March 31 - Robert Stevenson

On this day, in 1905, Robert Edward Stevenson was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. Robert attended St. Johns College, part of Cambridge, on a scholarship. While there he won an award for aeronautics and graduated in 1927 with a degree in engineering. At that point, his parents gave him six weeks to find employment, so, of course, he became an assistant to Michael Balcon, who was one of the most famous British film producers of the time.

Robert's first real task under Michael was to write scripts (not as hard as it might seem as movies were still silent at this point). The first film he received story credit on was the 1928 war picture Balaclava. But even as movies became talkies, it was evident that Robert had a real talent for story crafting. Over the next few years, he would write musicals (1930's Greek Street), mysteries (1931's Night in Montmartre), dramas (1931's The Calendar) and comedies (1932's Lord Babs).

In 1932, Robert was given his first shot at directing a movie, a musical called Happily Ever After. Throughout the rest of the Thirties, he continued cutting a path through the British film industry, sometimes writing, sometimes directing and often doing both. He did several films with Jack Hulbert, another writer/director/actor type, and worked with the likes of Paul Robeson and Boris Karloff. By 1940, Robert had gained the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who invited him to hop the pond and ply his craft in Hollywood.

While under contract to Selznick, Robert was loaned out to RKO Pictures for hits like 1942's Joan of Paris and to Universal for 1941's Back Street, which garnered an Oscar nomination for Music. In 1943, he wrote and directed an well received adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles. When his contract with Selznick ran out, Robert signed a new one with RKO in 1949 and produced a string of films that consistently lost money even though they had stars like Robert Mitchum, Joseph Cotton and Jane Russell. This led to a period of television directing in the early Fifties for everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to Gunsmoke. Many of the gigs he got during this period came from old friends in the industry (Robert and Hitchcock had worked closely together in 1940 for instance) and Robert's career could have fizzled into obscurity at this point, but a change of studio did wonders for his legacy.

In 1956, Robert was hired by the Walt Disney Studio to direct some of the live action movies they were starting to get more heavily into. His first project was Johnny Tremain. Set during the American Revolution, Tremain was filmed as part of the Disneyland television show but released to theaters before appearing on the small screen. Tremain was quickly followed up with one of the all time Disney classics, Old Yeller, the success of which cemented Robert's position with the studio.

Most of the rest of the nineteen films that Robert would direct for Disney over the next two decades are recognizable to the vast majority of people (and the few that aren't really are little gems just waiting to be discovered). His well known titles include Kidnapped, The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber, In Search of the Castaways, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and its sequel The Monkey's Uncle, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and its sequel Herbie Rides Again, and The Shaggy D.A. His lesser known films are Darby O'Gill and the Little People, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Island at the Top of the World and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Eagle eyed readers may have noticed that I've only listed eighteen movies so far. That's because the nineteenth film on the list (although in the middle of the pack chronologically) is the biggest one by far, for both Robert and the company. He was the man in charge of bringing Walt's magnum opus to life: Mary Poppins. Not only did Poppins become a run away hit, it gave Robert the only Oscar nomination for Best Director that Walt Disney Pictures had ever received (or would receive for years to come). Yes, he lost to My Fair Lady (which probably was extra galling because of the whole Julie Andrews 'controversy'), but that's still quite an accomplishment.

In a list published at the end of 1976, Robert was declared the most commercially successful director in the history of films. He had 16 films on the list of top grossing movies, all of them Disney pictures. The number two man (and of course it was a man, this was only the Seventies) only had 12. Robert's final picture, The Shaggy D.A., would join the list and push his supremacy even higher. It was estimated that he had worldwide grosses of over $750 million. I don't know if any of that was adjusted for the 20 year time frame the films spanned, but that's over $3.3 Billion in today's terms. Not to shabby for an engineer.

Robert spent the final decade of his life relaxing in his home in Santa Barbara, California with his fourth (and final) wife of 23 years, Ursula. He passed away on April 30, 1986 at the age of 81. He was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend as part of the class of 2002 as part of the opening of Disneyland Paris.