A specialist in breezy comedy who later turned to gutsy action, Ray Enright (1896-1965) began his career in silent comedies, working as a gagman and film editor for Charlie Chaplin and Mack Sennett. Enright made his bow as a director in 1927 and put his comic training to excellent use in Alibi Ike (1935), with Joe E. Brown in one of his best vehicles as a trouble-prone baseball pitcher. Enright put the Warner Bros. stock company - headed by Joan Blondell and Hugh Herbert - through its paces in the musical Dames (1934) and the comedy The Traveling Saleslady (1935). He guided two other WB leading lights, Olivia de Havilland and Dick Powell, through the romantic romp Hard to Get (1935), then turned his hand to Westerns with Bad Men of Missouri (1941), starring Dennis Morgan in the story of the notorious Younger Brothers. At RKO, Enright directed Pat O'Brien in The Iron Major (1943), a biography of WWI hero/football coach Frank Cavanaugh. Enright's most frequent collaborator in the 1940s was Randolph Scott, who starred for the director in several Westerns including the classic The Spoilers (1942), co-starring Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne; and such adventure films as China Sky (1945).

By Roger Fristoe