Background
Archie Mayo was born on 29 January 1891 in New York, New York, United States.
director producer screenwriter
Archie Mayo was born on 29 January 1891 in New York, New York, United States.
He attended Columbia University.
Although a Warners contract director from sound until 1937, Mayo’s record there is not striking. Black Legion, about the Ku Klux Klan, is a trenchant social melodrama, visually much darker than its tacked-on optimism. But The Petrified Forest is far worse than its reputation. A schematic stage play is never escaped, and Bogart, Leslie Howard, and Bette Davis remain separate trees in an unlikely forest. Later, Mayo made a good Walter Wanger thriller.
House Across the Bay and took over from Fritz Lang on Confirm or Deny and Moontide. It shows his flexibility that, in the same year, he could make Orchestra W ives, which has some nice catty bickering. And it was Mayo who directed the scene in Night in Casablanca in which Harpo is found leaning against a building. What are you doing? he is asked. Holding it up? So he removes himself and the building collapses.