Born September 6, 1909, in Baltimore, MD; died April 29, 1993. Director, actor, and educator. After attending Johns Hopkins University and the Yale DramaSchool, Gordon began a career in acting and then became a director for such New York stage productions as Home of the Brave and The Tender Trap. In 1943 he directed his first motion pictures, Crime Doctor and One Dangerous Night, crime films that were hampered by meager budgets. His work on Another Part ofthe Forest, a film centering on the avarice of a family in postbellum America, helped Gordon hone his skills for the direction of the 1950 production of Cyrano de Bergerac, which earned him recognition as a talented filmmaker withthe ability to handle a subject as grandiose as Edmond-Eugene-Alexis Rostand's tale of unrequited love. In the mid-1950s Gordon's career was hindered after he was brought under the scrutiny of the Un-American Activities Committee,a branch of the House of Representatives designed to identify and reveal individuals thought to have sympathies incompatible with American ideology. Blacklisted in Hollywood for refusal to cooperate with the committee, Gordon was forced to work elsewhere and moved to Australia for a time. He returned to America and--after volunteering information to the committee--received the opportunity to direct the commercial success Pillow Talk, the first of several films to pair Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Before retiring from film work in 1970and becoming a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Gordon directed other films, including another Hudson-Day vehicle, Move over Darling, and the Western spoof Texas across the River.
PERIODICALS
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