Jack Conway

Born Hugh Ryan Conway of Irish ancestry, Jack Conway was one of a team of MGM contract directors (others included Sam Wood and Robert Z. Leonard), who forsook any pretense to a specific individual style in favor of working within the strictures set forth by studio management--as embodied by Irving Thalberg and his production supervisors. The overall MGM strategy was to streamline efficiency and achieve tighter fiscal control by curbing the power of the director. Deeply suspicious of creative, individualistic filmmakers who would jeopardize the "studio look", Thalberg and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer hoped to prevent such budgetary excesses as had been perpetrated by directors like Erich von Stroheim during the 1920s. Conway contented himself with working under these guidelines. A thoroughly competent craftsman, he delivered commercially successful entertainments on time and within budget. Conway had started out in the industry as an actor, joining a repertory theatre group straight out of