Curiosidades

He is responsible for the original teaming of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, though Hal Roach claimed it later and is now sometimes erroneously given credit.

According to director Edward Dmytryk, who worked for him as an editor, McCarey never forgot a slight. He once told Dmytryk that early in his career Paramount had humiliated him by unceremoniously throwing him off the lot the moment a picture he was making for them was completed. After he became successful Paramount hired him for several more pictures, but McCarey got his revenge, he told Dmytryk, because "every picture I make for Paramount costs them a half-million more than it should".

He accused Cary Grant of ripping off his persona while shooting Cupido é Moleque Teimoso (1937), saying that the star's style and personality was just like his. McCarey and Grant worked together several times after that but never fully extinguished their long-standing antagonism resulting from McCarey's comments.

He believed that A Cruz dos Anos (1937) was his finest film.

Orson Welles said of the film A Cruz dos Anos (1937), "It would make a stone cry", and rhapsodized about his enthusiasm for the film in his book-length series of interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, "This Is Orson Welles".

Had the highest reported income in the United States in 1944.

Was considered one of the most handsome directors in Hollywood, and some said as good looking as Cary Grant, whom he directed in four films.

French director Jean Renoir once said that no other Hollywood director understood people better than McCarey.

He is among an elite group of eight directors who have won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Orig/Adapted). The others are Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, James L. Brooks, Peter Jackson, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

He was a practicing criminal defense attorney for a short time in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In August 2006, an Oscar statuette described as McCarey's Best Director award for O Bom Pastor (1944) was going to be auctioned online, and was expected to sell for at least $100,000 (US). The auction was canceled after the award was found to be counterfeit. McCarey's daughter said she still had all three of her father's Oscars. The base was authentic, but the original nameplate had been removed and replaced with a fake one. The statuette also weighed about a pound more than a real one.

He is the first director to win three major categories at the Academy Awards--Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writing, Original Story, for O Bom Pastor (1944).

He has directed seven films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Mighty Like a Moose (1926), Negócio de Arromba (1929), O Diabo a Quatro (1933), Vamos à América (1935), A Cruz dos Anos (1937), Cupido é Moleque Teimoso (1937) and O Bom Pastor (1944). He has also production supervised one film that is in the registry: Pass the Gravy (1928).

In O Poderoso Chefão (1972), his name appears outside of Radio City Music Hall, which is playing his popular film Os Sinos de Santa Maria (1945), as Michael is walking with Kay and reads about his father's attempted assassination from a newspaper headline.

Began his career as an assistant to Tod Browning at Universal Studios.

He started out as a lawyer but was so bad that on one case he was chased out of a courtroom so left town and ended up in Hollywood where he somehow fell in to work with Hal Roach for whom he directed the Charley Chase and Laurel and Hardy comedies. he also directed Eddie Cantor, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brother's Duck Soup.. It was the sense of freshness and improvisation that distinguished his films.

His begining at Hal Roach studios in 1923 led to a long and successful career in films directing, writing and producing over 200 films. His greatest contribution was to team Laurel and Hardy making four films with them.

Brother of director Ray McCarey.

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

In Newsweek Magazine famed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris named A Cruz dos Anos (1937) his number one most important film, stating "The most depressing movie ever made, providing reassurance that everything will definitely end badly".

He and his wife Stella lived at 1014 North Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills, two blocks away from McCarey's friend and fellow filmmaker Hal Roach.

Director/writer with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, W.C. Fields, and The Marx Brothers.

The opening sequences of No Mundo do Cinema (1976) in which Ryan O'Neal's character, Leo Harrigan, a lawyer who intentionally loses a case and is chased out of the courtroom by his enraged client, are inspired by actual events that happened to McCarey, who was once a criminal defense lawyer and was defending a wife-beater who chased him out of the courtroom and down the street.

Directed five Academy Award Best Picture nominees: Vamos à América (1935), Cupido é Moleque Teimoso (1937), Duas Vidas (1939), O Bom Pastor (1944) and Os Sinos de Santa Maria (1945). Going My Way won Best Picture in 1944.

Directed 6 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Ralph Bellamy, Irene Dunne, Maria Ouspenskaya , Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald and Ingrid Bergman. Crosby and Fitzgerald won for their performances in O Bom Pastor (1944).

Daughter: Mary Virginia McCarey Washburn (August 26, 1926-April 14, 2014). His son, Thomas Jeremiah McCarey, died shortly after his birth on August 24, 1925.

Pressured by his father to study law at USC.

Named after his French-born mother, Leona (Mistrot) McCarey.

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street.

An automobile accident prevented McCarey from directing "My Favorite Wife," so producer McCarey handed off the director's reins to Garson Kanin.

Corresponding Secretary for the Catholic Motion Picture Guild of America. The two other corresponding secretaries for the organization were, at the time, Ina Mae Merrill and June Collyer (per the 1931 Motion Picture Almanac).

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 739-747. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Biography in: "American National Biography." Supplement 1, pp. 392-393. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

It is widely believed that many aspects of McCarey's films were based on his personal history.

Father: Thomas J. McCarey; Mother: Leona Mistrot.

Attended St. Joseph's Catholic school and Los Angeles High School.

Graduated from law school, passed the California bar and was a practicing criminal defense attorney for a short time before entering the movie business.

During the period he was under contact at Hal Roach Studios between 1923 and 1929, McCarey supervised the production of about 300 comedy shorts including two-reelers of Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chase.