Jack Conway

Biography

Jack Conway was one of a team of MGM contract directors (others included Sam Wood and Robert Z. Leonard), who forsook any pretence to a specific individual style in favour of working within the strictures set forth by studio management -- as embodied by Irving Thalberg and his production supervisors. The overall MGM strategy was to streamline efficiency and achieve tighter fiscal control by curbing the power of the director. Deeply suspicious of creative, individualistic film makers who would jeopardise the 'studio look', Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer hoped to prevent such budgetary excesses as had been perpetrated by directors like Erich von Stroheim during the 1920's.