Born in September of 1900 in Paris, Robert Florey was a French-American film director, screenwriter, journalist and actor. He is known for his early career’s avant-garde German expressionist style and for his later work as a reliable studio-system 
director to complete troubled productions.
Born Robert Fuchs, Florey spent his early years in Paris near the Montreuil studio of George Melies who was producing highly successful films with experimental camera effects. He appeared in a small role in Alfred Lind’s 1916 multi-reel silent film for Signet Films, “Le Cirque de la Mort (The Masque of Life)”. Florey initially worked as a film journalist and then became an assistant director and actor to silent film maker Louis Feuillade. Florey was assistant director for Feuillade’s 1921 “L’Orpheline” and the 1921 film serial “Parisette”. After these films, he relocated to the United States as a Hollywood journalist for the French weekly Cinemagazine.
Having established himself in Hollywood, Robert Florey became the foreign publicity director for both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and the European advance manager for Rudolph Valentino. His first work as an assistant director in the United States was for Gothic Pictures’s 1925 silent drama “Parisian Nights”, that featured an early supporting role for Boris Karloff. Between 1925 and 1927, 
Florey was an assistant director at the newly established Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Among his silent films with MGM were the 1926 “La Bohème” and 1927 “The Magic Flame”.
In his early years as a director, Florey did work for multiple studios. His first film was the 1927 silent romantic drama “One Hour of Love” for Tiffany Pictures. Other works included “The Romantic Age”, a silent drama for Columbia Pictures, and “Face Value” for Sterling Pictures, both in 1927. Florey co-wrote and co-directed with cinematic artist Slavko Vorkapić the 1928 silent experimental short “The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra”, a satire of Hollywood with rapid camera movement and superimposition. Widely released in theaters by FBO Pictures, the film is considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema and was entered into the National Film Registry.
After accepting a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1928, Robert Florey directed the 1929 mystery drama “The Hole in the Wall”, which featured Edward G. Robinson and Claudette Colbert, and co-directed with Joseph Santley the first Marx Brothers film, the 1929 “The Cocoanuts”. After directing 
four films in Europe, Florey returned to Hollywood and worked for Universal Pictures. Originally given the directorship of the 1931 “Frankenstein”, he was replaced by director James Whale who cast Boris Karloff as the monster. Florey became the director for the 1932 “Murders in the Rue Morgue” with Bela Lugosi. With the help of cinematographer Karl Freund, he transformed Poe’s short story into a Americanized version of German Expressionist films.
Between 1933 and 1935, Florey worked on fifteen B-movies for the Warner Brothers Studios, principally as director. Among these were the 1933 “Ex-Lady” with Betty Davis; the 1933 “The House on 56th Street” with Kay Francis; the 1934 “Smarty” with Joan Blondell and Warren William; and the 1935 “Woman in Red” with Barbara Stanwyck. From 1935 to 1940, Florey was a director for Paramount Pictures where he made fast-paced, cynically toned films with dramatic lighting. Among these were the 1936 “Hollywood Boulevard” with John Halliday and new actor Robert Cummings; the 1937 “King of the Gamblers” with Claire Trevor and 
Lloyd Nolan; and the 1937 “Daughter of Shanghai” with Anna May Wong. “Daughter of Shanghai” was later added to the National Film Registry in 2006.
Robert Florey directed three movies for Columbia Pictures in 1941. Among these was the 1941 “The Face Behind the Mask”, a film noir crime drama written from Thomas O’Connell’s play “Interim” specifically for actor Peter Lorre. Following his stay with Columbia, Florey began a ten-year period of freelance work as a director for different studios. Among these films were the Warner Brothers’ 1943 musical “The Desert Song”; Twentieth-Century Fox’s 1943 wartime film “Bomber’s Moon”; Warner Brothers’ 1946 horror film “The Beast with Five Fingers” that featured Peter Lorre; and Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 black comedy “Monsieur Verdoux”.
After 1951, Florey devoted himself almost exclusively to work as a director in the medium of television. His methodic and quick-paced directing made him particularly suited to episodic television work. Forley’s initial work included two televised specials for Disney Studios in 1951, “The Walt Disney Christmas Show” and “Operation Wonderland”. Over the course of his career in television, he was responsible
for over three hundred episodes of such shows as Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, Studio 57, General Electric Theater, Wagon Train, Zane Grey Theater, The Untouchables, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, among others.
Robert Florey published a number of books on film history including the 1927 “Pola Negri”, a biography of Polish stage and screen actress Pola Negri; the 1927 “Charlie Chaplin”; and the 1966 “Le Lanterne Magique (The Magic Lantern)”, which documented the history of cinema. He was honored in 1950 with a knighthood in the French Légion d’Honneur. Robert Florey died in May of 1979 at the age of seventy-eight in Santa Monica, California. His body was interred at the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
“Florey was a free spirit who valued his personal liberty within the studio system (but) he never had the commercial clout to make that system work for him…he amused himself with second-string projects and B-picture budgets, relatively minor efforts on which he could word undisturbed, casually inserted a personal touch here and there.” —Film historian Richard Koszarski, Hollywood Directors:1914-1940, Oxford University Press, 1976
Second Insert Image: Robert Forley, “Ex-Lady”, Betty Davis, 1933, Warner Brothers Studio, Cinematography Tony Gaudio
Third Insert Image: Gertrude Mitchell, “Robert Florey”, 1936, Set of “Till We Meet Again”, Paramount Pictures, Gelatin Silver Print, Hulton Archives
Fourth Insert Image: Robert Forley, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, Bela Lugosi, 1932, Universal Pictures, Cinematography Karl W. Freund
Bottom Insert Image: Robert Forley and Joseph Santley, “The Cocoanuts”, Harpo and Chico Marx, 1929, Paramount Pictures, Cinematography George J. Folsey and J. Roy Hunt