Search a film or person :
FacebookConnectionRegistration
Joseph Santley is a Director and Scriptwriter American born on 10 january 1890 at Salt Lake City (USA)

Joseph Santley

Joseph Santley
If you like this person, let us know!
Birth name Joseph Mansfield
Nationality USA
Birth 10 january 1890 at Salt Lake City (USA)
Death 8 august 1971 (at 81 years) at Los Angeles (USA)

Joseph Santley (January 10, 1889 – August 8, 1971) was an American actor, singer, dancer, writer, director, and producer of musical theatrical plays and motion pictures.

Born Joseph Mansfield in Salt Lake City, Utah, he adopted the stage name of his stepfather, actor Eugene Santley. As a boy, he and older brother Fred began performing in live theatre appearing in summer stock and touring with their parents. In 1906, at age seventeen, Joseph Santley co-wrote and starred on Broadway in the play, Billy the Kid. In 1907, he acted in film for the first time for Sidney Olcott at the Kalem Company in a silent Western film short called Pony Express.

Santley continued to work almost exclusively in musical comedy plays, returning to Broadway five more times as well as touring nationally. A gifted dancer, Santley created the Santley Tango and the Hawaiian Butterfly. After he married actress/singer and cabaret dancer Ivy Sawyer, beginning in 1916 the two danced as a team, performing together in a number of Broadway musicals beginning with “Betty” and “Oh, My Dear!” and eventually other productions at major venues across the United States such as the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.. Their final collective Broadway presentation was in 1927's Just Fancy which Santley co-wrote, produced and directed. He and Ivy Sawyer had a son Joseph born in 1916 and a daughter Betty born in 1928.

In 1928, Joseph Santley directed his first motion picture, making a short talkie for Paramount Pictures that featured singer Ruth Etting. The next year, Paramount had Santley direct three more films that were short singing productions, one with Etting, another with crooner Rudy Vallee, plus a third titled High Hat with Broadway singing star Alice Boulden. Also, he directed A Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, a musical film featuring Eddie Cantor along with Eddie Elkins and his orchestra. In 1929, Joseph Santley co-directed, with Robert Florey, the first Marx Brothers feature film The Cocoanuts, a musical comedy for which he is most famous. Based on the George S. Kaufman play, and with music by Irving Berlin, the film was billed as "Paramount's All Talking-Singing Musical Comedy Hit." His other notable directorial efforts include 1935's Harmony Lane, a biographical musical on the life of composer Stephen Foster. In 1940, he directed Melody Ranch starring "singing cowboy" Gene Autry. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

During World War II, Joseph Santley worked for the war effort and in 1942 made the film Remember Pearl Harbor. In 1950, he made his last feature film but came back at age sixty-five to produce the 1954-55 television comedy The Mickey Rooney Show. In 1956, he put together two segments of Jazz Ball, a made-for-TV musical revue created from various filmed performances by jazz greats from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Joseph Santley died in 1971 in Los Angeles.

Best films

Earl Carroll Vanities (1945)
(Director)

Usually with

Fred Santley
Fred Santley
(8 films)
Jack A. Marta
Jack A. Marta
(7 films)
Jack Townley
Jack Townley
(7 films)
Nat Levine
Nat Levine
(4 films)
James Bush
James Bush
(3 films)
Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Joseph Santley (41 films)

