Mitchell Leisen, director; Barbara Stanwyck, actor
No Man of Her Own (USA;1950)
Original U.S. one sheet movie poster
Along with George Cukor and Edmund Goulding, Mitchell Leisen was a highly successful gay director during Hollywood’s golden age. Beginning his career as a set decorator and costume designer on films such as Robin Hood (1922) and Thief of Bagdad (1924), Leisen first flexed his directorial muscles when Cecil B. DeMille hired Leisen to shoot certain scenes of The Sign of the Cross (1932). By 1933, Leisen was helming his own pictures, often personally overseeing every aspect of his films, including cinematography, script, set design, dress, and makeup. Leisen became best known as a “woman’s director” for such films as the lighthearted romp Easy Living (1938) and the Barbara Stanwyck melodrama No Man of Her Own. Although homosexual, Leisen remained married to a woman for 15 years, a common arrangement for gay men in Hollywood.
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