H.C. Potter

MINI BIO:

'Hank' Potter was primarily a man of the theater, but he managed to get in enough visits to Hollywood to make 20 films there between 1936 an 1957. Although Potter worked for most of the major studios, he seems to have been happiest at RKO Radio and Universal, where he directed some of his most delightful comedies.

Not coming to Hollywood with the advent of sound like many of his Broadway colleagues, Potter was eventually tempted into the film fold by Samuel Goldwyn's offer to direct Beloved Enemy, an Irish 'troubles' melodrama set in the early 1920s. He wandered around making two or three light films for other studios, but there was nothing memorable -- until his tear-drenched remake of Shopworn Angel (with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart), which proved to be just the thing for pre-war audiences.

The softness of his images and the lightness of his touch brought him to direct The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, a stylish musical tearjerker starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  In 1947, Potter directed the delightful The Farmer's Daughter for which Loretta Young unexpectedly won an Academy Award -- and then Potter directed his best film, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, an enchanting, sophisticated comedy starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy as a city couple getting rooked left-and-right as they build their country home.