Display filmography as list

Director

Shadow of a Woman, 1h18
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Noir
Actors Helmut Dantine, Andrea King, William Prince, John Alvin, Richard Erdman, Peggy Knudsen
Rating59% 2.991512.991512.991512.991512.99151
Woman (Andrea King) on the verge of a breakdown marries a man (Helmut Dantine) she hardly knows, putting her in the path of fear and danger. She suspects her husband of plotting to kill his son from a previous marriage.
Hitchhike to Happiness, 1h14
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Musical
Themes Films about music and musicians, Musical films
Actors Dale Evans, William Frawley, Jerome Cowan, Arlene Harris, Joyce Compton, Maude Eburne
Rating52% 2.622212.622212.622212.622212.62221
A famous radio singer returns to New York City to reunite with her old friends who are unaware of who she is due to how she uses a stage name. She falls in love with a struggling song writer as well.
Rosie the Riveter, 1h15
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Musical, Romance
Themes Musical films
Actors Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson, Barbara Jo Allen, Frank Jenks, Lloyd Corrigan, Frank Fenton (Moran)
Rating62% 3.131463.131463.131463.131463.13146
Lors de la deuxième guerre mondiale en Californie, une campagne de presse fut lancée pour convaincre la population que les femmes pouvaient riveter, souder ou construire des bâtiments militaires, au lieu de rester travailler chez elle ou dans les secteurs habituels tel que l'industrie textiles.
Brazil
Brazil (1944)
, 1h31
Directed by R. G. Springsteen, Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Musical theatre, Romantic comedy, Musical, Romance
Themes Films about music and musicians, Musical films
Actors Tito Guízar, Virginia Bruce, Robert Livingston, Edward Everett Horton, Fortunio Bonanova, Frank Puglia
Rating59% 2.9503952.9503952.9503952.9503952.950395
Le Brésil est peut-être le meilleur de la poignée de films américains réalisés par la sensation de chant brésilien Tito Guizar. À la manière typique d'une comédie délirante, l'intrigue est mise en mouvement par l'auteur Nicky Henderson, qui a atteint les palmarès des best-sellers avec son dernier tome, Why Marry a Latin? En recherchant son prochain livre à Rio De Janeiro, elle découvre "pourquoi" lorsqu'elle rencontre le bel auteur-compositeur Miguel Soares. En apprenant l'existence du livre de Nicky, Miguel décide de lui donner quelques leçons sur les affaires de cœur. Edward Everett Horton est également sur place, gazouillant à travers le rôle d'un buttinsky bien intentionné. Grâce à la politique de "bon voisinage" des années 1940, les comédies musicales sud-américaines étaient une surabondance sur le marché, mais le Brésil était assez bon par ses propres mérites pour payer sa place au box-office.
Thumbs Up
Thumbs Up (1943)
, 1h7
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Musical
Themes Musical films, Political films
Actors Brenda Joyce, Richard Fraser, Elsa Lanchester, Arthur Margetson, J. Pat O'Malley, Queenie Leonard
Rating55% 2.787222.787222.787222.787222.78722
For a publicity stunt to boost her career an American nightclub singer volunteers for a stint in a British munitions factory. She is so impressed by the spirit of her fellow workers that she decides to stay on.
Call of the Canyon, 1h11
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Western
Actors Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Ruth Terry, Thurston Hall, Dorothea Kent, Marc Lawrence
Rating64% 3.2298353.2298353.2298353.2298353.229835
Singing cowboy Gene Autry (Gene Autry) and his fellow ranchers in Whippasaw are outraged to learn that the purchasing agent for the Grantley B. Johnson Packing Co., Thomas McCoy (Edmund MacDonald), is only offering them $65 per head of cattle. Unknown to the ranchers, McCoy is a gambler in debt to a bookie who sent his henchmen Horace Dunston and the Pigeon to ensure that McCoy pays up. McCoy plans to raise the money by pocketing the difference between what he is offering the ranchers and what the packing company sent him. Gene encourages the ranchers to stick together and wait while he travels to the city to speak directly with the packing company owner, Grantley B. Johnson (Thurston Hall).
Joan of Ozark, 1h22
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Comedy
Actors Joe E. Brown, Eddie Foy, Jr., Jerome Cowan, Gladys Gale, Alexander Granach, Anne Jeffreys
Rating58% 2.9211552.9211552.9211552.9211552.921155
A hillbilly manages to foil a ring of Nazi spies operating in the United States.
Down Mexico Way, 1h18
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Western
Actors Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Fay McKenzie, Harold Huber, Sidney Blackmer, Duncan Renaldo
Rating62% 3.142663.142663.142663.142663.14266
The townspeople of Sage City are celebrating the upcoming production of a motion picture in their community. The film's producers, Homer Gerard (Arthur Loft) and Ellery Gibson (Sidney Blackmer), assure the townspeople that if they invest financially in the production, that John Wayne himself will star in the movie, and the world premier will be held in Sage City, putting their community on the map. Singing cowboy Gene Autry (Gene Autry) and his sidekick Frog Millhouse (Smiley Burnette) are caught up in the excitement and host a barbecue for the town and its good fortune.
Behind the News, 1h15
Directed by Joseph Santley
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Crime
Actors Lloyd Nolan, Doris Davenport, Frank Albertson, Robert Armstrong, Paul Harvey, Charles Halton
Rating53% 2.6925852.6925852.6925852.6925852.692585
Recently graduated journalist Jeff Flavin gets a scholarship of six months work for the Enquirer
Melody Ranch, 1h24
Directed by Sol C. Siegel, Joseph Santley, F. Hugh Herbert
Origin USA
Genres Western
Actors Gene Autry, Jimmy Durante, Ann Miller, Barton MacLane, Jerome Cowan, George "Gabby" Hayes
Rating61% 3.095983.095983.095983.095983.09598
Gene Autry (Gene Autry) returns to his hometown of Torpedo as guest of honor at the Frontier Days Celebration, where he meets his childhood enemies, the Wildhack brothers—Mark (Barton MacLane), Jasper (Joe Sawyer), and Bud (Horace McMahon)—who are now local gangsters. The Wildhacks own a saloon next door to the school, and when their shooting and brawling endangers the safety of the children, Gene protests and threatens to expose them during his next radio broadcast. The Wildhacks stop the broadcast and beat Gene up.