was occasionally given an "A" picture. The majority of his output was routine but he did turn out several first-rate films, his best-known probably being the sleeper hit The Biscuit Eater (1940), a small film about a boy and a dog that became an unexpected financial and critical success, garnering Heisler the best reviews of his career. After leaving Paramount he free-lanced. He directed Bette Davis in The Star (1952) and did a bang-up job with Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan in the hard-hitting anti-Klan drama Storm Warning (1951). He m