Born as Robert Gustave Fuchs in Paris, he grew up near the studio of Georges Méliès. In 1920, he worked at first as an assistant and extra in featurettes from Louis Feuillade.
Florey went to Hollywood in 1921 as a journalist for Cinemagazine. He worked as foreign publicity director for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and was European advance manager for Rudolph Valentino.[3] He was an assistant director on Parisian Nights (1925).
He went to MGM where he was an assistant on The Masked Bride (1925), Exquisite Sinner (1926), Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), La Bohème (1926) and The Magic Flame (1927).
He also shot newsreel footage in New York.
Early films
Florey's first film as director was One Hour of Love (1927) for Tiffany Productions. He did The Romantic Age (1927) for Columbia and Face Value (1927) for Stirling Pictures. He was assistant on The Woman Disputed (1928). He directed and co-wrote the 27-minute experimental film Johann the Coffinmaker in 1927, said to have been made for $200 in his spare time, shooting at night while working on other films in the daytime. The avant-garde film was made on only three sets, and involved a lot of trick photographic effects.[4]
As a director, Florey's reputation is balanced between his avant-garde expressionist style, most evident in his early career, and his work as a fast, reliable studio-system director called on to finish troubled projects, such as 1939's Hotel Imperial.[6]
Florey made a significant but uncredited contribution to the script of the 1931 version of Frankenstein. Florey was to be given the job of directing Frankenstein, and he filmed a screen test with Bela Lugosi playing the monster, but Universal Pictures gave the job to James Whale, who cast Boris Karloff.
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 work undisturbed, casually inserted a personal touch here and there. His success at this mode of directing made him extremely suitable for television work, and he enlivened over 300 episodes of series like Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents with his characteristic stylistic flourishes.
—Film historian Richard Koszarski in Hollywood Directors, 1914-1940 (1976).[19]
Florey's early works for television included The Walt Disney Christmas Show (1951) and Operation Wonderland (1951) for Disney.
He also wrote a number of books, including Pola Negri (1927) and Charlie Chaplin (1927), Hollywood d'hier et d'aujord'hui (1948), La Lanterne magique (1966), and Hollywood annee zero (1972).
↑Workman, Christopher; Troy Howarth (December 6, 2016). Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era. Midnight Marquee Press. p.313. ISBN978-1936168-68-2.
.png)
.png)
